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RACING NOW AN EXPENSIVE BUSINESS Trainers Discuss Great Iccreaso in Cost of Feed, Stable Help and Other Essentials. NEW YORK. N. Y.. January 27. Walter House and Lucky Jack MeGinnis were conversing a few days ago on the expense of training horses these lays. Both were unanimous in their convictions that no one could train a horse properly on less than "per diem, and cited instances of expenses top- sitlodlslie-? in the business -that were now-so high thnt1-when the monthly bills were rendered they made them dizzy. "Look at this item for bandages," said Walter. "I used to get bandages for about fifty cents a set. now they are .50 and dont last nearly as long. Liniment I used to make for now costs me about 2. Labor is so high that a rubber wont talk work on less than 0 a month and board, which is now a week, but which used to be . Hay costs 0 a ton, the kind I buy, and oais, I am ashamed to say what I pay for them. If I told you you would accuse me of exaggeration, falsifying, fabricating and everything else that goes witli lying; why, oats arc worth almost a penny a piece." To all of which MeGinnis concurred, which set Walter reminiscencing. "Why, when I was working with the trotters I was a top paid man at 5 a month, and for seven years I never knew what a bed or cot looked like. We had to sleep in the stalls those days along side of ,a horse, or, to be more correct, under the manger on a blanket, with another blanket for a pillow. We did not even have a cot in the outfit, and as for a trunk, the only time I ever saw a trunk was when the boss came along on a visit. Then I used to see one and have to carry it around wherever he was going to locate. Ask one of the present day rubbers to pick up a stable trunk and hell tell you to go hire a piano mover. Rubbers today want secretaries and stenographers". They should have been living in my early educational days when we were sometimes luckv to get a couple of crullers and a cup of thin coffee for breakfast, and that had to last us until midnight or the next day. We had to keep our brass so brilliantly polished that the boss never carried a shaving glass. He used a doorknob or any other bit of brass handy. But that was more than thirty years ago, and things have changed. EXPENSES DONT BOTHER WINNERS. "Little did I ever think in those days that I should be waltzing around the Waldorf ordering broiled guinea hen and candied sweet potatoes, with a pot of Burgundy for a chaser. But to return to the subject, it is expensive training horses these days and will be until the country is reorganized and the price of food and labor becomes nearer normal. From what I can learn this will be brought nliout pretty soon, and then a trainer can get a little something for his work; but these times it is hard work to keep even and get a square meal for man and horse. Of course if one can get a good stable of horses that will win a purse or two a week the expenses dont trouble anybody so much; but to fall up against a bunch of bad horses, with little coming in to meet the bills, it keeps a fellow guessing just where he is going to laud at the end of the month, cither in the pen or the poorhouse. If the purses that are now being hung up do not diminish and the expenses get normal then there will be reason for shouting, for everybody can make a little money, and it "looks as if that time is approaching. Until then I am just going to hang on and try to get a few good horses together, so as to be well heeled for winners when the time is ripe." "Thems my sentiments exactly," was MeGinnis reply concerning the existing situation and the prospects. "I think I could get the bandages and the liniment hit cheaper, but I am, not going to argue with you about it, for I dont know for sure, as my horses are in sucli good condition I have not bad a bottle of liniment in the stable for years. If I asked any of my men to get me a bottle of liniment, they know so little about it they would probably think I was sending them for a new prohibition drink, and would most likely aJi- me what I was going to have on the side." i "I suppose thats true," was Walters quick response. "Giiess all your horses are turned out. When you take em up youll soon find out the price of liniment, and your rubbers wont ask you what you are going to have on the side neither."- Walter had won another argument.
