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HOT SPRINGS RACING CLOSURE The Sentinel-Records Editorial Summary of a Queer Situation. The leading newspaper of Hot Springs, an excellent journal it is, too in its issue of September 14. printed this about the demand of Judge Scott AVood that racing be discontinued at Oaklawn Iark: "Judge Scott AVood of the Circuit Court, in a communication to the Rusiness Mens League, sets forth such emphatic views against any proposed race meeting next spring that the board of governors of this organization has accepted the communication from the court as tantamount to a demand and has called off the anticipated race meeting next spring. "The announcement will come in the nature of a keen disappointment to many who regard the well-conducted race meeting at Oaklawn as a big outstanding unit in the scheme of prosperity that has visited this resort for the past three years, and on which to a large extent property values have increased materially. "The court itself, in comment on the situation, refers to a danger seen where pleasure seekers crowd out health seekers, and Judge Wood assumes that great injury was done to the resort from that situation. AVe will admit there has been some crowding the past two years, and was, in fact, some crowding the first year of the revived race meeting. "In fact, it was this accepted crowded condition that caused many of us to lend our influence to the furtherance of racing. Going backward a little bit, we remember that it was lack of crowding that seemed to be ailing Hot Springs. Seasons were growing shorter and the afflicted were either not paying a due mark of esteem to this resort, or else the general health of the country at large was too good for our well doing. "At any rate, racing was re-established and the crowd came. Then more racing was held, and the crowd grew. Then a third meeting came, and there was admittedly a town filled to overflowing with pleasure and health seekers. The people of Hot Springs have prospered during the last three years as in no three consecutive years of the resorts history! Hotel men, cafe men, bath houses, business interests generally, came to no longer regard their future with doubt, but to know that they would have big business at least for a period. "The calling off of the races will naturally draw a line between the health seeker and the pleasure seekerp Ttntl -ttitr lHHerwill "lie absent to a"marked degree. It may be that now, in the heyday of the enjoyment of the prosperity that was contributed so largely to by the pleasure seeker, we will not see much difference. Rut at least, in the language of the late Grover Cleveland, It is a fact find not a theory that confronts us. There will be no racing in the spring of 1920. "It will not be of service to permit difference of opinion between supporters of races and the circuit judge to heap critcism, animadversion or censure on the one who has stepped out between a three-year proved up policy of prosperity and an uncertain future in matters where business success is concerned. AAe have strife enough without that. "The Rusiness Mens League could not conduct a race meeting under its auspices in opposition to a determined stand by the circuit judge, and the league knows that well. It has acquiesced because it feels that there is 110 other course to pursue. So in view of these circumstances, at least for the present, we may as well all recover from the disappointment as speedily as possible, reconcile ourselves to the situation, and Proceed to try to maintain Hot Springs prosperity as completely as possible underall and any conditions."
