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Here and There on the Turf Handbook Evil. Education in the Stables. Americas Fastest Track. Near a Record Double. The Toronto police admit that handbooks on the horss races are more numerous now, as a consequence of the governments five per cent tax on pari-mutuel bets. They have much difficulty locating the bookmakers, who keep moving from one temporary location to another. The operating of a handbook is punishable by a heavy fine, but, like bootlegging, it flourishes in spite of the law. That is because so many people do not regard the placing of a bet with a bookmaker privately as any offense against morality. The state has to be careful as to how and when it runs counter to a substantial section of public opinion on these moral issues, for a minority may be powerful enough to nullify the effect of a law and thus bring the whote of the administration of justice into disrepute. It can be conceded that the person who eschews race horse betting entirely escapes moral risks that the bettor inevitably runs, but if there is betting it is better that it occur once or twice in a season, on a regulated track, rather than spasmodically all year through the handbooks. If Ontario track betting were abolished would the handbook go? Perhaps the habit would be lessened, but there are plenty of Toronto horse race fans who "play the ponies" on their rounds of southern and even Mexican tracks. The locality of the race is not their primary consideration. As in the case of bootlegging, if there is easy money to be made by a violation of the law, handbooks will be operated even if the sentence on conviction is jail. The problem of the handbook does not seem to be entirely dependent on and concurrent with Ontario track racing and betting. Toronto Daily Mail and Empire. It was at the. Saratoga yearling sales. He was a bright-eyed little fellow that could not have weighed more than sixty pounds, and no one surrounding that brightly lighted ring, where the thoroughbreds were shown, had a keener interest. A born horseman, he was quick to pick out the cow hocks, weak pasterns, straight shoulders and the other objectionable points. He was just as quick to recognize and remark on the well-formed youngster. But that was not the point. He was following the sale closely with a catalog and keeping his record of buyers and prices. And that same youngster last fall could not read or write. He is an exercise boy in the John E. Madden stable and just the sort that should develop into a high-class jockey. He has it in him and he is in the I stable where he will have a chance to develop his every talent. But Madden will do more than make a jockey of the youngster. It was at Maddens school at Hamburg Place that the lad learned how to read and write and his education has not ended there. He has learned how to deport himself and from a ragged, ignorant urchin he has every chance to grow into a clean living, responsible citizen. It is a!l wrong in these enlightened days to consider association with a racing stable as a dangerous upbringing for a youngster. Hamburg Place is not the only thoroughbred j establishment where a proper care is taken of the exercise boys. It is the same about all of the prominent racing stables and breeding farms. The morals and education of the boys are carefully looked after and many a lad has owed a successful career to just such a start. There are many schools for the exercise boys that are supported by the horsemen and no truant officer is necessary to look after the attendance. Each trainer is his own truant officer and the little fellows have to put in just so much time in study. Just so long as they remain exercise boys, and some will so remain to the end of the chapter, there need be no fear of their moral bringing up. It is only after these same boys become graduated into the ranks of full-fledged jockeys that they are beset with temptations from which they cannot always be protected by their natural guardians, the trainers. Even then this bringing up in the stable counts for much and it has kept many of them straight and clean as they climbed right along to the top of the heap. Predictions were freely made during the summer months that the Belmont Park race track would eventually be the fastest track in this country. Subsequent happenings at . the home of the Westchester Racing Association indicate that such forecasts were not far from the mark. On the third day of the fall meeting Kai-Sang ran a mile in 1:37, when the track was not at its best, in fact a drying-out track. The following day Bunting ran a mile and a sixteenth in 1:44, ths mile in 1:36. On the same day Valor hung up 1:37 for the mile and Dominique 1:17 for six and a half furlongs. Then on Friday Brainstorm, a three-year-old of no great claim to distinction, startled the spectators by running a mile in 1:36. Even on days when the track was slow after a rain mile races were run in less than 1 :39. Such displays of speed are as a general rule foreign to most American tracks, and strikingly portend the realization of the hopes of August Belmont and his colleagues in the Westchester Racing Association in providing for the American racing public the most palatial and greatest race course in this country. Only the small matter of a few fezt prevented Harry Payne Whitney yesterday from recording about the most remarkable double of turf history. At Belmont Park his Bunting was beaten a half-length by Kai-Sang at the end of a magnificent race for the Lawrence Realization Stakes. At Louisville his fast and enormous two-year-old Enchantment swept home in proud victory in the valuable Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes. It was not . in the least detracting from the ability of Kummer as a rider to say that, had Sande bean on Bunting and Kummer on Kai-Sang, Bunting instead of Kai-Sang would have won the Lawrence Realization of 1922. However, both are fine colts and gave the Belmont Park patrons a rare treat indeed. Next to Man o Wars it was ths fastest Realization ever run. That is a factor to be considered in estimating the quality of the race. As for Enchantment, he invited further recognition of the Spearmint horse Chicle as a progenitor of high-class racing stock.
