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KENTUCKYS NEW GOVERNOR Hon. W. Jason Field, Elected 4 Tuesday, Favors Bacing. irm in His Conviction That People of Bluo Grass State Arc Satisfied with Existing Conditions. LEXINGTON, Ivy., Nov. 7. The election of William Jason Fields to be governor of Kentucky and of other Democrats to fill the roster of state offices, including a seat in the General Assembly that Is to meet In January at Frankfort, is a great triumph for those -who are interested in race horse breeding and horse racing, since it represents the unquestioned approval by the people of the law under which we have betting by the pari-mutuel method at the race courses in the state. "When the late J. Campbell Cantnll entered the race for Democratic nominee for governor lie declared himself to be opposed to repeal of the pari-mutuel act, which was being sought by a group of men at Louisville calling themselves the Anti-Race Track Gambling Commission of Kentucky. Alben W. Barkley, opponent of Cantrill, declared himself to be in favor of a repeal. Cantrill won by a majority of 9,000. Charles I. Dawson, backed by the forces in the Republican party opposed to repeal of the pari-mutuel law, had won his partys nomination at the June convention in Lexington and his party had turned down a plank calling for repeal, but had committed its gubernatorial nominee to sign a repealer should it be passed by the General Assembly during the next four years. Fields had supported Cantrill for the Democratic nomination, and throughout the ninth congressional district, from which he had been six times elected to congress and which gave a splendid majority to Cantrill, j ha made speeches in which he asserted his j preference for the pari-mutuel law because, I i as he put it, it had been written on to the . statute books thirty-five years ago as a re- I ! form measure, that if it was a reform . measure then, it is a reform measure now, that the forces seeking its repeal admit that j ! they do not expect to prevent betting on horse races thereby, that the effect of their movement would be to destroy regulation, deprive the state of revenue, put the bookmakers back on the tracks with no security to people in the matter of their wafers and to cheapen racing altogether. BEIT3TES inS rOSITI03T. Fields, prior to his selection by the Democratic State Committee to succeed to the nomination made vacant by Cantrills death, stated that his position on the subject of pari-mutuels was fixed and that he would continue to oppose a repealer. After his nomination he expressed his willingness to have his attitude written into the platform, but the party leaders and platform writers took the ground, which likewise was his ground, that the question had ceased to be an issue. So it was decided that Fields should make his campaign against Dawson with silence upon the question except that in his opening speech he would say that he regarded it as not an issue. . Dawson, in every speech he made during the campaign, called upon Fields to state his position upon the question, but Fields, with characteristic sturdiness and devotion to purpose, persistently ignored the matter until last Saturday at Ashland, when he entered into joint debate with Dawson. At that time he told Dawson that he regarded the question as having been settled by the primary and the convention and stated that Dawson well knew that already twenty-six of j the thirty-eight men who will have seats In the state senate have expressed themselves against a repealer and that Dawson had tried to draw him out on the matter in the hope that he might divert votes of church people to himself, but that he, Fields, was satisfied that the people on Tuesday would make him governor by an overwhelming majority. This they have done. The pari-mutuel system of betting at the race courses in Kentucky survives by a verdict measured in a majority of more than 50,000 votes. Yet it is hardly to be expected that tne handful of men at Louisville who have kept up the agitation against the mutuels will abandon their plan to introduce a measure at the forthcoming session of the legislature, even though it has no chance of passage. When it is introduced it will be speedily and certainly disposed of.
