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CARTWR1GHT HAD SYSTEM vc Was Laying Odds When Large andfi Percentage Could Be Safely an Handled Died Rich. ?? k: His System Was to "Lose "Willi the Favor- gfi Itc" Had Itemarkablc Judgment. 80 "Was Xot a Gambler. jjj , 84 81 "When a bookmaker dies rich he doesnt die a bookmaker. Marcus Cartwright, of Nashville and Chicago, who died in 1D12. was 0 extensively written about as "one of the wealthiest and most successful bookmakers w on the American turf." He had been all that but he was not a bookmaker when he died 8 and hadnt been for the last and most fruit- ful dozen years of his life. gf As a bookmaker one can plaster his career 7 with all the superlatives without extrava- 7! gance, but the greatest triumph of his career came when he "turned his slate" forever. Therein he gave the most remarkable 8 example of his most remarkable judgment. K He ciuit long before the art of bookmaking 8, had degenerated into a measurement of wits 8 with those "on the ground" and before the 8 volume of race horse speculation had shrunk ! to a slender thread before, in short, it be- N came "a case of dog eat dog." A GAME GAMBLER. Cartwrigbt booked while large sums of jj money could be safely handled on a per- jj centago basis by an operator who had the 8 courage and the power of continuance. He was called "a game gambler." Game he t was. but not a gambler. The "corroding passion" never had possession of him and he never exposed himself to the crash that comes 8 to all gamblers sooner or later. 8 His system was to "lose with the .fav- s orite." Evcrbcdy who has had to do with 8 the horses, even as an occasional diversion, knows what that is and how inevitably it f must "get the money in the end" if the play continues large enough to minimize the ex- g penses by comparison. As an employer of s other bookmakers he would have nobody 8 about him, no matter how smart and self- contained, who departed from his system for J a single race. They might shoot off then-allotted bankroll and hed never spueal, but would stake them to. another and tell them to keep right on in the simple, if sometimes disastrous, specialty of "knocking down the f top choices." t One day at New Orleans an assisted bock- maker, with a mind of his own and a lot of . S faith in- his own figures, broke his shovel with Cartwright because he won ,000. That day there happened to be, what some- s times happens, a fusillade of winning favcr- j ites, ranging in price from 4 to 5 to S to 5. 1 and almost a corresponding number cf sharp- j lv played outsiders that didnt eventuate. " It was a decidedly bad day for the Cart- , wright system and the big man was some 510,000 to the bad in his own book. Climbing ! down off the block, he took a stroll down the line to see how much his men had lost. ; Peeking over the back of the box he said to the cashier: "Well, how much?" "Four thousand," said the cashier, without looking up. "And expenses?" asked Cartwright The cashier looked up and laughed a 1 gleeful, gloatful laugh, nad said: "Expenses 3 h ! "We didnt lose four thousand; we won 1 it He meaning the man on the block didnt write the name of one of those winners. He had em all for cinches and held I em fiat. "Hum !" was the only sound that came out t of Cartwright as he walked away. DISCHARGES EMPLOYE. That night, while he was lounging in the lobby of the hotel, the dazzling blockman n danced up to him, expecting to receive the c accolade of the boss approval. He didnt get it. Instead : "Youre through," said Cartwright in his J best brand of Tennessee sententiousness. "After I ." the blockman began, but it Marcus took up the running. "I said you were through. Tell the cashier ir to give you a thousand of that bank roll II and turn in the rest. You cant book for if me. See what you can do with that thousand on the. ground. A fellow as smart as lS you are is wasting time on the block." The next day the discharged bookmaker r I went to the track with the thousand Cartwright gave him and proceeded to play his .S own figures from the ground. He didnt t pick a winner and when the sun sank into 0 the Bayou St. Johns he was broke. Cartwright t- heard about the disaster and sought it his quondam employe in the hotel lobby. "So they took ye, eh?" he said. "Good and proper," answered the penitent t I "But" "Exactly I understand," said Cartwright. f "Are you tame enough to go to work again?" , "Im" pretty tame." "Can ye do like I tell you?" "Sure." "All right; Ill try ye again."
