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WILL NOT ABOLISH MUTUELS New Fair Grounds Management Considers Dual Betting System. Meeting Opening January 23 May Continue Until March 18 Bahr Gate to Supplant Bradley Device. The season of racing at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, control of which recently was acquired by the Crescent City Jockey Club, will open Monday, January 23, and continue for a period of forty-two or forty-eight days, according to a prepared statement by Joseph A. Murphy, vice-president and general manager of the Crescent City Jockey Club, released from his local office today. Whether the meeting will embrace forty-two days, concluding Saturday, March 11, or forty-eight days and terminate Saturday, March 18, will be definitely decided later, according to the announcement, "Which also contained an outline of the policies to be followed by judge Murphy and his associates in the operation of the Fair Grounds and the racing officials engaged for the coming meeting. The officials were announced as follows: Joseph A. Murphy, chairman of the board of stewards. . J. B. Campbell and H. .P. Conkling, acting stewards. J. B. Campbell, racing secretary. H. P. Conkling, John Carey and William Doyle, placing judges. Roy Dickerson, starter. Frank Otis, clerk of the scales. Francis Dunne and Austin McLaughlin, patrol judges. John Carey, entry clerk. E. P. Karstendieck, veterinary to the stewards. All of the officials are men of long experience and, with only two exceptions, have in recent years filled important positions at the Fair Grounds. The exceptions are Dickerson and Dunne. Dickerson has been in charge of the starting at Arlington Park here for several, years and Dunne has ably filled various positions in secretarial and course work at tracks throughout this country and in Mexico. The Bradley-Stewart starting gates, which have been in service for four years, will be taken down and stored and the improved Bahr gate, which is the last word in start-continued on twenty-second page WILL NOT ABOLISH MUTUELS Continued from first page. ing devices, will be used in starting all fields. In relating features of the new Bahr gate, judge Murphy said: "The stalls of the new gate do not reach the ground and as a consequence the gate can be hauled from the track immediately upon the starting of the field. This not only eliminates all chance of accident, but also all strain from the audience, which often becomes nervous if there is a delay in removing the gate." Rigid adherence tothe system of closing the co-operative betting at a specified time, about two minutes before the horses reach the post, a system in vogue at Hawthorne, also managed by judge Murphy, and other tracks, is an important principle of procedure to be followed through the meeting, said the announcement. Under this system the final approximate odds as posted tally almost exactly with the pay-off. The possibility of oral betting as a club house feature remains, according to the announcement, in which judge Murphy is quoted as follows: "We shall make marked changes in some of the policies, including that of the conduct of the club house. The day of exclusive club houses on race tracks is passing. People do not come to a race track to swank, they come there to see horses and talk horses, and a club house, to be successful on a race track, must be liberty hall. That Is what we intend to make the Fair Grounds club house. "Suggestions have been made that we turn it over to the layers of odds. Both laying of odds and co-operative betting are legal under supreme court decisions in Louisiana. I have an open mind on the question of turning the club house over to a system other than co-operative, but expert advice from all over the country has notified me that, in its judgment, the two systems will be hard to mix. "It is true that both are used in Havana and Agua Caliente, but It must be remembered that these places have big casinos on which the success of the meeting largely depends, while the Fair Grounds has no such privilege from the state of Louisiana and must collect its revenue from its gate receipts and legalized betting. "We may yet work out a plan for dual betting, but we have never had any intention of abolishing the co-operative."
