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BOOKMAKERS AND MUTUELS Both Methods of Wagering May Be Used at the Fair Grounds. Ifew Management of Popular New Orleans Track Expected to Beach Decision on Matter in Near Future. Gathering in New Orleans of the new forces in control of the Fair Grounds race track there will be watched with interest this week and next, as out of the conference there between John Schank, judge Joseph A. Murphy and their associates, -who succeed Col. E. R. Bradley and Col. John P. Sullivan as the dominant factors in New Orleans winter racing, will probably come the decision as to whether New Orleans is to again have the bookmakers back, along j with pari-mutuel betting, which has been the only system prevailing there for years. The new owners of the Fair Grounds have had the dual form of betting under discussion, it is said, but have not committed themselves as to whether they are seriously considering the return of the books. A newspaper story under a New Orleans date line, recently said that it was the understanding in that city that judge Murphy was inclined to favor giving the dual system a trial, and that some of the largest eastern oralizers, who in late years have spent the winters in Florida, have been much interested in the outcome of New Orleans parleys on the subject. The theory is that with the bookmakers again in line quoting odds independent of the play through the mutuel windows, a good many large bettors from New York, Chicago and other large cities would again be attracted to the Crescent City. There never has been any consideration of the abandonment of mutuel betting altogether and if there is any change at all it will simply be the removal of the ban against the bookmakers. New Orleans operated for a number of years after the revival of racing there under variations of what was known as oral booking. For some time there was in operation a plan by which the player, after receiving the oral quotations of the layer, inscribed the terms of the transaction on a slip of paper, the layer and the player both handing to a stake holder, who stood with each layer or "oralizer," the amount that each staked. This was placed in a box which swung from the stake holders shoulder and, after each race, the stake holder returned to layer or player the entire amount of each transaction. This system, found cumbersome and slow in operation, was supplanted by a simpler one whereby the player, after ascertaining the odds against the horse of his choice, which occasioned widespread "shopping" up and down the lines of the layers, wrote the terms of his wager and handed this, with the amount to cover his end of the bet, to the layer, receiving no memorandum or receipt in return. If his bet cashed he identified himself to the layers cashier after the race by giving the signature on the slip and stating the full amount and terms of the wager. This was the method employed just before the introduction in this country of what was then called the "modified mu-tuels." It was probably the simplest and most satisfactory system of race track wagering between layer and player since the abolishment of the old block and slate, which presented in full view all the odds, with their constant changes and fluctuations. Now that race track betting has been legalized in so many states and has become a custom with which few have to quarrel, racing fans of the old school in New Orleans have discussed the possibility of the return of the block and slate which, to many of them, was the most satisfactory way of betting on races ever devised. The fanning bees that have been in almost continuous convention occasionally bring up the names of nearly all the old bookmakers of block and slate days, many of whom have long since passed away, but most often are mentioned the names of those, many still doing business in New York and Florida, that were at the Fair Grounds and Jefferson Park before the change to mutuels. Tom Shaw was, as he is now in the East, the bell cow of the herd and it was seldom that a bet was made in the "ring" on a race until either Shaw or the late "Whitey" Beck, his contemporary of those days, intoned his run-down of the card for the benefit of the scores that gathered around these two particular stands in such growing numbers that often Tom and "Whitey" had their toes stepped upon while they were making their mental notes of the field, apparently with only the program as their guide and the occasional whisperings of their commissioners and runners. Once supplied with Shaws or Becks or Peter Blongs line, the first crowd would disperse and another take its place, the early birds scattering about the "ring" to begin their shopping among the lesser operators. And many of the first crowd often came back to Shaw or Beck to make their wagers, having found, especially in the cases of short-priced favorites, that these two, until loaded up with no chance to unload and balance up, would still have a point or two the best of the inducements. On big days at the Fair Grounds old "Schillinger Hall," as it was then called, was a veritable madhouse, what with the milling and rushing about to "beat the betting." The books in action ran from thirty to forty on the average week-days to seventy and more on the big days. And throughout the period of that form of betting, during which, by the way, judge Murphy was the presiding steward at the Fair Grounds, the complaints about the wagers deposited with the layers, for which the player had neither ticket nor scratch of the pen, were so few as to be entirely negligible. But for the mad scrambling and discomfort which, of course, would have precluded women from betting even had there been no track regulation against their appearance in the betting ring, the system was much more satisfactory than the other methods of "oral" betting to which other tracks were confined at the time and j which still prevails in New York.
