The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1892.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 23, 11 August 1892, Page 2

The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1892.

Gambling on horse races is regulated with military precision in Germany, but whether the people are anything the better is an open question. A writer in the London Referee paid a visit to Berlin recently, where he attended a race meeting at Charlottenburg. He found that no bookmakers were allowed on the course, while the people had to pay about 10s lief ore they could back a horse on the machine. The object of this is to prevent the "working classes" gambling, by making it impossible with their limited means, and, according to the writer, it has succeeded admirably. It appears (hat at one time anybody could patronise the totalisator {pan mutuel), but when the lower orders lost their money they said they were ruined, and raised revolutionary tribulation. The energetic, but somewhat meddling, young Emperor had his attention drawn to the matter, so he put a stop to racing altogether. After an interval of six weeks, during which time he learned that racing was not such a bad thing after all, but that any evil therein only existed among the parasites of sport, so he withdrew his mandate and allowed races to go on again, under certain very rigid conditions. The ten marks (ten shillings) admission to the machine enclosure is one of them, and another is that no racing is permitted on Sunday. This is one of the beauties of having an absolute ruler, who protects the best interests of the " poor working man " with such a firm hand ; but, if the Kaiser thinks that these " down-trodden serfs " do not club together and send in one of themselves to put on their money, he is very much mistaken, and knows very little about human nature. The telegrams from Europe inform us that the dread pestilence, cholera, continues to increase in virulence in the large cities as well as in the villages. The well directed talents of scientific men aided by the microscope, have long shown that cholera is a preventible disease. But the supine ignorance and terrible selfishness of the lower classes in Europe as well as the East, have already proved impassable barriers to the progress of sanitary science. In the United Kingdom where the stern hand of the law now compels individuals to be their own protectors, the possibility of cholera becoming epidemic has now been reduced to a niinimum. It may be instructive to quote a few figures to show how large has been the death roll from cholera during the last fifty years. In the year 1832 there were 53,000 deaths from cholera in Great Britian, over 260,000 in France, Germany, and Austria, besides 250,000 in other countries. In 1848 it claimed 761,000 victims, in 1854, 905,000, and in 1873, 621,000. The most severe visitation of this fearful epidemic occurred however in 1866 when the number of deaths in Italy in proportion to the persons attacked was very high, 56 per cent of all men, and 54 per cent of all women, falling under its assaults. The death roll during this year amounted to 560,000. The greatest mortality occurred at Rome und Madrid on Sundays, at London and Berlin on Wednesdays, and at Paris on Saturdays. The visitation of 1884 accounted for 14,300 deaths in Italy, and 110,000 in Spain whilst that of 1885 carried off more than 50,000 victims in France.