CLEANSING THE TURF. Using the Wrong Broom.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 165, 29 August 1903, Page 8

CLEANSING THE TURF. Using the Wrong Broom.

LAST year many of the racing clubs m New Zealand, anxious for the puiification of the turf, decided that the bookmaker was an ' undesirable character" on a racecourse, and gav^ him notice to quit. The Wellington Club did this thing in July, and others ha\e followed suit. The bookmakers, like the New town publicans, have been "chancing it," and the latest result is that a little squad of gentlemen who follow the enchanting occupation of ' calling the odds" have been fined. It is, of course, presumable that the gentlemen who manage the "sport of kings" in this country aie actuated solely by a regard for public morality, and that in time that noble animal the horse will be run "straight," and for the pure love, of the thing. * •* * There are few owners in New Zealand who would keep a horse and run him if the said owner merely won a cup of the same value as the American Yacht Cup (which is worth about 12s 6d), and if the law could prohibit ' sports" from making wagers at all the great sport would die right out. Examine horse-racing from any point i f view, and you will admit that it exists almost entirely as a game of chance. Carbine wasn't run because he was a perfect physical specimen of the horse, but because that rather ugly equine con Id win money. * # * If you are going to purify the turf, and make the sport a mere amusement and not a speculation, you cannot do it by merely hunting bookmakers off the course. Hunting bookmakers off the course does not destroy bookmaking. They may pencil odds in secret and

poison the lives of youths. That the industry is carried on to an alarming extent in Wellington is obvious to theleast observant, and that the purging of the racecourse of these undesirables has in no whit decreased the gambling evil is perfectly evident. In the meantime, the totalisator remains, and it is morally as wrong for it to take the people's money as it is for the bookmaker to do so. It is absolutely impossible for the police to prevent people betting, or to raid a bookmaker's "establishment," which is not a '"place" within the meaning of the Act if the bookmaker moves from kerb to kerb. Undesirable or no — and we ad-" mit the undesirability of all betting — the bookmaker who openly calls the odds is an honester man than his fellow''bookie" whose barber's shop is a ' blind" to the real business going on in the rear. The bookmaker who "infests" the course is under surveillance. There is a hundred to one chance against hia "welching," and if he's a nuisance and plies a nefarious trade, the peopfewho are allowed to patronise the "tote," which is equally nefarious, should, be the best judges of the destination of their bets. And fair play is much more possible on a course than m a cellar. If the bookmaker is to be prohibited from carrying on his avocation on the racecourse, the racing clubs should prohibit the> "tote," and private detectives should be on the alert to run in people who dared to bet among themselves. If the clubs do this, we shall believe that they intend really and truly to cleanse the "sport of kings. '