A SENATOR'S GRIT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9152, 27 July 1908, Page 4

A SENATOR'S GRIT.

The recent campaign against racecourse betting in the State of New York was one of the hardest fought and most dramatic political struggles in America during recent years. Mr Hughes, the Governor of the Stale, some months ago introduced a Bill making betting on a course punishable by one year's imprisonment, buc the Upper House threw it 'out by one vote. A senator's seat became vacant, and the Governor turned the by-etection into a contest in which his Bill was the one issue. The reform candidate was elected, and the Governor re-convened the Legi: - lature and re-submitted his BjU. The lower House passed it, but in the Senate the opposition was very strong, and had it not been for the wonderful grit of a senator believed to ba at death's door, the Bill would again have been thrown out. Senator Foelker had undergone an operation for appendicitus, and was in a critical state. Yet he was wheeled into the Chamber, with a doctor on one side of hirn and a clergyman on the other, and, although-tho opposition delayed the proceedings for hours, in the hope of preventing him from voting,

he recorded his vote and saved the J Bill, for the division was 26 t0 ,: 28'." By some strange magic, says a New York correspondent, so soon as the nervous worry of being the responsible figure in the situation had been removed, Senator Foelker's condition took on a marked change for the better—indeed, the surgeons say that the risk he took really saved his life, for during the last two or three critical days he had been unable to eat or sleep, and it was only the moral stimulus that gave him a new start.