Race-track gambling has unexpectedly become an issue of importance in
New York, and widespread discussion of means to rid the city of its
race tracks is taking place.
Discussion, however, is unnecessary. The way to end the plague of
betting on races is plain. Let the grand jury indict officials of
the Western Union Telegraph Company for complicity in bookmaking and
send them to jail. Without gambling race tracks would be deserted.
Without the aid of the Western Union there would be no gambling worth
mentioning. Strike at the Western Union and the race tracks would go
out of existence.
The Western Union Company is the one great encourager of gambling in
this country. But for its reports of races, hundreds of thousands of
young men would be saved from ruin every year. It is in partnership
with sharpers who fleece the foolish. It shares their gains in payment
for the use of its wires. The money that flows into its coffers from
that source is taken by trickery from the public. The race track
swindlers rob a man and hand over a part of their loot to the Western
Union, because without the Western Union's assistance they could not
have robbed him.
[Illustration: Do they think about us at home? We air having such a
good time hear a lone.]
But for the Western Union Telegraph Company not a single race track
would be in operation in the United States, for without the Western
Union's aid race tracks would not be profitable.
The way to stop race tracks gambling and drive race courses out of
existence is to compel the Western Union to observe the law which
forbids just such practices as those of which it is guilty every day.
That can be done only by sending a few Western Union officials to
jail and keeping them there until their company concludes to dissolve
partnership with crooks.