WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 307, 23 September 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

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T.D.H.)

The real battle is not between Mt Dempsey and his opponent in the rttig, but between the financiers over tlte bakings at the gate. The news from Russia is still un-reliable.—A-n old gentleman of 159 years is now stated to have died there. Mr. Oscar Asche is now in the Bankruptcy Court.—“Chu Chin Chow” made the record run, but the £120,000 it brought in did the record gallop. It costs a lot of monev to get Mr. Tack Dempsey into the nng to defend his title as heavy-weight boxing champion, and the news to-day indicates the usual trouble over the financial preliminaries. Mr. Dempsey’s last fight in September, 1923, netted him £90,000 out of a total gate receipts of £250,000. That was his appearance against Firpo, but a more remarkable encounter financially was that staged on Independence Day, 1923, at the little cow town of Shelby in Montana. The sixty-year-old Mayor of Shelby, Mr. Jim Johnson, had been considering schemes for boosting Shelby, and somebody on the Town Council humorously suggested a prize fight. Then the wags of the village began to declare that the Town Council was hiring Dempsey to fight in its main street.

The idea interested Mr. Johnson. He inquired of Mr. Dempsey what his fee would be, and was told 300,000 dollars, in round figures £60,000. _ This was precisely the sum that the city of New York had failed just previously to secure for a jubilee celebration. The Mayor of Shelby was not a whit daunted. Mr. Dempsey intimated also that he wanted real money, cash in advance. Nobody had previously suspected that Shelby could raise £60,000 for any purpose whatsoever, but Mr. Johnson did a lot of searching, and, incidentally, poured his entire fortune of £3o,ooo’into the pot that was needed to hire Mr. Dempsey for an afternoon’s work. The best that the rest of the inhabitants could do was to produce a guarantee of another £lO,OOO. Mr. 'Dempsey scornfully rejected the idea of fighting for a beggarly £40,000, and a long financial battle followed. At first the fight would be declared on, then it would be off, then on again. It was not until 3 a.m. on July 3, the day before the battle, that Mr. Dempsey’s manager was convinced that no bigger sum could be extracted from the district. As money is money, the champion agreed in the end to appear, on condition that he put his own men on at the gates and collected all the takings up to £20,000, thus, if possible, making up the original £60,000 demanded.

About 12,000 spectators turned up, and the gate receipts totalled £22,000, so that Mr. Dempsey came out all right; and Shelby and its Mayor had a few pounds to console themselves with. However, there was a last-min-ute hitch: the referee refused to act unless he got his £lOOO fee in advance. For a while it looked as if there might be gun-play over this final financial jar, but after an hour’s delay Shelby managed to scrape up the money, and the fight proceeded, even if the local bank did go out of business after it was over. The fight was a tame affair, and the really dramatic moment only come after the fray when the veteran Mayor of Shelby stood smiling in the main street. "Well,” he boomed triumphantly, "we had the fight, didn’t we? Slip me the price of a shave.”

When John L. Sullivan . won the heavy-weight championship in 1890 the sum at stake was £5OO. When Corbett beat Sullivan to a pulp in twenty-one rounds at New Orleans in 1892, they fought for £2OOO a side and a purse of £sooo—the winner to take all. That was the end of prize-fighting in the heavy-weight class, for now the champion gets a fixed guarantee win, lose, or draw. He takes no financial chances. Since Dempsey_ won. his championship title by beating Willard at Toledo, Ohio, on July 4, 1919, he has earned over £2ss,ooo—exclusive of moving picture rights—for less than two hours’ fighting all told spread out over seven years.

Like the hurricane that struck Galveston twenty-six years ago, that in Florida is recorded as leaving a long trail of disaster in other parts. Ihe West Indian hurricanes as a rule travel very slowly. The Galveston storm, for instance, was first spotted by the American Weather Bureau in the southern part of the Caribbean on September 1, 1900. It was then revolving fairly slowly, and travelled at the rate of eight miles an hour. By September 6 it had reached Key West, where it was just an ordinarily severe storm. As it crossed westward to. Texas it began revolving at a dangerous rate, sending great waves on in advance before any wind reached the city it was about to demolish.

The storm passed over Galveston at a pace of twelve miles an hour—though revolving about a core of calm air about 30 miles wide at a rate of about 135 miles an hour. By September 10 it had reached Oklahoma City, ano dy September 12 it passed over Quebec, its speed of travel gradually increasing from the time it left Galveston until at Quebec it sped along at 70 miles an hour. Luckily for New Zealand the clerk of the weather does not concoct this type of storm in these parts. Here is a storv from prohibition America told bv the Memphis “Commercial Advertiser”: “A gentleman coming to Memphis Sunday morning in an automobile found himself athirst for com whisky. He drove up in front of a filling station, and, after some desultory conversation, expressed a desire for some liquid lightning. The gasoline seller informed him that, he did a quiet liquor business on the side, whereupon a quart of corn whisky was transferred for four dollars of current money. Then the traveller said, that his gasoline had run out, and the oil station man might sell him five gallons, whereupon the oil station man said: *1 cannot sell you any gasoline on Sunday. It’s against the law. and besides I have never beKind Stranger: “Are you the little man I gave candy to yesterday?” Small Child: “No. I’se the little girl who heard about you.” CHRISTMAS EVE. I had an old man to my friend Who gave me at December’s end Twelve chosen apples, fresh as dewt “A Christmas gift I bring to you.” With palsied hands he searched the fruit From out the pockets of his suit, Deep, cunning pockets that he wore, And set the apples me before. ''You are a lad I like,” said he; “I like those songs you sing to me; I like vour face, for mine, ye know. Was much like yours the years ago.” I took tile apples two by two, Twelve apples: "Friend, ’tis kind of you!” . —But I was stung by mortal dread To grow like him the years ahead. A. E. Coppard, m “London Mercury.*'