Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1909. COPING WITH A PUBLIC EVIL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1909, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1909. COPING WITH A PUBLIC EVIL.

One of America's strong, clean, levelheaded men, of whom she has none too many in politics, is Mr. Hughes, Governor of New York. He is detested by the "bosses" on his own side in politics almost as much as by those in the opposite camp, but, much in Mr. Roosevelt's fashion, he has fought his way to power in spite of them all, and having successfully resisted the attempt to oust him at the end of his first term seems likely, as his fellow-countrymen say. to "go far." Eoosevelt himself has undertaken no more gallant enterprise than the crusade of Governor Hughes against race-track gambling in tho Slate of New York. The ultimate issue of that crusade, which has been somewhat embarrassed by the subtleties of the law courts, is still uncertain, but months ago it was reported to have seriously prejudiced the horse-breeding industry jf Kentucky, and to have resulted in the whole-sale transfer of the investment of American capital in thoroughbreds to English stables. Even the men to whom the Burns-Johnson fight was the event of the year, if not of the century, and for whom the future has no more momentous mystery in store than tho result of the winner's projected engagement with Jeffries, is constrained by the sheer force of his sporting instinct to admire the courage and the constancy with which Governor Hughes hammers j away at the "boodlers" and "grafters" and gamblers, and in turn takes hia punishment in a warfare where naturally "tho reciprocity is not all on one side." The latest attempt of this intrepid /reformer to cope with a great public evil was lecorded in a cable message from New York yesterday. Some time ago Governor Hughes appointed a committee to deal with a form of gambling which, in the United States at any rate, is conducted on a far move extensive scale and inflicts far more mischief upon the community than that which centres in the turf. While the patrons and hangers-on of the racecourse deal in hundreds or thousands, the Rockefellers and the Ryans and the Pattens are concerned with millions; and when these mammoth gamblers are playing with the people's food supplies as their stakes, the rattle of their dice may cause a shake in the humblest and most frugal home in the land. Tha practice of speculation in securities and commodities which the committee was asked to investigate is, therefore, though the immediate scope of its enquiry was limited to the State of New York, a matter of national and even of international concern. Mr. Patten was proud to think that the price of biead in Europe, as well as in the United States, was staked upon the issuo of his recent gamble in wheat at Chicago. When the game was over, he was reported as having "left Chicago in search of seclusion on a New Mexico ranch." It sounds at first a little like the story of Cincinnatua returning to his plough after saving the State, but when wo read that Mr. Patten is supposed to have pecketed over three million dollars as tha rosult of his operations, and realise that the salvation of liis fellows «cunts for as little, with him as their damnation as long as he can make money, tho parallel no longer holds. It is not to be wondored at that t» thousands ot reformers who are not anarchists or revolutionaries Sing Sing or Elmira would be a much more appropriate place of retirement for this class of performer than a New Mexico ranch. Governor Hughas's committee has, however, very wisely resisted tho inclination of the natural man towards heroic measures for grappling with the ovil. Th#*e drastic short-cut* rarely pay.. A&d iibtt gojnjnij&oe'fi report will

carry all the greater result from the fact that its terms are said to be "generslly regarded as moderate." "Speculation in some form is," says the report, "a necessary incident in the productive operations of any country. It tends to steady prices for merchant and manufacturer, and is practically tantamount to an insurance. ' v Those are wise words and well calculated to create an impression of thex committee's moderation. In one sense, an insurance company may be said to be speculating on the lives or the fires of its customers, but its speculation is really reduced- by mathematics to a science which snables it, when dealing on a largo scale, to compound the risks of the industrial customer for a fixed payment. Speculation of this land diminishes the region of uncertainty instead of enlarging it, and Governor Hughes's committee gives us a pledge of its sanity when it sets out with this clear assertion of tho value of the legitimate operations of commerce which secure a similar object. But the speculator who on the strength of this rejoices over "a Daniel come to judgment" will chango his note before he gets to the end of the report. The committee recommends "that the governors of exchanges be empowered to fix the price of any cornered commodity, and urges that legislation should be passed to prevent pretended puichases or sales uf soc-urities for a. customer, or the selling of customers' securities for tho particular benefit of brokers." What is to be the status of the governors of exchanges is not reported, nor how their decrees are to be enforced ; but we take it that the committee is not merely talking in the abstract, but sees and suggests some practical method of procedure. Legislation with a Bimilar object was introdu?ed in Congress as long ago as twenty years, but was ruled to be beyond its jurisdiction. Th« basis of tho ruling was, however, that the power to legislate along these lines was reserved to the individual States. Technically, therefore., the Ne-.v York Legislature has the necessary power to carry out the progianime of the committee, and wo may be sure that whatever human courage and ii.qermity cau do to enable it to do so will be supplied by Governor Hughes and his advisers.