BOOKMAKERS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LVI, Issue LVI, 22 July 1909, Page 7

BOOKMAKERS.

STRONG COMMENT BY SIR GEO. CLIFFORD.

[press association.] WELLINGTON, July 22.

At the opening of the annual conference of delegates of Jockey Clubs today, Sir Geo. Clifford, President, made some strong remarks in reference to bookmakers. He said: — "Experience of the effects of the legislative interference which has thrust upon us the conspicuous presence of bookmakers upon our courses, has not lessened the distaste of all true sportsmen to this compulsion. It was fully pointed out before the enactment became law that to make the professional better a legalised portion of the machinery of the turf was fraught with many dangers, and that it tended to the destruction or weakening of many safeguards with which, for the past 20 years, we had been endeavoring with success to guard our pastime. The Act has been powerless to deal with the abuses at which it was aimed, and has brought into renewed existence others which we had earnestly striven to suppress. I unhesitatingly affirm that the legalised connection of the bookmaker with the organisation of racing has lessoned the confidence of the public and of owners, and has exposed trainers and jockeys to temptations from which they have long been exempt. I sincerely trust that this pernicicnis law may be repealed, or so amended as to restore to our meetings the happy quietude and confidence- of recent years. If it pleases the Legislature to invite the public to choose between the "trade customs" of the bookmaker and the silent honesty of the totalisator, we can at least resent the infliction upon us of the invidious duty of selection among the applicants for licenses. No committee or racing club, however zealous, would adequately perform this task so as to protect the public. The reform, or purification from suspicion, of any profession can only be effectively organised within its membership. If we must have licensed traders in odds they should guard their own honor and prove their integrity to the world. Let them form associations whose badges' may be regarded as an indication of careful selection and trustworthiness. The business of men unworthy, in the estimation of their fellows, to obtain the badgs, would quickly dwindle, and we should hoar no more of licenses stolen from racing clubs by the assumption of false names and the similar devices now in practice. Turf authorities cannot satisfactorily regulate the bookmakers, and, so far, its professors have been inactive in that direction, and therefore, presumably, unwilling. We say to them frankly that we do not welcome them as accessories, but that we emphatically call upon them, for their credit and our comfort, to take measures for the effective exclusion of such black sheep as conspicuously discredit them."