THE TOTALISATOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 48

THE TOTALISATOR.

By J. P. H.

The president of the recent Racing Conference was very zealous iv his adiocacy of the totalisator, and claimed that it had elevated the sport of racing and purified it more than oan easily be. realised. The bookmaker in the old clays, he said, was the dictator of the turf, the hidden owner of horses, the corrupter of tho trainer, the jockey, ancl the owner; but gradually his influence waned before the totalisator, and inferentially all these evils are things of the past. He seeme to overlook the fact that other sports hay© become much more respectable, orderly, a«d regulated than they were 20 or 25 years ago, and tliis without the aid of tho totalisator ; and it is to be hoped that they will long be without such aid. Sir George Clifford, and honourable men of his stamp, have dene much to purify and elevate the sport of racing; but when he insists that the toteilisafor has done the same he makes too great at demand upon the credulity, and challenges the criticism of independent thinkers. It has done nothing of the kind. Th« malpractices of bookmakers and others (such as they were or are) can go on just as well or ill under the totalisator regime as before, because there is the same monetary temptation, or even greater, in the increased stakes and odds which it is the means of affording. If racSng officials claim«d support and continuance of the "tote" because it allows their clubs to give more and larger prizes they would be within the bounds of reason. They can also contend that it is the faireet betting instrument ye hare known, save for the large percentage they appropriate. But it is precisely because it is the fairest, and because i* gives such tremendous odds on outside horsee, that it has inordinately increased the number of speculators, and also the amount of betting or gambling on horsee which have a poor show of winning. in the anti-totalisator days the writer attended many race meetings, and made perhaps a dozen bets altogether with bookmakers; nowadays he ne\er a>ttcnde a meeting without backing one or more horpes in every race. But if perchance he is at a email country meeting whioh cannot afford the luxury of the machine (and therefore better deserves the support of one) hie investments are limited to modest h-'f-crown sweep*. And he is a type of <ji\ mary racegoers. Thousands of these, who never would have thought of taking the odds from x bookmaker, are regular speculators en the totalisator, and these thousands include a large peroontago of women and boys. They go to the races not 6O much for the cake of seeing a good race as of trying to make money on it. And if they cannot attend at the course the jockey clubs offer every facility for speculation at a distance. The result is that the new system, in increasing the number of race meetings and the amounts of the prize?, has necessarily done it by increasing the number of speculators a hundred or even a thousand-fold. It is a matter of cause and effect, and it is a thing to be deplored. Sir George Clifford says, in referring to the cases of disgrace and ruin attributed to the totalisator, that nearly every innooent aot ol mankind can be converted to evil by its abuse, and also that, not the machine, but the failure of the authorities to carry out laws safeguarding its operation, has produced a few quotable instances of ruin. If the "tote" was not there, the eases would not occur; and allowing it to be there, ■what possible laws could be parsed by the ' authorities to mitigate the evils that admittedly follow in its train? Could the president devise any to prevent eager in- ' restore from speculating with other people's

money, or with money that should be applied in payment of jusfc debt 3, or in support o£ families instead of the noble sport of racing? Eating and driaking may be converted to evil by their abuse ; bufc they are necessities, and nobody will contend that the totalisator is a necessity.

I am not against racing. I like a horse, and I like a horge-i ace ; and I believD that horse-racing does improve the breed of horses ; and I very much like (I hope lam not getting too egotistic) to see men like Sir George Clifford taking an interest in the sporl ; but I firmly believe that the totalisator gives us too much horse-racing, too many speculators, and too much speculation. I do not urge its alx>!ition ; but I think that its influence, like a more important on© in other time*, "has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."