SECOND HORSE DIVIDENDS.

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 August 1901, Page 2

SECOND HORSE DIVIDENDS.

The Lyttelton Times is no lover of the totalisator, and it has just availed itseli of the opportunity of providing its reader* with another illustration of the "beneficial effects" of the machine, as afforded by the first day's racing at the Riccartor; meeting. It says:—'The "investments" on the machine amounted to no less v sum than £16,395, an increase of £5391 on the amount received at the corresponding meeting last year, and if we assumt that the bookmakers experienced n, similar improvement in business it will not betoo much to say that tl^p money lost and won on the races reached a total of at least £20,000. The increase in the total was mainly due to the new method devised by the Jockey Club of paying out dividends on both the first and the second horses. The insidious experiment encour aged a much larger number of people thar, were ever deceived before to believe that they had at last mastered the problem of making money out of the totalisator. TUey imagined that they were given twe chances instead of one, and that they had only to go oi) long enough to come out on the right side, .Of course, the members of the Jockey Club will say, as. they have said before, that the mer-ey is not lost to the community; that ij> is Merely transferred from one set of pockets to another set, and .that even tho losers have i the satisfaction of knowing that they have ; contributed something towards the promotion of sport and the improvement of tho breed of horses. The plain truth, liowever, is that 10 per cent, of the money invested in the totalisator yesterday a sum of £1639 was irretrievably: lost by the public, if the gambling should go on lit the same rate during the two remaining da.js of the meeting, },he community, to say nothing of the' money abstracted by the club in other ways and by the bookmakers and » small army of harpies, will; by Saturday evening be £5000 poorer for its holiday. Probably we should be rather lielow the mark if we estimated the cost of this week's junketing at Riccarton, the amount actually withdrawn from legitimate and reproductive channels, at £10,----000. What the community obtains in return for this expenditure it is extremely tlifticulfc to see. The good old fable about improving tb.e breed of horses will not survive a comparison between the animals lliat ran at Riccarton yesterday and those that took part in the .Grand National Meetings of ten or a dozen years ago. In ordev to attract large fields and large totalisator investments, the Jockey Club has cut down the fences until they can now bs negotiated by Almost any weedy thoroughbred that has proved a failure on tho flat. The weight-carrying steeplechaser, that was of some use off the racecourse, has very nearly disappeared, and; hia successor, speaking generally, is neither' a thing of beauty nor a joy for ever. The totalisator, in fact, has had no better influence on the horses than if has on the men, and if it is tolerated much longer; it will bring them both into irreparable' disrepute.