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New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IV, Issue 205, 28 June 1894, Page 5

The merits and demerits of the totalisator are agitating Victoria as well .as New Zealand. Here the agitation is in the direction of the extermination of the machine: On the other side of the water the movement is in favour of the introduction of the- totalisator. South Australia has taken the plunge and there the ting ting of. the machine bell is heard - pn the racecourse, and during the recent meeting at Adelaide, Victorians were ' eagerly criticising the machine. The Victorian owner, Mr S. G. Cook, summed up the position by saying the machine has converted Adelaide into a city full of liars—a remark which is not particularly striking for its originality. A Melbourne Sportsman representative was there to sum up the position, and he has declared " the conclusions he arrived at in a recent number of his journal. He has written an article entitled “ The Totalisator : its pros and cons, as shown by Adelaide experiences, ” which is interesting reading to New Zealanders who should be in a better position to, appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of the betting machine than any other colonists in Australasia. The author of the article in question admits that the machine has been very beneficial to South Australian racing, because it has enabled clubs by the revenue received in percentage charges to hold race meetings and realise a profit which is sufficient in amount to maintain the sport in a form that would not exist without this assistance. It is stated that previous to the introduction of the machine Adelaide clubs found it impossible to maintain the sport in a satisfactory manner and derive the essential profit from it, and we are further told “ the deplorable periods in the history of the South Australian Turf tell a woful tale of the racing state.” The one value of the machine is held to be that it provides a means of bringing a large income to the club, and that with the revenue realised racing can be maintained at a profit where formerly it existed “ by the skin of its teeth,” to use a vulgarism. Racing in South Australia is said to be impossible without the machine, and therein lies its benefaction and justification. But the Sportsman writer points out that such a parlous state of things does not exist in glorious boom-stricken Victoria—what about the Melbourne Cup shorn of, half its glory ? —and that therefore there is no reason for the displacement of the Ring in Mel bourne. /‘Flemington,’’ the authority quoted goes on to say, “in all its magnificence has been brought to its condition without the aid of the totalisator, and in the past the sport has been a source of such wealth to the V.R.C. that its course and appointments vie in Splendour with-those of the old world, while its stakes have been little if anything inferior and the £lO,OOO prize of past (the italics are our own) Melbourne Cups stands as * a monument of the world’s record of added money direct from the funds of a club.”