Layers & Players

As a form of gambling, betting on a horse race is less expensive than the stockmarket, healthier than playing cards, less brutal than bearbaiting, more spectacular than roulette. Largely because of these advantages, horse racing has long seemed a particularly pernicious sport to those who consider all gambling immoral. At the turn of the Century there started a wave of earnest reform to curtail gambling by putting a stop to racetrack betting. Typical was the history of the reform in New York, where there has generally been more horse racing than anywhere else in the U. S.

From 1894 to 1908, betting on New York horse races was legal under State law. In 1908 Charles Evans Hughes as a reform Governor outlawed racetrack bets with a statute which also denied betters the right to sue to collect winnings. By 1912, since racing cannot flourish without gambling, a turf track on the golf course of Long Island's Piping Rock Club was the only one functioning in the State. Year later a test case uncovered a loophole in the Hughes law. It was legal for betters to deposit money with a bookmaker before the day's racing, bet against it by marking paper slips during the races, collect whatever was left after the races. That left only the exchange of cash at the track during the races prohibited. With "oral" betting tolerated, horse racing again began to flourish in New York.

Depression wilted attendance at the racetracks throughout the State to such an extent that last year they lost $250,000. The New York Legislature went to their rescue last month, less to shore up a sagging sport than to provide the State with a new source of tax revenue. Last week, Governor Lehman signed a bill which pulled the remaining teeth out of the Hughes anti-betting law by permitting money to change hands at the track and betters to sue for their winnings.

Two days later, when the racing season in New York opened at Jamaica, L. I., onlookers, instead of sidling up to bookmakers in the crowd made their way openly in jostling hordes to a "betting shed" which had been empty since 1908. There, holding up their slates, stood the besieged "layers." Called back to the betting ring to settle disputes between layers and players was grizzled John G. Cavanagh who had the same job 27 years ago. A onetime program salesman at New York tracks, then a vendor of bookmakers' sheets, he organized the Metropolitan Turf Association (bookmakers union) before 1900. During the interim of oral betting, '"Ringmaster" Cavanagh functioned as unofficial arbiter for a group of New York bookmakers.

Each layer last week had to employ a clerk to register bets, a cashier to pay winners, a runner to carry wagers from the clubhouse. To belong to the betting ring was expected to cost about $90 a day. Total bets on the opening day, in which the feature race was the Paumonok Handicap which Sgt. Byrne won at odds of 3-to-1, amounted to $500,000. Estimated revenue to the State at the end of the racing season in New York State was $1,500,000.

As in New York, Depression and the hunt for new revenue were the driving power behind the wave of liberality which has caused 13 other States to legalize horse-race betting in the last two years. Some of the results:

In Florida, the first meet under legalized pari-mutuel betting was held in 1931-32. Last winter bets at Florida's three horse-racing and seven dog-racing tracks totaled $27,000,000. Advantages of pari-mutuel betting machines are that they insure fair odds, permit the track to get its revenue from a percentage of the bets instead of an admission fee. Last winter, Joseph E. Widener's Hialeah Park made $1,000,000 in 45 days.

In New Hampshire, four members of The Jockey Club--John W. Gates, William C. Whitney, John Drake and Andrew Miller--opened an elaborate racetrack at Rockingham Park, Salem, in 1906, although betting in New Hampshire was illegal. The sheriff closed Rockingham Park after one day. Last spring when the Legislature legalized betting, Rockingham Park became a gold mine for a onetime newsboy named Lou Smith, associate of William V. Dwyer, who owns Tropical Park (Florida) and Coney Island (Ohio). He re-opened the track, which last year made more money than any other in the U. S. In 53 summer days, bets at Rockingham Park's pari-mutuel windows amounted to $12,000,000.

In Massachusetts, James Roosevelt and his friend. Boston's onetime Mayor James M. Curley, were among the sponsors of a $7,000,000 racetrack at Lenox, on the property of the Berkshire Hunt & Country Club, to operate if and when the Massachusetts Legislature, which has been considering betting bills for the last two years, legalized pari-mutuel horse racing. In Kentucky, betting has been legal for a decade. Churchill Downs at Louisville for the past four years has supported itself mainly on the proceeds of the Kentucky Derby--at which a larger crowd than usual, because of revived interest in racing, is expected next week. Kentucky's other important tracks, Lexington and Latonia, lost money last year, the latter because of competition from Coney Island in Cincinnati which opened when Ohio passed favorable betting laws last year.

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