Betting Reborn

In Olympia. Wash., Governor Clarence D. Martin last fortnight signed a bill legalizing pari-mutuel betting on horse races, which has been forbidden in Washington since 1909.

In Indianapolis, the Indiana State Senate last fortnight passed a bill to legalize pari-mutuel betting on horse and dog races.

In Santa Fe, Governor Arthur Seligman last fortnight signed a bill legalizing horse racing with pari-mutuel betting.

In Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma House of Representatives last week passed a bill to legalize horse racing with pari-mutuel betting.

In Concord the New Hampshire House of Representatives last week voted to legalize pari-mutuel betting at racetracks.

In all, the legislatures of 20 states were last week considering legalized race betting. Causes of this sudden wave of liberalizing seemed to be several: an extension of the anti-Puritanism that brought about the proposed 21st Amendment; the spread of interest in horse racing due to better management, better horses; the prospect of state revenues from betting. Wherever there is pari-mutuel betting, the state takes a percentage of the total amount wagered. Pari-mutuel betting is legal in Maryland, Kentucky, Illinois. Louisiana, Nevada. Montana, and, since 1931, Florida. This year, bets at Florida's No. 1 track, Hialeah Park, totaled $8,000,000, $2,000,000 more than last year.

In making a bet by the pari-mutuel system, a better goes to one of a row of windows, states the amount of his bet and the name of his horse, pays his money to a clerk, receives in exchange a ticket recording the transaction which he can cash after the race if his horse wins. The clerk records the bet; during the race, the odds on each horse are determined with mathematical fairness in ratio to the amount of money bet on each.

Commonest objection to legalizing pari-mutuel betting on horse races: it might pave the way for gambling on dog races, slot-machines, lotteries. New York State tried to evade this difficulty in 1913 by legalizing "oral" but not pari-mutuel betting. "Oral" bets (i. e., bets handled by bookmakers), where most racetracks are run at a loss, are estimated at $68,000,000 a year. To legalize pari-mutuel betting in New York would require an amendment to the State constitution, a referendum in 1935. To avoid delay, Assemblyman William Breitenbach was last week urging passage of a bill simply to rescind the penalties for pari-mutuel betting, to let it start up at once.

As pari-mutuel betting spreads. U. S. track enthusiasts are likely to become increasingly familiar with an extraordinary contraption known as the "totalizator." A totalizator, not to be confused with various forms of "parimutuel machines" which print the tickets to record individual bets, is a machine which instantaneously transmits each bet on each horse to a central office, adds the result of all the bets on each horse, displays the sum on a large board where betters can see it. Developed from inventions by one J. Cruickshank in Australia, and Sir George Julius in England, various forms of totalizators have been manufactured in England by British Thomson-Houston Co., Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Co., Bell Punch Co. Only totalizator in the U. S. was installed last year at Hialeah Park, where President Joseph Early Widener of the Miami Jockey Club, who runs the Belmont Park track on Long Island as well as Hialeah, last week said of his contraption: "I am firmly convinced that it is the only form of betting that should be used."

Main advantage of the totalizator from the better's viewpoint is that it eliminates the possibility of fraud or mistake, indicates more accurately and rapidly than human "odds-checkers" the trend of the betting. Track owners like it because, by increasing confidence, the "tote" increases betting; saves the cost--often as high as $1,200 a day--of ready-printed tickets; operates more efficiently and cheaper than a human staff of accountants, board-markers, calculators, checkers. Totalizators cost from $125,000 to $300,000 to install. Hialeah's, which contains 90 miles of electric wiring, is owned by an Australian corporation which rents it for .5% of the money it handles.

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