E. W. MILLS.
The success of the New Manhattan Athletic Club in managing the recent in-door interscholastic games has suggested the possibility of having the club manage the National meet in June. This would be a very good scheme, if practicable, because experience has shown that hitherto the chief obstacle in the way of success for scholastic meetings has been poor business management.
It is not always possible for young men who have nearly all they can attend to at school to devote enough time to the business management of an athletic meeting to make it a thorough success; and it is therefore well, when possible, that this kind of work should be turned over to those who have more time and greater experience for the amount and kind of work required. The N.M.A.C. handled the recent games in a satisfactory way, and there is no reason to think that it would not carry out the plans for the National meet fully as well.
At the in-door games the club assumed the entire financial responsibility, and offered prizes besides; but the managers would naturally feel some hesitancy about doing the same thing for an out-of-door meeting, where the weather must have so much to do with the attendance. The constitution of the National Interscholastic Association stipulates, I believe, that the prizes in each event shall amount in value to $25. The N.M.A.C. would not care to saddle itself with the responsibility of offering thirteen or fourteen sets of $25 medals, besides paying the rental of the grounds and other incidental expenses; but I am informed on good authority that the club would be perfectly willing to assume the responsibility of securing grounds and of making all arrangements for advertising and management, as they did for the in-door games, at their own risk. Should there be any surplus after these expenses have been defrayed, this would go toward paying for the prizes—no set of medals to cost more than $25; and should there still be a surplus after that, the money would be turned over to the National Association's treasury. The club, I am sure, does not wish to make any profit out of the enterprise.
By such an arrangement, of course, there would be no shining medals on a table in the middle of the Berkeley Oval for the contestants to admire before they had been defeated in their events, and that would doubtless detract much from the interest in these games of our friends the medal-hunters; but on the other hand it would be a good thing if it could be announced that there would not be any medals on show that day, as this might keep these same medal-hunters off the grounds—which would be an advantage.