The sum of $10,000 per day will cover all the expenses, including added money, at Sheepshead Bay. According to such calculation and taking the club’s figures of gross receipts as correct, the result would be like this:
| Receipts for thirty days’ racing | $854,421.20 |
| Expenses for thirty days’ racing at $10,000 per day | 300,000.00 |
| Balance in favor of the club | $554,421.20 |
These figures show that the profits of the Coney Island Jockey Club for thirty days of racing are more than the full amount of its capital stock. Some years ago, when racing was conducted on a smaller scale, this stock paid 56 per cent. per annum. Unless a lot of money is packed away in a reserve fund, the stock should pay dollar for dollar now, and the state still gets the “penny in the dollar.”
Much of the income was contributed by the chief factors at a race-course—the men who own and race horses; and one of the most interesting features of a race meeting, to members of the Racing Trust, is the fact that the men who own the horses are racing for money contributed, in great part, by themselves. The money added by the racing associations is often less than the amounts furnished by owners of horses that have been entered for a race. Much stress is laid upon the fact that $2,601,160 was won in purses last year on the tracks of the metropolitan circuit and Bennings. This amount, large as it may seem, was so distributed that very few owners paid much more than expenses, while a far larger number lost much money. Four hundred and thirty-eight stables or owners were among the winners, and a glance at the following table will show that the losers were in a large majority.
OWNERS AND WINNINGS
In addition to the foregoing, 155 stables won between $1,000 and $7,000 each. Some of these stables had as many as a dozen starters who “figured in the money.” Stables or owners to the number of 217 won between $100 and $1,000 each. Of this number fifty-four were in the $100 class. The average winnings for the 438 stables were $5,938, which sum tells a doleful tale for a majority of them, as the expenses of one thoroughbred and its owner for a year cannot well be squeezed into $5,938, unless the horse’s diet is restricted to hay and the owner lives at a Mills hotel. Mr. Keene’s winnings were $164,940. That amount about paid his racing expenses for the year.
All of which, I think, goes to prove that the Racing Trust is more anxious to make and increase enormous profits than to improve the breed of horses. And everybody is aware that such enormous profits are made only by violation of the Constitution of the state, and that, while gambling in poolrooms and elsewhere has been made difficult and dangerous, no effort has been made by the authorities to interfere with it on the tracks of the Racing Trust.