tionship between owners, trainers, and jockeys. In the first place, the totalizator will supply the funds. Deduct 15 per cent. from the gross takings and the public will not murmur. Pay 5 per cent. to the Government, 5 per cent. for working expenses, and 5 per cent. to the Jockey Club for the administration of racing. There will then be ample money to introduce the two following reforms, which will be the greatest piece of legislation for the cleansing of English racing that the Jockey Club of Newmarket has ever effected.

In the first place, the Jockey Club should organize a service of stipendary stewards, and plenty of them, so that there should be a full quota at each meeting. If there is an anachronism in English racing, it is the picture of three eminent and kindly old gentlemen sitting in the stewards' box and, with the aid of field-glasses, attempting, or not attempting, to visualize the running of a dozen or more race-horses during their journey over the last furlong of a race. Anyone who has ridden in a race knows perfectly well that it is not in the last furlong that a rider looses a race, if that be his intention. When I was the secretary of race-meetings in India, and the stewards were not satisfied with the integrity of certain of the riders, we posted a steward or deputy at every furlong post. There was then no argument as to whether a horse was trying or not.

The fair adjudication upon a rider's attitude in a race is not a simple affair. It requires the judgment of a man of a great experience and knowledge and of a certain courage -qualities that are not necessarily to be found in every wealthy and estimable old gentleman who may have owned race-horses and attended race-meetings all his life. And even if they be in possession of these qualities, they can hardly apply them when their vision only covers that part of the race where irregularities are least likely to occur. Stipendary stewards would be of entirely different calibre, and would be in closest touch with their colleagues, the handicappers and their staffs.

Racing as a whole would be immediately sensitive to the joint activities of the handicappers and the stipendary stewards.

And now we come to the most revolutionary suggestion of all. It is this: With the opening of the new régime all jockeys should become the paid servants of the Jockey Club. I am quite prepared for all and every person intimately or professionally engaged in the crafts of horseracing to say the man who suggests this is a lunatic-he knows nothing about racing or he would not suggest such

an impracticable and futile expedient! It is not the first time that a proposal that has ultimately proved efficacious has been received with ridicule and contumely. Especially has this been the case when the suggested innovation has as its base the upsetting of some usages that, while benefiting the few, are counter to the interests of the majority. All criticism leaves me cold, since I am not a lunatic, and I know as much about racing as it is good for a man to know.

Let us examine what constitutes a jockey nowadays and what was the intention as to the status of a jockey when the laws that now govern racing were framed. In the old days he was an experienced stable-lad, who emerged from that state upon merit in the training centres. He was rewarded for his services on the race-course on a scale commensurate with his social position. He asked no less and expected no more. If his skill in the saddle warranted it, he made a very satisfactory income by comparison with those of the station to which he belonged, and probably, when his increasing years and weight forbade the two-pound saddle to him, he became a head lad or a modest publican.

What is the picture to-day? The embryo jockey emerges from the same social surroundings. He is better educated, it is true, because the standard of compulsory education in the whole country has been raised. As a stable-lad he shows ability to ride. He is immediately apprenticed to a trainer, who teaches him something of the finesse of race riding, but who does more for him by giving him experience in riding gallops, and in time, if his merit warrants it, the opportunity of riding in races.

Once he has established a reputation, he becomes the spoilt child of the race-course. Retaining fees, valets, motor-cars, all the attributes of the wealthy fall upon him, and with this aggrandizement come those temptations which, if not entirely absent, were the exception in the days of his professional predecessors. As a natural consequence he learns when it is expedient for the mount he rides to try and when it is expedient for it to be "down the course,' as the saying goes. He is the victim of his improved circumstances, because the evils of which I write are so rampant that he can hardly help himself, unless he is of the favoured few who are retained in stables which are above suspicion. And these, alas! are not many.

With stipendary stewards and all jockeys the servants of the Jockey Club, by the stroke of a pen the major evils of temptation will be taken from the jockey, and he will revert to the emoluments of the station to which he should

E

belong. All the false values will disappear. And be it remembered that a jockey's skill is no greater than that of an engine-driver driving a non-stop express, and his responsibilities are not a tithe of those of the engine-driver. Yet the driver of the Flying Scotsman does not demand a retainer of several thousands a year. But then he is not the agent by which thousands of pounds may be lost or won. And this is how the scheme could be worked.

According to the records for 1926 there were seventynine jockeys and one hundred and thirty-four registered apprentices. This number is in excess of the requirements. The Jockey Club should have a pool of jockeys, paid by them at a fixed minimum wage, to be supplemented by the winning and losing rewards as laid down in the rules for racing. This pool would be classified according to the riding weights of the individuals.

Whenever and wherever there is a race-meeting the i Jockey Club would supply the requisite number of jockeys according to the probable starters in groups according to riding weights required. From the moment that the first bell goes all jockeys attending that meeting would be in the control of a specially deputed steward until the final race. A very little administrative forethought would decide the numbers and riding weights of jockeys required at a particular centre on a particular day.

Immediately before each race the stewards of the meeting will draw by lots for owners the jockeys who are to ride their horses in the forthcoming race, just in the same way as they draw for places. As the jockeys are classed according to their riding weights, the adjustment at the scales will be just a matter of "leads " as it is at present.

The following point is the important one.

Until the draw is made the owner, the trainer, the jockey, and, be it not forgotten, the bookmaker, will not know by whom any particular horse will be ridden.

It is important, firstly, because the owner and the trainer will say that it is impossible, and, secondly, because the public, and in many cases the owner, will be protected from the horse that is not trying. The penalties for wilful negligence in riding a horse out should be so heavy, and with stipendary stewards so difficult to evade, that it would never be worth a lad's while to jeopardize his life's employment.

Owners and trainers will say: "Did you ever hear of such a mad and futile proposal? Half the battle in our business is the employment of a jockey who knows the peculiarities of

the particular horse we wish him to ride. Our only chance of success lies in the hands of a particular jockey.

In certain cases this may be true, but in the general rule, especially among the many smaller stables, there is even now something of a scramble to get the jockey most desired, and in most cases owners have to put up with what they can get.

It must be understood that all jockeys employed by the Jockey Club will be tested and approved by the expert representatives of that body. They will not be haphazard lads caught for the occasion; they will be the same jockeys as ride to-day.

Certain trainers, doubtless, will argue that it will not be worth their while to train apprentices if they are to be snatched away from them to become jockeys in a common pool and placed beyond their control. This, doubtless, is true. But the Jockey Club will be able to look after itself in this respect, and, with the totalizator profits behind it, it could easily subsidize certain training establishments to furnish it with a supply of apprentices. Given the determination and the money, opposition by the self-interested few can quickly be over-ridden until exterminated.

And what do the objections of the few personally interested count in comparison with the protection of the overwhelming majority, who have a right to know that every horse that competes upon the arena-which, be it remembered, the overwhelming majority furnish-is trying its utmost to win the contest in which it is engaged? No trainer has the smallest justification to use a race-course as a training-ground. The race-course is there to test his efficiency as a trainer. This is a cardinal fact that the Jockey Club has failed to enforce until misuse of the racecourse has become an open scandal.

It is only by means such as have been suggested above -crudely suggested it may be that racing in England can be relieved of the burden of money-weight that now oppresses it. Every racing man knows what this means, and it is the honest desire of the writer that it shall never happen in this country, as it has happened in another, when a distinguished foreign guest was politely handed by one of the stewards the list of the horses that were officially scheduled to win at a race-meeting he was attending!

Yet are we much better when a jockey can requite a benefactress by telling her the horses that are trying in a race?

MUCKRAKE

MAY DAYS ON THE FELLS

THE blind gave an extra thump against the window-pane and woke me to reluctant consciousness, to the knowledge that a faint grey glimmer of light was creeping in, that an early-rising cock was crowing in a way that seemed to show he liked the break of day better than I did, that an energetic thrush was singing in the chill dawn, and an equally energetic starling was mimicing the melancholy whistle of a curlew.

Again the blind flapped against the window-pane, and the wind whistled in the chimney. Shiveringly I raised myself in bed and flashed on the torch, in the white glare of which my watch showed the time-4.30! And hounds met at 5.30!

In less time than it takes to tell I was out of bed and struggling into my clothes. This was May the first, day of snow-wreathed hawthorn and heavy-scented, slumbrous air, yet somehow or other the description did not seem to fit. The morn seemed chill and drear; only the one thrush beneath my window was saluting the dawn, and he seemed to be doing it more as a duty than because the coming day deserved it.

We naturalists now believe that bird song is not so much a pean of joy as an advertisement and a warning; that when a cock bird sings he is telling his friends and rivals that he has got a nice territory, a pretty little estate, and there is only one person welcome upon it, namely his mate, other birds to keep off, and trespassers to be prosecuted. But fancy getting up on a morning such as this to sing a song about trespassers! Had I been the thrush I should have gone straight back to roost; but it shows the peculiar folly of the human species when I say I did not go back to bed.

Oh, how chill and grey the world was! The struggling light from the pallid sky hardly showed the countryside. On the one hand the fell rose above the house in formless purple masses, on the other the valley stretched, indefinite and grey, only showing darker shadows here and there to indicate farmsteads, trees, and walls.

No wonder the car was reluctant to start, but at last we were off, with macintoshes turned up about our ears, while the engine warmed to her work as we faced the long rise of the road from Troutbeck to the top of the Kirkstone Pass.