1903. 1904. Coney Island Jockey Club $903,128.84 $854,421.20 Brooklyn Jockey Club 790,054.07 731,559.26 Brighton Beach 559,348.00 626,837.10 Westchester 623,131.27 566,143.62 Saratoga 439,649.49 393,550.09 Metropolitan 355,270.70 307,396.03 Queens 282,900.88 218,729.16 Buffalo 60,857.63 106,489.05 ------------- ------------- Totals $4,014,340.88 $3,805,125.51 The reader will notice the exactness with which the racing associations make up their gross receipts—the “twenty cents” of the Coney Island Jockey Club, the “nine cents” of the Saratoga “Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses,” and so on. The reader will notice, also, that the gross receipts for last year were $209,215.37 less than those of 1903, though the press was unanimous in declaring that last year’s racing was the greatest, which means the most profitable of all years. The five per cent. paid to the state last year by the Racing Trust amounted to $190,256.27. This five per cent. is “the penny in the dollar” alluded to by Mr. Edward Lauterbach in his address to the constitutional convention. But ridiculously small as it is, why does the Racing Trust give it to the state? Simply as a sop to the rural legislator and his constituents. The dweller in cities may lack some or many of the virtues, but when it is necessary to find the highest plane of parsimonious hypocrisy one must needs pay a visit to the rural districts. This five per cent., which smacks so much of Iscariot’s thirty pieces of silver, is divided among such agricultural societies as give annual fairs, and to farmers’ institutes. Ostensibly it is intended for the improvement of agriculture; in reality much of it is given as purses for trotting races at the said county fairs. Without the support of the rural element the Racing Trust would not have succeeded in getting the adoption of the Percy-Gray racing law.