Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1903 — THE GLADIATORIAL COMBAT IN AMERICA. [ARTICLE]

THE GLADIATORIAL COMBAT IN AMERICA.

Chicago Examiner: We rejoice to see that at last one clergyman has had the courage to protest against the strange frenzy of animalism in which oar colleges and universities are indulging, i Everything that Dr. Gunsaulus says on thiq subject is perfectly true. One of the sweetest and most welcome days of th& year has been degraded by our college sports into a day for the apotheatics of mere brute strength. We no longer observe Thanksgiving Day to give thanks, to gather in family reunions and enjoy good cheer and kindliness, but to see squads of young men from our seats of learning try to break one another’s ribs and heads. There has come to be no other significance to the day. The President of the United States and the Governor of the state might as well omit their annual proclamations. Nobody heeds them. It is a curious commentary on human affairs that the institutions that are supposed to do most for human advancement and improvement are responsible for this distinct backward step. Without the support of the colleges and universities “the American bull fight” would quickly disappear. Dr. Gunsaulus might have gone further and condemned the entire Bystem of athletics as practiced in these institutions. He might have condemned the idea of having students pummel and pound one another in public for the gratification of spectators. He might have condemned Buch a scene as most revolting to any conception of civilization and absolutely irreconcilable with any tenet of Christianity. What must be the effect upon youthful minds of this constant adulation of mere physical strength as the summit of human glory? What must be the effect of steadily inculcating the idea that life is a battle-ground and only that man wins honor in it that gouges and punches and batters his way to the front? This truly appalling doctrine, that there is nothing in life worth while but material success, and that it

makes no difference how that success is gained—what will be the effect of upholding and maintaining that doctrine year after year? We have no need in this country to glorify the creed of the strong arm and the ethics of might. We have seen in the black and monstrous performance at Panama what’ this 6ort, of thing means for a nation. If the universities of America are to be of any avail for righteousness they will have to set their faces resolutely against the whole Bpirit of brutality and barbarism that finds its natural expression at home in the football field and abroad at Panama. There is not a thoughtful educator in America that does not know in bis heart that these words are perfectly true. There is not one that has not seen in the daily con-

duct of the young men nnder him the reflex of the degrading influence of the gladiatorial combats in which they permit their students to engage. There is not one that would not be glad to stop the whole dreadful business if he could. And the reason they do not stop it is as bad as the thing itself. They do not stop it because supremacy in brutal sports is the greatest advertisement a university can have. Each educator is, therefore, afraid that without the attraction of a successful football team young men will not enter his institution, the attendance will dwindle and his trustees will regard his administration as a failure. There is not a college president in the United State that does not) know that this statement is literally true. So that, in a practical analysis, what we maintain our colleges and universities for, is not the training of youth in the ways of knowledge, but to afford popular apeotacles like those of the Roman arena. To what instinct in mankind these exhibitions appeal we can tell without referring to Roman history. We have taken no account here of the list of maimed and killed that rounds each year’s record of American college football. Bat we should like to ask some college president if in his judgment all the trophies, all the victories ever won on all the football fields in the world are worth one young life crushed out iu this repulsive sport. We should like to ask him that, and be pleased to print his reply, The Indianapolis News has favored football in its editorial columns until a few days ago, when it “about faces” and comes out against the game. Two Indianapolis boys have died as a result of injuries received this season and another was so badly hurt at Paris, 111., on Thanksgiving that it was thought he would not

live. Perhaps these “accidents” have caused the change of front in the News. Below we copy an editorial from a late issue of that paper. The probable death of another Indianapolis boy as the result of a football accident again emphasizes the deadly character of the game. Serious accidents in playing it have become too frequent for more than passing mention. Besides this, we have the word of an expert, the president of the Footballers’ Hospital in London, that our training for this game is such as to prove a detriment in after life, and that our manner of playing it, which is for the purpose of winning exclusively, rather than sport for sport’s sake, all have the tendency to bring the game to a condition in which it will break of its own weight if it be not reformed. The tendency to play it merely to win, instead of regarding the sport itself as of most account, is a tendency toward professionalism. Amateurism, the doing of a thing for the love of it, is the bar and dividing line that keeps sports sweet. As soon as desire to win gets so fierce as to obscure this and to involve in its pursuits a recklessness to life and limb, which appears to be the stage that football is attaining, there must be reform for the sake of the game, if we wish to preserve it as an honorable sport. On the more serious side, but a part of it, is the necessity of a

modification of the rale* that will obviate the great risks that attend the game as it is. To put before oar yonth for emulation a sport so framed that it can not be engaged in except at the constant risk of life and limb, is more than foolish. It tends to lower, and not to elevate. Courage is not inculated by that sort of thing, but a hardened sense of recklessness that is at war with the finest qualities of courage. Another football season ought not to begin without important modifications in the methods of the game. Grover Cleveland has positively declined to ever become again the nominee of the democratic party. The refusal was unnecessary. We are glad to see such papers as the Chicago Examiner, Chronicle and Indianapolis News falling in line with The Democrat on football. John Alexander Dewie, (Elijah 11, the Restorer, etc.) head of Zion City, has been declared a bankrupt, and a receiver has taken charge of Zion City and its bank. The seizure is made by order of the Federal court. W. R. Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, Chicago American and San Franoisoo Examiner, will launch still another paper at Los Angeles, Cali., next Monday. The new paper will be known as “Hearst’s Examiner.” The football season which closed last week was the most disastrous season ever known to this “sport” as more deaths resulted than during any previous year since the game was established in America. Hundreds of pUyers were also crippled for life while a still greater number were ternporarially disabled with broken arms, legs, noses, etc., etc. Which is it? Has the people of Indiana always been honest or are they now conscienceless? A dispatch from Washington reads: “It is still a subject of remark at the treasury department that In-

diana does not contribute to the department’s conscience fund. Day by day the year through men and women send in money, sometimes in small amounts and sometimes in large amounts, in envelopes marked “for the conscience fund” but none ever comes from the Hoosier state. The officials often remark that it seems strange that the state is never represented iu the contributions.”—Republican Exchange. Well, yes. When w*e contemplate the Heath’s, Neeley’s, Rathbone’s, Tyner’s, Miller's, John’s, et al, all of whom are from the g. o. p., ranks of Hoosierdom, we are constrained to believe that the Indiana office-holders and politicians are so scrupulously honest (?) that the “conscience fund” never receives any contributions from Indiana.