People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1893 — A Law for the Sluggers. [ARTICLE]

A Law for the Sluggers.

Cilcago Re.-owL Monday evening’s prize-fights at the Roby club-rooms indicate that the governor of Indiana has accepted the results of his own untoward act. Sheriff Frederick occupied his old box at the Columbian club, but even after the fights were over he did not again attempt arrests. It is not at all likely that those arrested at the first exhibition will ever be brought to a trial. The shrewd manner in which the prize-fight bill of the last legislature is worded apparently precludes the possibility of a conviction under the law. And how completely the wording of this law pulled wool over the eyes of the governor! In construction it is a ghastly exhibition of mutilated rhetoric, but it would seem to be patent enough in its intent: “It shall be iawful to organize associations for the purpose of buying, leasing and holding mineral springs, the improvement of the grounds attached thereto and the building and carrying on of hotels, bath houses and other conveniences thereon for the use of visitors, and to organize associations for the purpose of carrying on pleasure or health resorts, the erection of and maintenance of hotels, clubs, boating and bathing houses, sanitariums and gymnasiums in connection therewith, and for the maintenance of gymnastic or physicial training schools, and for the giving therein of athletic exhibitions and other contests of science and skill.” Mineral springs and prizefights are scarcely to be looked for in a single sentence, and while the combination tricked the governor into signing the bill it will still point always to the methods and the motives of the man who framed it. Chartered as a club for the purpose of maintaining a “pleasure and health resort, boating and bathing houses, sanitariums and gymnasiums and physical training schools,” the Columbian Athletic association is perhaps secure in its position until the meeting of the next Indiana legislature. In the meantime it is hoped that Sheriff Frederick’s box at the prize-ring will not be taken from him when the club discovers that he does not Sneed to be longer propitiated.