People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1895 — WILL BE NO FIGHT. [ARTICLE]

WILL BE NO FIGHT.

TEXAS LEGISLATURE BACKS UP THE GOVERNOR. Anti-Prise Fightins L*w Passed Which Is to Go Into Effect at Once —Three Hours All the Time Consumed in the Passage. Austin, Texas, Oct. 3. —There will be no prize fight at Dallas Oct. 31 between Corbett and Fitzsimmons. This fact ?as settled yesterday afternoon by the exas legislature in exactff three hours. The two committees are in the senate and the other in the house, gave an audience to the Dallas attorneys all the morning to ascertain their objections and protests to the passage of the law. In the afternoon when the two houses met at 3 o’clock both committees were ready to report and the senate bill was promptly considered. From the time the bill was placed before the senate until it finally passed was fifty-five minutes. The vote on the final passage of the bill was 27 yeas and 1 nay. The bill was immediately sent over to the house and at 4 o’clock that body began discussing it, substituting the senate bill for the house bill. After several gentlemen had spoken on the bill and the emergency feature pro and con, a final vote was reached at 6 o’clock precisely, and the bill passed the house by a vote of 110 to 5. Thus, within three hours did the Texas legislature forever put an end to prize fighting in Texas.

Gov. Culberson’s friends consider it a great victory for him, and lost no opportunity to congratulate him on the outcome of one of the hottest, and, it might be safely termed, one of the bitterest, as well as shortest, political fights ever brought up In the Lone Star State on any one single man. The bill that will prohibit prize fighting in Texas in the future, reads as fQllows: “Be it enacted by the legislature of the state of Texas, that any person who shall voluntarily engage in a pugilistic encounter between man and man. or a fight between a man and a bull, or any other animal, for money or other thing of value, or of any championship, or upon the result of which any money or anything of value is bet or wagered, or to see which any admission fee is charged, either directly or indirectly, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than two or more than five years.” ■ When the prize fight bill was under discussion in the house Representative Evans of Hunt offered an amendment to strike out the clause with reference to a fight between a man and a bull, claiming that its presence in the bill made it unconstitutional. As there was some discussion on the matter in the lobbies, Mr. Evans was interviewed and, in reply to a question, said: “The senate bill which passed the house, contains two subjects, and is in violation of article 2, section 35, of the constitution of the state of Texas, which provides that no law shall contain mere than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title. A plain and simple law against prize-fighting was the cause for the assembling of the twenty-fourth legislature, and, as representatives, we should not have endangered the law by attempting to .prohibit brutal practices - That only occur In a foreign country. Fight Will Be Pulled Off Somewhere. Dallas, Texas, Oct. 3.—Dallas people thronged the streets last night discussing the news from Austin, and the general sentiment is that the question is finally settled and that all idea of holding the mill here must be abandoned. Dan Stuart says the officers of the Florida Athletic club will meet here or in New York and decide what is best to be done. They have three points in view as a location, but decline to name them at present. Stuart says the fight will positively be pulled off somewhere.