Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1894 — THE PUGILISTIC CRAZE. [ARTICLE]

THE PUGILISTIC CRAZE.

The prize-fighting furore that has of late years prevailed to such an alarming extent in America, and which has culminated in the remarkable meetings between the champions, both at New Orleans and Jacksonville, is an evil that is seemingly impossible to check with the means at present available, Every State is not blessed with an Executive like Indiana, to whose determined stand and prompt action the commonwealth owes its escape from the stigma of placid permission of the brutal exhibitions that have from time to time occupied the public mind to the exclusion of less exciting subjects. The effect of these contests for what is the reverse of all that is refining and enobiing can hardly be calculated, and is especially marked upon the vivid imaginations of the rising generation. Col. Alexander Hogeland, a prominent Chicago philanthropist, prior to the CorbettMitchell fight sent an earnest protest to Gov. Mitchell, of Florida, in which he urged the absolute suppression of the contest on the ground that long observation had convinced him that every such meeting was the direct inspiration of countless quarrels and fistic encounters that would not otherwise take place. Exactly the same rule that causes the boy reader of the delirious dime novel to strive to emulate the hero of the impossible tale in all his maudlin adventures holds good in the nauseating details that are given in the daily press to be eagerly devoured by the multitude who delight in these fights to a finish with all their sensational features. On every street corner it is an absorbing topic,' and embryo pugilists fill the streets, with yells and cries as they “slug’ each other in a weak imitation of the wonderful encounter they so long to see. That their minds should be thus inflamed by an ambition as wicked as that of the champions themselves is but a natural consequence of the sentiment that has been fostered by the failure of our laws to effectually suppress the evil that all good citizens condemn.