Bookie Review

A
self-proclaimed expert on sin who goes by the name of Front End Freddie
advises this corner that he is agog and aghast at recent disclosures
about bookmaking. He refers to a report by Asst. Dist. Atty. Manley
Bowler stating that of the 1,614 persons convicted of bookmaking in
L.A. County in 1958 none went to San Quentin, although the crime can be
a felony as well as a misdemeanor. Most were fined, the others did time
in County Jail.

As a result, the grand jury plans to review the
entire bookmaking panorama, perhaps with a view to recommending the
felony aspect of taking bets we knocked out. After all, if judges are
reluctant to send bookies to San Q., what's the point?

And so, Front End Freddie thinks this is an appropriate time to recall how bookmaking became a felony in the first place.

IT HAPPENED,
he remembers, in the teens. Anti-sin groups, then politically powerful,
managed to get horse racing outlawed on the grounds that it was
virtually in the same category with murder, arson, armed robbery and
grunion hunting out of season.

At this strategic moment, the
buck grabbers, Americans who operated horse racing and gambling in
Tijuana, saw a golden opportunity to sluice the loose money south of
the border. The way Front End Freddie tells it, they procured the
services of an accomplished team of lobbyists, who somehow prevailed
upon the legislators in Sacramento to make the horrible crime of
bookmaking a felony, punishable by confinement in San Q.

Many
people forget that it was not until 1935 that horse racing was again
legalized by a vote of the people. Now, all these years later, the
lawmen seem about to wipe out the hypocritical felony phase of
bookmaking inasmuch as the courts disregard it anyway.

It's refreshing to see a little sanity shine through the obfuscation, a pretty good word for Wednesday.