ss and arming. The scarlet rash
of international hatred spread over the earth, and there were many
predictions. I said then it was comparatively easy to foretell the issue
of these wars--excepting one. I believed that the Revolutionist of
Panama would be beaten; the half-breed overcome by the Canadian; that
France would humble China, but that the Central American war would go
on, and stop, and go on again, and stop again, until, discovering some
Washington or Hamilton or Jefferson of its own, it would establish a
United States of South America corresponding with the United States of
North America. The Soudan war would cease when the English Government
abandoned the attempt to fix up in Egypt things unfixable. But what
would be the result of the outbreak between England and Russia was the
war problem of the world. The real question at issue was whether Europe
should be dominated by the lion or the bear.

In the United States we had no internal frictions which threatened us so
much as rum and gambling. In Brooklyn we never ceased bombarding these
rebellious agents of war on the character of young men. Coney Island was
once a beautiful place, but in the five years since that time, when it
was a garden by the sea, the races at Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay
had been established. In New York and Brooklyn pool rooms were open for
betting on these races. In ten years' time I predicted that no decent
man or woman would be able to visit Coney Island. The evil was
stupendous, and the subject of Coney Island could no longer be neglected
in the pulpit.

Betting was a new-fashioned sort of vice in America in 1885; it was just
becoming a licensed relaxation for young boys. As the years went on, it
has grown to great distinction in all forms of American life, but it was
yet only at its starting point in this year. Looking over an address I
made on this subject, I find this statement:

"What a spectacle when, at Saratoga, or at Long Branch, or at Brighton
Beach, the horses stop, and in a flash $50,000 or $100,000 change
hands--multitudes ruined by losses, others, ruined by winnings." Many
years afterwards the money involved in racing was in the millions; but
in 1885, $100,000 was still a good bit. There were three kinds of
betting at the horse races then--by auction pools, by French mutuals,
and by what is called bookmaking--all of these methods controlled "for a
consideration." The pool seller deducted three or five per cent. fro