The Senator Who Called a Race 'Hell on Wheels'
In the smoke-filled backroom of the Seattle Jockey Club in 1888, U.S. Senators discussed tariffs and whiskey while recounting a chaotic horse race where the crowd 'yelled like demons' and hats flew like confetti.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On the last day of the meeting last week, Senators Beck, Cassius, and Hampton found at the private room of the Jockey Club at the track, to partake of the cordial and tobacco hospitality afforded by the management. The talk was naturally about horse racing, a subject with which Senator Beck, on his Kentucky training, is more familiar than the tariff.
The next day, back in the stand for the next race, and Senator Beck deftly mixed a whisky war for Senator Cassius. 'I remember ours when there was a great race on the Lexington course,' he began. 'It was a four-mile heat, in which Alexander's great 60f and a priming colt from Boston were in the race, together with half a dozen other horses. I was in the judge's stand and Beck appointed distance judge. It was a terrifically exciting race. Alexander's 60f and the Lexington colt made the running, and it was a death struggle down the street. Everybody was wildly excited. The horses came down the street neck and neck. The seat crowd stood up and yelled like demons. The closeness of the finish was marvelously exciting. Every body was yelling and throwing their hats in the air. The crowd danced like fiends, and shrieked like sirens! Beck carried away with the enthusiasm. He threw the distance flag onto the turf and joined in the general yell for the Lexington horse.'
'When the heat was finished,' Beck continued, 'the jockeys on the two leaders and their owners came to the judge, and asked how many horses had been disqualified. They said they supposed none had been shut out, as the flag had not been dropped. Then there was a big protest. I knew that four of the horses had not got inside of the flag, and one of these had been distanced by 200 yards. After considerable wrangling, it was decided to send for the distance judge. So Beck was sent for.'
This snippet captures the intimate, almost fraternal corruption of late-19th-century civic life, where U.S. Senators spent their downtime in private clubs discussing gambling and whiskey rather than legislation. It mirrors modern concerns about the revolving door between politics and special interests, though here the stakes were horse racing rather than corporate lobbying.
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