Indeed, 80 conservative a Journal as "Collier's," under this heading to an editorial, invites its readers make no mistake that the recent} prize fight at the Philadelphia Sesaicentennial Exposition "was an important event in the social history of the American people."
The writer of the editorial dealing with the fight remarked that 50 years ago, when Philadelphia's first great exposition celebrated the cenfennial of American independence, such q contest would have been impossible. Pugilism was then class. ed as disorderly conduct and prosecuted as a crime, and prize fights were conducted in remote pi spectators and participants alike being on the alert to avoid police and sheriff's posses.
And during the Inst 50 years so great has been the changes that the championship boxing match "marked the great day of the 150th celebration of our existence as an independent} nation." It is true that in the stadium on Exposition grounds was assem! fed the largest gathering of American citizens who ever recorded to witness a single sporting event. The governor of Pennsylvania, himself a famous reformer, was' conspieuously present. Women,—well-dressed and well-behaved, were there. Every class of American society, cluding ministers in clerical garb, contributed their quota, And the cost was enormous. I have read many estimates,—but "Col which may be" rel upon to get the facts, states that 125,000 people paid $1,500,000—about £400,000—to take part in the fete. Mr. Dempsey, the most, prominent actor in the fight, received close on three-quarters of a million dollars for his share in the half-hour's wolent exercise, earning in 30 minutes as much as sever cultured professional men ear during their lifetime. What does this change signify? asks the writer in the journal I quote. "Have w: become worse and more brutal than' were our grandfathers? Why is it that public taste approved in so spectacular a Zashion an event in 1926 which would have been pressed, both by law and by publio opinion, in 18762"
'He then sets out to answer any' one of the 15 million people who (i is estimated) listened to the radic description of the event, or any one of the vast multitude that watched who might be inclined to ask such questions. In q word, he says, the reply is that Americans to-day "are more tolerant, certainly mot mor brutal, than' were our grand father's."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.