Los Angeles Jan. 4.
Californians now have the questionable privilege of betting their money at the horse tracks more easily and more expensively. The medium is the "direct wire agency," an offspring of the parimutuel machine and the old-fashioned bookmaker's shop.
Credit for the innovation is claimed by Mr. J. M. Linane who brought his idea here and in a month has watched it mushroom into a big business. The spread of agencies has been so great they now threaten to eclipse the pin games, the few remaining "bookies," and in some instances the tracks themselves.
The scheme was worked out as a legal method of circumventing the state's anti-bookmaking laws, and its Success was best seen in a recent ruling by Mr. U.S. Webb, Attorney General of California, that it is entirely "within the law," so long as bets are restricted to state tracks.
The agency is merely a small shop which operates a teletype machine to a representative stationed at whatever California track is holding a meeting. The bets all are wired back and forth over the teletype machine, eliminating all book-making.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.