Company were soon numbered important horse owners on the turf, leading bookmakers and many leaders of both sexes in the smart set. Maxim & Gay made it a rule to sell no information of any kind to minors and often excluded young men from the offices for this reason.

HOW "THE ONE BEST BET" WAS COINED

Our methods of advertising were unique. We used full pages whenever possible, and it was a maxim in the establishment that small type was never intended for commercial uses. We used in our big display advertisements a nomenclature of the turf that had never before been heard except in the vicinity of the stables, and we coined words and phrases to suit almost every occasion. The word "clocker," meaning a man who holds a watch on horses in their exercise gallops, was original with us, and has since come into common use, as has the phrase, "The One Best Bet," which we also coined.

It was our aim, in using the language of horsemen, to be technical rather than vulgar, the theory being that, if we could convince professional horsemen that we knew what we were talking about, the general public would quickly fall in line.

One morning we were alarmed to see in the Morning Telegraph, on the page opposite our own daily effort, the advertisement of a new tipster who called himself "Dan Smith." Dan went Maxim & Gay "one better" in the use of race-track terminology. He evidently employed a number of negro clockers, for the horse lingo which he used in his advertisements smelled of soiled hay and the manure pile. It was awful! But it made a hit with race-goers, and before a week had passed we recognized "Smith" as a dangerous competitor.

We were loth to believe that the use of this horsy language was entirely responsible for Smith's success, for we knew that his tips were not so good as ours. We investigated. His trick was this: In the sheet that he sent out to his customers, he would name for every race at least five horses as having a chance to win. He advised his clients, in varying terms, to bet on every one of them, and if any one of them won, he would print next morning what he had said on the preceding day regarding the winner alone, leading the public to believe that the only horse he had fancied was the actual winner.

I decided to organize another Bureau to knock out Dan Smith. The intention was "to go" our competitor "a few better" in the use of vulgar horse-racing colloquialisms and exaggerated claims, and thus nauseate the betting public and "put the kibosh" on Dan. We created a fictitious advertiser whom we named "Two Spot," and the next morning there appeared at our instigation in the Morning Telegraph a large display advertisement, headed substantially as follows:

Following the style which Dan Smith had adopted in his racing sheets, "Two Spot" mentioned in his first advertisement, as a sample of his line of "dope," four or five horses to win each race, each one in more grandiloquent terms than the other, but these were selected because they, in reality, appeared to be the most likely losers of all the entries.

A woman was sent over to the newly-organized office of "Two Spot" to take charge of the salesroom. I was completely taken off my feet the next day when she informed me that the receipts, as a result of the first advertisement, were in excess of $300, and that the public not only did not read between the lines, but had actually fallen for the hoax.

To cap the climax, on the second day one of the "outsiders" which "Two Spot" named derisively as the one best bet "walked in" at 40 to 1!

Next day "Two Spot" did a land-office business, and within a few days we figured that the "Two Spot" venture would net $1,000 a week if continued. "Two Spot" then went after the game hammer and tongs and endeavored to gage the full credulity of the public.

The distinctive difference between "Two Spot" and Maxim & Gay was this: Maxim & Gay, except in one instance, which is chronicled herein, never pretended to have selected a winner when it had not, while "Two Spot" enjoying the same source of information as Maxim & Gay, worded his daily advices to clients so artfully as to be able to claim the next morning in his advertisements à la Dan Smith, the credit of having said something good about every winner.

The profits of Dan Smith's venture, I was informed, exceeded a quarter of a million dollars the first year, and the profits of "Two Spot," whose career was cut short within a month by a realization on our part that we could not afford to be identified with such an enterprise, was divided among the employees of the "Two Spot" office. "Two Spot" had been brought into being for the purpose of killing opposition and not for profit-making. The scheme failed of its purpose.

To give an idea of the character of some of the raw kind of advertising put out by "Two Spot," and for which the public fell, I recall this excerpt from one of his tipping sheets:

REAL INSIDE TURF INFORMATION

Maxim & Gay repeated the "Silver Coin" method of advertising only once during the entire career of the company. This happened in the spring of 1902, when John Rogers, trainer for William C. Whitney, sent to the post a mare named Smoke. Our information was that the mare would win, and our selections for the day named her to win—and she did. Two days later, she was again entered, against an inferior class of horses, and the handicap was entirely in her favor. Notwithstanding this, we inserted an advertisement which appeared in the newspapers on the morning of the race, reading substantially as follows:

Sure enough, Smoke opened up favorite in the betting. The betting commissioners of Mr. Whitney placed large wagers on the horse with the bookmakers. The bulk of the public's money, however, went on Rockstorm, and before post time thousands of dollars of the "wise" money followed suit.

Rockstorm won the race. Smoke led into the stretch, when up went her tail and she "blew up."

Immediately I was cross-questioned by messengers from the judges' stand. They asked our reason why we were so positive that Smoke would lose. Mr. Whitney, I was informed, was actually suspicious that his mare had been "pulled." The reason for the reversal of form, as I explained at the time, was this:

William Dozier, our chief clocker at the race-track, who had witnessed the preparation which Smoke received for the races, was of the opinion that her training had been rushed too fast, and that her first race, instead of putting her on edge, had caused a setback. Her first race, in fact, had "soured" her. Being a veteran horseman, he was positive that Smoke would lose. I afterwards learned that the training of Smoke had been left to an understrapper, and that Mr. Rogers himself was not responsible for her condition.

THE PUBLIC ASKS TO BE MYSTIFIED

The judges were apparently satisfied, but the public could not readily understand the truth, and we didn't point it out in our advertisements, because our policy was always to appear as mysterious as possible as to the source of our information.

Mystery played an important rôle in our organization, and it would have been better had we never succeeded in the Smoke coup. Up to this time my