p. 945 | The Butcher Contest

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 2, 1913

The Butcher Contest

THIS is one of the latest forms of amusement for the gratification of the insatiate desire for excitement which is possessing thousands of people at the present time. Recently, in one of the amusement parks in the city of Chicago six steers were hoisted to a platform, and there in the presence of eight thousand men and two thousand children were slaughtered, skinned, and dismembered in record time. This butcher contest was advertised weeks ahead, and drew this immense crowd.

It is gratifying to know that many who witnessed this inhuman spectacle denounced the management for presenting before the public this bloody exhibition of amusement. Of course, the purpose of the management was to draw the crowd and so make money out of the enterprise. This commercializing of sports and games is one of the banes of our present civilization. The love of money on the one hand and the desire for new forms of excitement on the other form a combination that leads to the production of many things in the world of sports which are highly questionable. Speaking of this tendency, the New York Weekly Witness of September 10 says:—

For years we have looked on at the commercialization of play with indifference. Dancing in time past has been a healthful, pleasant, and wholesome amusement (?). Today dancing, in the poorer sections of the big cities, has become synonymous with debauchery and immorality. Why?—Because men of low character have commercialized dancing and made the dance-hall an adjunct to the saloon, to the drink-selling business. The same is true of the moving-picture theaters. In themselves the “movies” may be made of high value as an educational aid. Commercialized by unscrupulous men, the moving-picture theater is too often exercising a hurtful and depraving influence. The public has not been in ignorance regarding the character of the men who purvey amusement to boys and girls. Repeatedly they have been shown up by men and women interested in the welfare of our boys and girls, as vultures with no education, no culture, and no æsthetic sense, absorbed only in private gain. Still we have allowed the commercialization of play to proceed without making any efforts to counteract its sinister influence. Perhaps the “butcher contest” in Forest Park will finally wake up the public to the need of bringing fun and play to our children through other channels than the present commercial agencies which mix fun with degradation and depravity.