their deportment, really take care of them.

No club owner, unless he is maliciously or foolishly inclined, will
jeopardize the interests of his team by acting in a wilfully unjust
manner toward a player who is cheerfully and uprightly offering his
services. We may hear of occasional exceptions to this condition of
things, but if these occasional exceptions chance to arise, it is
inevitably certain that the owner in the long run will suffer to a
greater degree than the player with whom he deals unfairly.

It is the history of Base Ball that more inequitable treatment has
arisen by fifty per cent in the minor leagues than has had its origin in
the major leagues. The reason for this existed almost wholly in the
inability of Base Ball as a whole to bring the minor league owners to a
realization of the injury that they might be doing and to extend such
punishment and insist upon such regulation as were necessary to change
this undesirable condition.

By the organization of the National Association of Base Ball clubs the
minor leagues, for the first time in their history, placed themselves in
a position where they could demand proper enforcement of regulations for
the government of the sport, and by their alliance with the major league
clubs, under the articles of the National Agreement, a general working
basis was effected whereby compliance with rules could be insisted upon.

The result of this admirable condition of affairs is that wisdom and
equity now rule where there once existed chaos and at times something
akin to anarchy in sport.

At no time in the history of the game, which is so dear to the hearts of