Abstract This article examines the legalization of parimutuel betting at New York racetracks in the context of broader national shifts in public attitudes toward gambling during the Great Depression. It explores the early years of legal racetrack betting in New York and across the country as the sport grew immensely in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s and increasingly became an important source of finance for state governments. The closure of racing by the federal government as a wartime emergency measure proved to be the last gasp of an older reformist morality that disapproved of gambling, as racetrack gambling weathered the ban, and the sport emerged more popular than ever, and with a cemented bond to state governments.
Matthew Vaz (Thu,) studied this question.