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By Root 567 0

he met during the evening to join his table. One summer, at the Arrowhead Inn there, he started out with his wife and wound up with a hundred and fifty guests. Mara lives in an eightroom apartment at 975 Park Avenue during most of the year, and he and Mrs. Mara also have a summer home in Luzerne, New York. He is one of eight honorary life members of Lodge No. 1, Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks. (The other seven include Nicholas Murray Butler, Governor Lehman, and former governors Charles S. Whitman and Alfred E. Smith.) In 1925, Mara established the New York Football Giants, the professional eleven which plays at the Polo Grounds. Later he presented the franchise to his two sons, Jack and Wellington, both Fordham alumni. It was because of the Giants that the club on Fortysixth Street was called the Turf and Gridiron, rather than something like the Turf Association or the Odds Club. At various times in the past he has taken flyers in the liquorimporting business, the promotion of prize fights, and stockbrokerage.

The first dollar Mara bet on a horse started him on his way to all these glories. He was a twelveyearold newsboy on Union Square at the time, and he lost the dollar. He forgets the name of the horse involved, but he remembers that it was ridden by an exnewsboy named Micky Clemens. The experience taught him the irrelevancy of sentiment in horse racing. It also taught him that the bookmakers usually win. From that day on, his ambition was formed. The bookmakers to whom he delivered papers on his news route seemed to him singularly blessed among the people of the East Side. They dressed the best and worked the least.

His newspaper route ran along Broadway from Wanamaker's store to Seventeenth Street, and included several popular hotels, like the St. Denis and the Union Square. Sometimes hotel guests would ask him where they could place a bet, and he would take their money to the bookmakers he knew. If the bettors lost, the bookies would pay Tim a fivepercent commission. If the bettors won, Tim would deliver the winnings, and often receive a tip. During that period Tim was a pupil in Public School 14, on Twentyseventh Street near Third Avenue. He sold newspapers in the late afternoon, and in the evenings worked as an usher at the Third Avenue Theatre, a temple of melodrama. Tim's father died before Tim was born. In his neighborhood, therefore, he enjoyed the good will that falls to a bright, cheerful Irish boy who is at the same time the son of a poor widow. Among the early friends he made was Mike Cruise, the leader of the Tammany Central Association on East Thirtysecond Street. Tim has been a good Tammany man ever since, and is frequently credited with great political influence, an impression he does nothing to discourage.

When Tim left public school he was thirteen. His first real job was with a lawbook firm on Nassau Street, delivering rebound volumes to attorneys. This gave him an opportunity to extend his betting business, for some of the lawyers played the races, and on days when they were busy in court they left betting commissions for him to execute. After working for several years for the lawbook dealers, he opened a place of his own, the New York Law Bindery, at 99 Nassau Street. More bookmaking than bookbinding went on there. By then he had established a regular following among bettors, and they telephoned their wagers to him.

His greatest patron was Thomas W. O'Brien, immortal in reminiscence as one of the few bettors who beat the races. Chicago O'Brien was this phenomenon's nom de course, and he was a retired bricklayer. At the appearance of O'Brien money in the betting ring, odds dropped like a barometer before a typhoon. Chicago therefore bet through agents, who placed thousands of dollars by telephone with poolrooms out of town. The agents were men who had established their credit in the gambling world. Young Tim was already in this class. Sometimes he placed $50,000 on a single race for the O'Brien account. Knowing that O'Brien was generally right, he would put $1000 of his own money on the