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NOT DEAD, BUT SLEEPING.
The proposed New American Base-Ball Association, of which so much was heard during the fall and winter months of 1899 and 1900, is not dead, as some people fondly hope, but only sleeping.

That the National League fears the birth of a new rival has been time and again shown, and in my judgment without good and sufficient reason, for I hold that "competition is the life of trade," and that with a strong and healthy competitor in, the field the rivalry would be of benefit to both organizations.
From personal experience I know that the National Game was never in as healthy condition as it was when the League had the old American Association for a rival and when such a thing as syndicate base-ball was unheard of.

The Harts, the Friedmans and the Robisons were not then in control, and the rule-or-ruin policy that now prevails had at that time not even been thought of.
Base-ball as at present conducted is a gigantic monopoly, intolerant of opposition and run on a grab-all-that-there-is-in-sight policy that is alienating its friends and disgusting the very public that has so long and cheerfully given to it the support that it has withheld from other forms of amusement.
It was Abraham Lincoln, I believe, who once remarked that you can fool some of the people all the time but that you cannot fool all the people all the time, and yet it is this latter feat that the League magnates are at the present time trying to perform.
That the new Association did not take the field in 1900 was due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, but that it will do so another season I firmly believe, as many of the men interested in its formation are still enthusiastic over the project and determined to carry it to a successful conclusion.
St.Louis may justly be regarded as the birthplace of the newcomer, as it was there that the idea of a new rival to the worn-out old League first originated in the brain of Al Spink, who, like the majority of the game's best friends the country over, had grown sick of syndicate methods and believed that the time had come when a new association, run on strictly business principles, would secure the patronage of the people.

Associating with him Chris Von der Ahe, who became famous as "der boss" of the old St.Louis Browns, George Shaefer and others, he at once begun pulling wires looking toward the formation of an organization based on the old American Association lines, one that should do away with many of the evils that now exist.
Milwaukee and Detroit capitalists were soon interested in the scheme, and early in October, 1899, an informal meeting was held in Chicago, at which Chas.