operated by Richard Canfield, who operated the Saratoga Club. Prominent players included Reggie Vanderbilt and John Bet-a-Million Gates. The chief competitor to Canfield was the "Bronze Door," operated 1891–1917, by a syndicate of gamblers closely linked to the Democratic machine represented by Tammany Hall. These elite establishments were illegal and paid off the police and politicians as needed. The working-class was served by hundreds of neighbourhood gambling parlours, featuring faro card games, and the omnipresent policy shops where poor folks could bet a few pennies on the daily numbers, and be quickly paid off so they could gamble again. Betting on horse racing was allowed only at the tracks themselves, where the controls were tight. The most famous venue was Belmont Park, a complex of five racecourses, a 12,000 seat grandstand, and multiple stables, centred around a lavish clubhouse. Middle-class gamblers could frequent the city's race tracks, but the centre of middle-class moral gravity was strongly opposed to all forms of gambling. The reform movements were strongest in the 1890s. They were led by men such as the Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, the leading Presbyterian pastor and president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime; reform mayor William L. Strong, and his police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Reformers passed laws in the state legislature against any emerging gambling venue. Such laws were enforced in most of the small towns and rural areas, but not in New York's larger cities, where political machines controlled the police and the courts. Another common gambling activity during this period was betting on political elections. Betting on United States presidential elections from around 1868 to 1940 was practiced on a large scale, centered on New York city, which conducted an estimated half of the activity. The money spent on election betting even occasionally exceeded trading done on the stock exchanges of Wall Street. The odds from the betting markets were often used as a way to predict the outcome of an election. Election betting generally declined leading up to the second world war, due to a combination of factors, including increased legal restrictions, being crowded out by horse betting, and the rise of scientific polling like Gallup, which correctly predicted the outcome of the 1940 election. Saratoga Springs After 1870, Saratoga Springs, near Albany in upstate New York, became the nation's top upscale resort relying on natural mineral springs, horse racing, gambling, and