As we have now considered a great triump_The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

to it and the lesson it has taught, it seems to be in order to give an

example of a great failure and the causes which have produced it. For

more than forty years Woodburn Farm, in Kentucky, has been breeding

trotters, and up to the close of 1896 just four with records of 2:15

or better have hailed from that great establishment. During all these

years, and until Palo Alto Farm was established, Woodburn was the largest

establishment in this country. With thousands of broad acres of the most

productive soil, with the possession and control of money without limit,

and with the experiences of forty years in which to select and breed only

to the best, it is the natural and reasonable expectation of everybody

interested in the question of breeding the trotter to look to Woodburn as

leading all other establishments in the whole world in the production of

first-class trotters. And what has Woodburn done? With her experiences

of forty years, with all her broad acres and boundless wealth, up to the

close of 1896 she has produced just four trotters with records of 2:15

or better. Instead of leading all others, she is at the wrong end of the

procession, and if we consider the proportional advantages involved, we

find that “all others,” little and big, are leading her. By referring to

the above list of breeders that have produced three or more with records

of 2:15 or better, we find that Henry N. Smith has produced thirteen,

that William Corbett, from his little stud in California, has produced

nine, and that the late William H. Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, from

his little band of mares, and without either broad acres or money, has

produced eight within the past twelve or fifteen years, and all except

one by the same horse. This places Mr. Wilson first among all Kentucky

breeders. In the short period of its existence Glenview Farm produced

six, and the quite unpretentious farmer, Mr. Timothy Anglin, produced

five; W. C. France and Colonel R. G. Stoner produced four each—the same

number as Woodburn—but they did not require forty years to accomplish

it. Thus the breeding world, with “the little fellows” on top, has

gone away ahead and left Woodburn to mumble over her “tin cups,” and

exult in the many triumphs she has won against the watch in 2:30. The

policy of Woodburn for years past seems to have been to hold the lead of

Kentucky breeders in the production of 2:30 trotters, and to this end

the youngsters are put in training in the early spring and kept at it

till the frosts come, when such of them as are sure to win are brought

out and started against the watch, for a “tin cup,” and these are the

victories that Woodburn wins. Nobody has ever heard of Woodburn entering

a youngster in a stake where he would have to win on his merits. That

would be bringing him down to an equality with the colts of such people

as William H. Wilson, Colonel R. G. Stoner, Farmer Timothy Anglin, and

all the other “little fellows.” Woodburn has made a great deal of money

out of these humbug tin-cup records, and as registration and the standard

are now absolutely under the control of her manager, the 2:30-tin-cup

still remains the evidence of a fast trotter, worthy of standard rank.

True, everybody nowadays laughs at the idea that 2:30, with the “tin

cup,” is any evidence of even reputable speed, but as they have given a

certain kind of pre-eminence and made money in the past, the twins will

not be separated, but will hold their places just as long as the standard

is under the present control.

From this brief examination of the symptoms I think a safe diagnosis can

be made. The trouble seems to be twofold, or it may be said there are

two troubles, either one of which is dangerous, but the two together may

prove fatal in the end. It is a well-known fact in veterinary science

that there are certain diseases among horses that may be communicated to

the men who have them in charge. There is one disease, vulgarly called

“big-head,” that comes creeping upon its victim before he is aware of its

existence or approach, and against the insidious steps of this destroyer

the manager at Woodburn should be affectionately warned. Sham records

of 2:30 for standard rank are no longer welcomed with enthusiasm in

this country. The other trouble is not so much with the manager as with

the material which he manages, which seems to be affected with what may

be called “dry-rot.” This view of the non-productive character of the

Woodburn breeding stock, when measured by first-class performers, seems

to be borne out by the fact that the names of those gentlemen who have

depended most largely on Woodburn blood do not appear on the foregoing

list as the producers of first-class trotters. For about forty years

the fame of Woodburn as the greatest of all our breeding establishments

has been as wide as the boundaries of the nation. But notwithstanding

the weight and influence which great wealth and an unblemished name may

have secured, the records up to the close of the year 1896 have deposed

her from the first rank as a breeder of trotting horses, and sent her

away to the rear, where she now occupies her true place in the eighth

rank. It is well known to everybody that, since the days of the first

Mr. Alexander, Woodburn has never entered a colt in a stake nor started

one against other people’s colts, prize or no prize. This air of assumed

superiority is sought to be explained on high moral grounds against the

evils of horse-racing. This is like the man who never tasted whisky for

conscience’ sake, in view of the great evil it was doing in the world,

and yet he was the chief owner in a large distillery. At the great local

meetings in Kentucky practically all the breeding establishments of that

region, except Woodburn, are represented in the stakes, and while they

are being contested Woodburn will come in with a string of youngsters,

between the heats, and win sham records in 2:30 for “tin cups.” Depending

on this kind of test and this kind of development, it is not remarkable

that all the small breeders of the State have left Woodburn in the rear.

This shining example of failure teaches unmistakably the necessity

of honest and full development of breeding stock in order to produce

high-class trotters.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HOW THE TROTTING HOUSE IS BRED (_Continued_).

Breeding the trotter intelligently an industry of modern

development—Plethora of turf papers, and their timidity of

the truth—The accepted theories, old and new—Failure of

the “thoroughbred blood in the trotter” idea—“Thoroughbred

foundations,” and the Register—“Like begets like,” the great

central truth—Long-continued efforts to breed trotters from

runners —New York the original source of supply of trotting

blood to all the States—Kentucky’s beginning in breeding

trotters—R. A. Alexander, and the founding of Woodburn—The

“infallibility” of Woodburn pedigrees—Refusal to enter

fictitious crosses in the Register and the results—The

genesis and history of the standard—Its objects, effects and

influence —Establishing the breed of trotters—The Kentucky

or “Pinafore” standard —Its purposes analyzed—The “Breeders’

Trotting Stud Book” and how it was compiled—Failure and

collapse of the Kentucky project—Another unsuccessful attempt

to capture the Register—How honest administration of the

and the Chicago Convention—Detailed history of the sale and

transfer of the Register, the events that led up to it, and the

results—Personal satisfaction and benefits from the transfer,

and the years of rest and congenial study in preparing this

book—The end.

All that American breeders know about producing the trotting horse they

have learned in the past twenty-five years. In that short period this

interest has developed from practically nothing into a great national

industry that has placed this country in front of all the nations of the

earth in the character, quality and speed of the light harness horse.

It is true we had the “raw material” out of which to build up this new

breed, and this had been in our possession we may say for generations,

but we didn’t know how to use it. There may be some apparent indelicacy

in making the remark, but I think every intelligent man who is acquainted

with the subject will sustain me in saying that, had it not been for the

compilation of the “Trotting Register” and _Wallace’s Monthly_, with the

facts, statistics and reasonings which were developed through them, we

would know no more about the trotter today than we did thirty years ago.

The trotting horse, therefore, as we contemplate him in his position

of superiority to all others of his kind, is simply the result of great

labor in collecting the facts and sound reasoning from the lessons taught

by those facts. With all the facts placed in his hand, any breeder of

intelligence, if he were honest, could not fail to reach the truth; but,

unfortunately, all breeders have never learned to divest themselves of

their prejudices, and to accept the plain teachings of the facts, just as

they are.

To be able to think intelligently and honestly and to reason soundly, is

the first requisite to success in breeding the trotter. It is a seeming

paradox, but it is nevertheless true, that many men who are able to think

a little are not able to think honestly. It is easy to understand why a

man may act dishonestly, for there is the hope of gain to impel him; but

why he should think dishonestly is not so apparent. Let us illustrate

this matter of thinking dishonestly. On an occasion a correspondent asked

a breeding journal to give a list of the thoroughbred horses that had

sired trotters. A list of horses, represented as thoroughbred in the

reply, was given, embracing some ten or twelve, about half of which were

either unknown or dependent upon the most flimsy kind of representation

as to their blood. It is not with the actual misrepresentation of the

blood of most of the animals named, but with the use that was made of the

list that I will now speak. After accepting the list as true and genuine,

the correspondent comes before the public with his conclusions. He shows

that these dozen performers from about as many horses made an average

record of 2:24 and a fraction, and then triumphantly raises the question

whether any single trotting-bred sire can show as many performers with as

low an average record. Having satisfied himself that all the running-bred

sires, real and imaginary, put together could more than equal any one

trotting-bred sire in the average high rate of speed, he reaches the

profound conclusion that the way to breed the trotter is to go to the

runner. This is a real and not an imaginary instance of a few years

ago. No doubt this man thought he was thinking when he reached this

conclusion, and that he had solved the problem of breeding the trotter;

but, poor man, he was simply trying to advertise a half-and-half-bred

stallion he had in his stable.

I have no old scores to pay off against the breeding and sporting press,

for I generally managed to pay them off as we went along, and the triumph

of the views I advanced and sustained has become sufficiently complete

to satisfy the most fastidious. It seems to be a real misfortune that

there are so many weekly journals in this field and most of them leading

a precarious existence. It may be observed in most directions that the

management of these journals is hesitating and timid, as though afraid

that somebody might be offended and a five or ten-dollar advertisement

lost thereby. It is all right to make the advertising patronage

remunerative, but it is all wrong when that department is placed in

control of all the others, from the fear that somebody may be offended

if the truth be told. In the present depressed condition of the breeding

interests, and indeed of all interests, the horsemen of the whole country

feel that they are carrying too heavy a burden in supporting so many

papers, and the question of the “survival of the fittest” is already

imminent. But, whatever the present financial and intellectual condition

of the breeding and sporting publications of the country may be, a number

of them have had their part in the discussions and wrangles that were

naturally coincident with the progress of the revolution on the question

of breeding the trotter, which finally brushed everything out of its way

and fully established the truth of the laws of inheritance. Twenty-five

years ago there was a good number of intelligent and capable writers

on the horse, and they were either engaged in editing horse papers or

contributed to them, and one and all they were handicapped with the idea,

inherited from their fathers, that whatever of excellence that was found

in the American horse came from the English race horse, and that all the

speed, at any gait, that he was able to show came from the same source.

From this absurd fallacy, it naturally followed that speed at the trot

was merely the result of accident or of the persistent skill of the

trainer. This was, substantially, the view of the general public at that

date.

When, therefore, it was announced that the horse was far more than a

mere machine, that he had a mental as well as a physical organization,

that these were both equally matters of inheritance, that one horse ran

fast because his ancestors ran fast and that another horse trotted fast

because his ancestors were able to trot fast, and that no fast runner

was ever a fast trotter, there was a tremendous hubbub. This was a new

gospel, and it threatened to annihilate the stupid Anglo-Arabian fetish

that all that was good in horsedom must of necessity come from that

source. For generations the belief had been universal that the only way

to improve the horse for any purpose under the sun was to “breed up” to

the running horse and thus get back to the blood of the pure Arabian.

On the other hand, and as opposed to this ancient fallacy that the way

to breed the trotter was to go to the runner, it was urged, with a

thousand proofs at the back of it, that the way to breed the runner was

to go to the horse that could run, and the way to breed the trotter was

to go to the horse that could trot. Here was a direct issue squarely

made, and it was not to be expected that such men as Charles J. Foster,

Peter C. Kellogg, Joseph O. Simpson, etc., all writers of ability, would

quietly surrender without a battle. They had committed themselves to

the running-blood traditions, some rich men had shaped their breeding

studs in that direction, and without deciding whether a rich man had

necessarily more sense than a poor one, they knew instinctively that

a rich man could be more liberal in advertising, and that he could

be more generous in properly recognizing the little courtesies that

might be extended in the way of keeping his establishment before the

public in an approving light. Thus, with an eye to the weather-gauge,

the editors were able to maintain their own consistency. As the

experiences of every succeeding year added thousands of proofs to the

plain proposition that the trotter inherits his speed from a trotting

ancestry, the “irreconcilables” began to shift their ground, conceding

that there must be trotting blood to give the action, but that there

must be “speed-sustaining” blood from the thoroughbred to give courage

and endurance. This was the second position, and in a commercial sense

it was shrewdly chosen for the advantage of certain localities. This

position furnished the “thoroughbred foundation” argument, and for a time

it had its supporters. This theory also furnished its promised commercial

advantages to such localities as had formerly bred running horses, and

it was but a week till everybody in those localities had “thoroughbred

foundations” for their trotting pedigrees, and those who did not have

them could easily procure them. This brought an avalanche of pedigrees,

especially from Kentucky, with “thoroughbred foundations,” consisting

of long strings of dams by famous horses, but without names, dates,

breeders or histories, and many of them impossible. To checkmate this

inundation of manufactured foundations, in the office of the Register,

a rule was adopted requiring satisfactory identification and history

of each dam, and where that could not be given the pedigree would be

cut off. This rule saved the “Trotting Register” from becoming the mere

dumping place for countless frauds, but it aroused such a feeling of

antagonism on the part of the manager of Woodburn Farm that he, at once,

started an opposition Register to be compiled at the farm, under his own

personal direction. Of this, and what came of it, I will speak further

on. It is but just that I should say here, that from a wide knowledge of

men and from a study of their moral fiber extending through many years

in connection with horse affairs, I have found many Kentuckians that

were thoroughly truthful and reliable in pedigree matters; but at the

same time it must be admitted that the conditions there for generations

past have not been favorable, among horsemen, for the cultivation of

the highest type of truthfulness. Many of them have been making their

own pedigrees for so long, and padding them out with nameless dams by

suppositious sires, to suit themselves—and the market—that they don’t

take kindly to any restraint in what they consider their own business.

The great central truth in reproduction, whether of animals or plants,

is summed up in the homely but axiomatic phrase, “like begets like.”

With the rank and file of intelligent breeders who were able to think,

this axiom was soon accepted as a fundamental and basic truth. The

phrase “trotting instinct” was soon in everybody’s mouth, and the broad,

plain distinction between that and “running instinct” was so palpable

and easy of practical comprehension that the fallacy of a “thoroughbred

foundation” was buried out of sight. When it was considered that the

instinct of the one was to put forth his supreme effort at the trot,

and of the other to put forth his supreme effort at the gallop, the

irreconcilable antagonism between the two gaits was apparent. The

cumulative evidences furnished year after year by the official records

of performances on the tracks, and all going to show that the trotting

horse must have a trotting inheritance, soon became so overwhelming in

the uniformity of their teachings, and so completely unanswerable in

the force of numbers, that no man able to observe and think could any

longer doubt the truth of the position taken. But, unfortunately, some

men can neither observe nor think, and, what is still more unfortunate,

they not infrequently undertake to fill the rôle of public teachers

and leaders of public thought. We can understand how a man of average

intelligence may be wise in many things and foolish in others. When

we come to study the phenomena he presents, we find he has studied the

subjects on which he is wise, and he is ignorant on the subjects on which

he is foolish. Like “Brother Jasper,” the negro preacher, he is ready

to maintain against all comers that “the sun do move.” Another class of

men in the writing fraternity, but fortunately they are restricted in

numbers, have brains enough to apprehend the facts surrounding them and

their teachings, but they have not conscience enough to lift them above

their toadying instincts, for fear they might miss the crumbs from a

rich patron’s table. Another type of man, generally a beginner in the

breeding business, has a half-and-half-bred stallion at the head of his

little stud, and he is uniformly an enthusiast for the “thoroughbred

foundation.” As might be expected, he fills the columns of all the papers

accessible with his “views of breeding,” which are always shaped to fit

his own stallion and bring him patronage. We might here go on and point

out other types of would-be “teachers” that would be entertaining, but

certainly not profitable or instructive. We might follow the vagaries

of different writers and show the origin and reason for those vagaries,

but as the breeding world has become far more intelligent, and I think

more honest, than it was twenty-five years ago, one vagary after another

has disappeared and been buried out of sight. All such trumpery as, “to

breed the trotter you must go to the runner,” “more running blood in the

trotter,” “thoroughbred foundation,” etc., are phrases that are never

heard in our day among intelligent breeders. A mile in two minutes and

thirty seconds is “played out” as an evidence of trotting speed, but it

is still held in its place as such evidence to suit the blood and methods

of development at one particular establishment, and to gather in the

money for registration from the little fellows.

Anything slower than “two-twenty” is no longer looked upon as of any

value in a trotting sense.

This astonishing increase of speed has come hand in hand with a closer

and more careful observance of the law of inheritance, or heredity. If

we breed the merino ram upon a merino ewe, we know that the produce

will be a merino. If we breed the cotswold on the cotswold we know the

produce will be a cotswold, but if we breed the merino on the cotswold

the produce will be a mongrel. The physical inheritance is destroyed,

and in propagating from this mongrel confusion, uncertainty and

disappointment always follow. If we go a step higher and consider those

types of domestic animals endowed with a species of mentality that we

call instinct, we find the illustrations still more marked and effective.

The finely bred greyhound coupled with the finely bred pointer produces

neither a greyhound nor a pointer, but only a nondescript cur. Sometimes

the instincts of the greyhound and sometimes the instincts of the pointer

may be the more masterful, but the inheritance is broken and divided, and

the mongrel should never be used for propagation. If we couple the very

best specimen of the English race horse with the very best and fastest

American trotting mare, the produce would be literally half-and-half

bred. The sire never could trot a mile in four minutes and the dam never

could run a mile in two minutes, and what is the produce good for? Once

in a hundred times the running instinct might predominate and develop

something of a runner, and once in a hundred times the trotting instinct

might predominate, as in the case of Bonnie Scotland and Waterwitch, and

produce something of a trotter, but of what value would the half-and-half

progeny be for breeding purposes? Whatever might be the characteristics

of their progeny, physically, they would undoubtedly and invariably

inherit and transmit not only divided, but antagonistic, instincts that

would require generations of careful selection and training to get rid

of. While the “featherheads” may, for the sake of personal consistency,

which is a very weighty matter of public concern, still advocate “more

running blood in the trotter;” and while one great concern may still look

one way, on this question, and row the other, it being literally true

that she has not added a single drop of running blood to her trotting

stud in a quarter of a century, it is safe to say that the whole body of

intelligent breeders of this country have come to accept and obey the

great central truth that the American trotter has reached his present

state of perfection by the development of his unbroken and undivided

trotting inheritances. These inheritances have been cumulative and thus

made stronger in each developed generation of ancestors, and if this high

development of speed is kept up for a series of successive generations

the speed of the American trotter will be placed at a point of which we

have never yet dreamed. The inherited and developed instinct to stick to

the trot as the fastest gait of which the horse is conscious, coupled

with skillful preparation and handling, are the two factors that will

always put the American trotting horse in the front rank and keep him

there.

In the early chapters of this work we have considered the horse in his

original habitat and his distribution among the different peoples of

the then known world, but we have not considered the distribution of

the trotter through the different regions of our own country. Fifty or

sixty years ago the trotting horse was hardly known outside of a limited

territory embracing the cities of New York and Philadelphia. In the New

England States the trappy little Morgan filled the place of the driving

horse with very great acceptance, but he had no speed as a trotter. We

then began to see and hear something of the “Maine Messengers,” that

were trotters in reality and able to demonstrate their speed and courage

on the track. Occasionally a converted pacer would strike a trot and

show speed that was phenomenal in that day, but it was uniformly treated

as “accidental.” There was a great deal of high-class trotting blood

in the region of Philadelphia, and for a time that was the leading

center of the trotting interest, but it did not receive that measure of

encouragement and support that was necessary to its permanent growth,

and the seat of empire was transferred to Long Island and Orange County,

New York. South of Mason and Dixon’s line the trotter was tabooed, as a

mongrel nondescript, and “not worthy of the attention of a gentleman,

sah.” They had runners and they had pacers, and as all excellence in the

shape of a horse, at whatever gait, as they argued, must come from the

running horse or his progenitor, the Arabian, they had already the very

best material in the world for the production of the fast trotter. The

belief as expressed in their motto, “Speed at the gallop was a guarantee

of speed at any other gait required,” pervaded all minds and directed

all action in matters of breeding. Thus they worked away for years

trying to breed trotters from blood that never could and that never did

trot, and, strange as it may seem, there are still some people in that

region, at the close of the nineteenth century, trying to breed trotters

from runners. From New York as a common center all the breeding States

obtained their supplies of trotting blood, and they in time became

sources of supply. The only exception to this is that of the pacer, which

eventually developed into a trotting element of some prominence and

value, especially in the West and South.

The prominence of Kentucky as a breeding center is wholly due to the

trotting blood she obtained from New York. She had plenty of pacing

blood that was good, of its kind, but it was so uncertain and sporadic

that it did not commend itself to the breeders of that section as a

source of trotting speed. From an early period in the history of the

State the habits and fancies of the people, in the richer portions, had

been “horsey,” from their knowledge and familiarity with running races

for many years, and thus when the demand came for trotters they struck

out vigorously to meet that demand. When Mr. R. A. Alexander organized

the great Woodburn Farm he established a department of trotters, which

was among the very first of any magnitude in the State. As he had been

reared abroad he knew nothing about American pedigrees, and in making

his purchases of breeding stock he was victimized by every sharper who

came along with a brood mare to sell. He was a man of honest purpose and

excellent natural judgment which told him to buy such breeding animals

as could trot themselves or had produced trotters, and if he had been

content to stop with what little he knew of their breeding he would

have been all right; but, meantime, the professional pedigree-maker—the

successor to the famous Patrick Nesbitt Edgar—came along and tricked them

out in an excellent quality of pinchbeck pedigrees containing plenty of

running blood that had never trotted nor produced a trotter. When the

first Mr. Alexander died he was succeeded in the proprietorship of the

great estate by his brother, a very worthy gentleman who made it a law to

the establishment that none of his horses should ever start in a race.

His fancy and knowledge were all in the line of cattle, and he seemed

to neither know nor care anything about horses. Soon after this change

in the ownership of the estate a new manager was placed in charge, and

it was soon manifest that however absurd and untruthful the pedigrees

of breeding stock might be, they must not be questioned nor corrected

by any authority whatever. This doctrine of infallibility as applied to

Woodburn pedigrees was wholly incompatible with what I conceived to be

my duty to the breeding public. I had accepted the Woodburn pedigrees,

at the start, as trustworthy, on the grounds of the eminence and high

character of the first Mr. Alexander, and it was far more than a surprise

to me when I discovered something of the extent to which the pedigrees

of the whole establishment had been honeycombed with the dishonesty

of “sharpers” and “pedigree-makers.” These fictions antedated any

compilation or known authority of trotting pedigrees, and there can be

no doubt they were accepted as honest statements of the blood of the

animals in question, while many of them were wholly fictitious and all of

them contained crosses on the maternal side that were merely imaginary.

These embellishments, to call them by no harder name, were uniformly in

one and the same direction, all stretching out to embrace as much of the

blood of the running horse as possible, and often a great deal that was

impossible. Here I may state the general fact that all Kentuckians had

claimed and exercised the right so long to shape up their pedigrees to

suit themselves and to bring the most money in the market that a number

of them still claimed that as a right and became somewhat restive when

told that their pedigrees would be recorded just as far as they were

proved, and no further. Two or three breeders expostulated against this

rule, and in reply they were assured that they had a perfect right to

shape their pedigrees as they pleased, but that insertion in the Register

was the same as my personal indorsement, and that this indorsement could

not be given to any pedigree that I did not know or believe to be honest

and true. This ended all doubts about the position and character of the

submitted to the rule, with the solitary exception of Woodburn Farm.

The manager of that establishment was not only unwilling to have the

infallibility of Woodburn pedigrees called in question, but he aspired to

the control of the pedigrees of all other breeders in the whole country.

When the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders was organized in

December, 1876, he was not only asked, but pressed, to become a member

and take part in its management and control. But no, he would be “boss,”

or he would be nothing. New York was not the right place to organize it.

It should be organized in Kentucky, and with the manager of Woodburn

at the head of it. The arrogance of this young manager was something

amazing, his intrigues to get control of registration were continued for

a number of years, and the means employed to accomplish his ends were of

such a character as clearly to demonstrate that of all the men in the

world he was the last one who should be placed in the control of such a

trust. As this controversy extended through the period of building up the

breed of trotters, it is of necessity a part of the literature of the

formation of that breed, and as some of the more salient points seem to

be of sufficient importance to hand down to future generations, I will

here consider them very briefly. In doing this I am conscious of some

feeling of embarrassment on account of the personal matters that must

enter into the recital, but it is a part of the trotting history of the

times, and I prefer that the truth may be preserved, whatever may be the

teachings of the canons of taste.

In the collection and registration of pedigrees that seemed to be more

or less closely allied to trotting blood, embracing all contained in the

first, second and third volumes of the “Trotting Register,” there was no

guide or rule to determine what was worthy of registration, in a trotting

sense, and what was unworthy. I had a general conception of the families

that had produced trotters and those that had not, but I had no rule by

which I could decide what to admit and what to reject, except that all

actual performers of reputable speed must be admitted. To undertake,

on individual responsibility, to determine what amount of trotting

blood should be requisite to admission, and how that amount should

be measured, was quite too hazardous, except when backed by a strong

moral and numerical force of breeders. Hence my active interest in the

organization of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, and

my earnest desire that it might be composed of breeders of high standing

and character from all parts of the country. Upon the organization of

the association, its character was so entirely acceptable to me that I

did not hesitate to place in its hands the supervisory control of the

registration of pedigrees for the “Trotting Register,” to be exercised

by a Board of Censors to be appointed annually. The first board was

appointed and entered on its functions January 15, 1877, by formulating

the first set of rules relating to the requisites necessary to the

acceptance of pedigrees, in their form and completeness. The third volume

was then approaching completion and the Board of Censors commenced their

supervisory duties on that volume.

The members of the Breeders’ Association were generally men of

intelligence, and capable of thinking, and every suitable opportunity was

improved to get their individual views on the question as to whether a

set of rules could be adopted by the association that would distinguish

between animals that had trotted themselves or produced trotters in say

2:30, and animals that had not. Not many had ever thought of the subject,

but all were ready to think of it more. The only objection urged was

that such a scheme would certainly reduce the fees for registration in

large degree. To this I assented as doubtless true for the time being,

though in the end it would largely increase them, but declared that it

was not for the fees I was working, but to establish a breed of trotting

horses. When satisfied that a good number of the leading breeders were

thinking favorably of the subject, it was presented to the public in

a very modest and unpretentious way. In discussing “The Future of the

Breeders’ Association,” in _Wallace’s Monthly_ for April, 1878, the

following language occurs:

“In addition to the thought and labor necessary to secure such

an organization as the interest demands, there is another topic

that will require great deliberation and wisdom, in the near

future. The association must fix a standard of admission to the

official record of pedigrees. Up to the present time there has

been no standard of blood requisite to secure a place in the

without even so much as advice on the subject. The Register,

therefore, has no value as a classification of blood, but

only as a reliable record of the pedigrees of the animals it

contains, whatever their blood may be.”

This is the first intimation ever given to the public, so far as I

know, that any body of men ever contemplated the construction of a

standard to control the admission of trotting horses to specific rank

and registration. The question was thus placed openly before the public

and it was looked upon favorably by those most immediately interested.

In due time, at a meeting of the Breeders’ Association, a committee was

appointed to whom was referred all the suggestions that had been made for

the proposed scheme. Soon afterward (November 19, 1879) the committee

reported the standard to a large, enthusiastic and harmonious meeting of

the Association, and it was unanimously adopted as follows:

THE STANDARD OF ADMISSION TO REGISTRATION.

(Established by the National Association of Trotting-Horse

Breeders, November 19, 1879.)

In order to define what constitutes a trotting-bred horse, and

to establish a BREED of trotters on a more intelligent basis,

the following rules are adopted to control admission to the

records of pedigrees. When an animal meets the requirements of

admission and is duly registered, it shall be accepted as a

standard trotting-bred animal.

FIRST.—Any stallion that has, himself, a record of two minutes

and thirty seconds (2:30) or better; provided any of his get

has a record of 2:40 or better; or provided his sire or his

dam, his grandsire or his grandam, is already a standard animal.

SECOND.—Any mare or gelding that has a record of 2:30 or better.

THIRD.—Any horse that is the sire of two animals with a record

of 2:30 or better.

FOURTH.—Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a record

of 2:30 or better; provided he has either of the following

additional qualifications:

1.—A record himself of 2:40 or better.

2.—Is the sire of two other animals with a record of 2:40 or

better.

3.—Has a sire or dam, grandsire or grandam that is already a

standard animal.

FIFTH.—Any mare that has produced an animal with a record of

2:30 or better.

SIXTH.—The progeny of a standard horse when out of a standard

mare.

SEVENTH.—The progeny of a standard horse out of a mare by a

standard horse.

EIGHTH.—The progeny of a standard horse when out of a mare

whose dam is a standard mare.

NINTH.—Any mare that has a record of 2:40 or better, and whose

sire or dam, grandsire or grandam is a standard animal.

TENTH.—A record to wagon of 2:35 or better shall be regarded as

equal to a 2:30 record.

In this, its original form, the standard was administered successfully

and smoothly through the period of the compilation of volumes four, five,

six, and seven of the “Trotting Register,” when it was revised by the

Breeders’ Association as follows:

THE STANDARD.

(AS REVISED AND ADOPTED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF

TROTTING-HORSE BREEDERS, DECEMBER 14, 1887.)

In order to define what constitutes a trotting bred horse and

to establish a BREED of trotters on a more intelligent basis,

the following rules are adopted to control admission to the

records of pedigrees. When an animal meets the requirements

of admission and is duly registered it shall be accepted as a

standard trotting-bred animal.

FIRST.—Any stallion that has himself a record of two minutes

and thirty seconds (2:30) or better, provided any of his get

has a record of 2:35 or better, or provided his sire or his dam

is already a standard animal.

SECOND.—Any mare or gelding that has a record of 2:30 or better.

THIRD.—Any horse that is the sire of two animals with a record

of 2:30 or better.

FOURTH.—Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a record

of 2:30 or better, provided he has either of the following

additional qualifications: (1) A record himself of 2:35 or

better. (2) Is the sire of two other animals with a record

of 2:35 or better. (3) Has a sire or dam that is already a

standard animal.

FIFTH.—Any mare that has produced an animal with a record of

2:30 or better.

SIXTH.—The progeny of a standard horse when out of a standard

mare.

SEVENTH.—The female progeny of a standard horse when out of a

mare by a standard horse.

EIGHTH.—The female progeny of a standard horse when out of a

mare whose dam is a standard mare.

NINTH.—Any mare that has a record of 2:35 or better, and whose

sire or dam is a standard animal.

From the indefinite and unsatisfactory starting point, and without

any rule or guide as to what should be admitted, except the pointless

phrase, “well related to trotting blood,” it soon became evident that

the Register would soon contain as much chaff as wheat. Through the

_Monthly_, which was established for that purpose, I did not despair of

the success of my aim in leading the intelligent breeders of the country

up to the point of recognizing and establishing the American trotting

horse as a BREED. The road was long, steep, rough in places, and beset

with prejudices on all sides, but labor conquers all things, and we

have in the standard and its revision, as given above, the culmination

and perfection of the implements that were to effect this purpose. To

reject a horse from registration merely because he was running bred would

have been “flying in the face” of the prejudices of nearly everybody,

but to reject him because neither he nor any of his tribe had ever been

able to trot, was philosophical and just; and as it gave no section

of the country an advantage over any other section, and no theory an

advantage over a fact, no man could gainsay or criticise its justice or

its truthfulness. This was the wedge that split the rock of ignorance

and prejudice, and thus exploded the theories of generations as to the

value of running blood in the trotter. As I look at it to-day, the

undertaking to gather up a great lot of fragments and convert them into

a breed was a tremendous one, and although it was backed up with brains

and influence, it is doubtful whether many of its promoters had any very

clear conception of the results that would follow—either its success

or its failure. It assumed to direct and control the trotting-horse

breeding interest of the whole country, and to leave its impress for

all time. It required no gift of prophecy to see this as the result of

success, and neither did it require any gift of prophecy to foresee

that failure would wipe out the work already done in both the Register

and the _Monthly_. It was the crucial period in the history of these

publications. A misstep or an unwise provision would have brought a

disastrous end. To found a breed of horses resting primarily and wholly

upon performance and the blood descended directly from performers, or the

producers of performers, was something that never had been attempted in

the world. The basis was wholly unique, but it commended itself to the

public judgment as a just one, and as the only foundation upon which the

proposed breed could be successfully established. The basis was wisely

chosen and the superstructure erected thereon was equally wise in all its

provisions. Never have we known a set of men to work more earnestly or

more unselfishly for the common purpose.

After very careful consideration in a large and intelligent committee,

the finished labors of that committee was reported to the Association on

November 19, 1879, at the Everett House, in this city, and the standard

was then and there adopted without so much as a question and without a

voice or a vote being raised against it. Thus the standard was launched

in unity and wisdom, and from that day it went forward on its mission

of educating the people. The “Trotting Register” has done much and the

_Monthly_ has done something in the way of education, but the standard

has been the special formula through which all these teachings have been

brought home to the breeder, great and small, in a manner that educated

both his mind and his pocket. If we could conceive of the brightest mind

directing the most pointed pen for the period of a hundred years in the

special department of how to breed the trotting horse, we feel sure he

would fail to accomplish as much as this little, practical formula called

the “Standard” accomplished in the first dozen years of its existence.

When the standard was adopted and put in operation there was a material

advance in the market value of all animals registered under its

requirements, and it thus became not only a matter of honor, but of

profit, to breed only in the standard ranks. Everybody was willing to

pay more for a good horse that was standard in his breeding than for

one equally good that was not standard in his breeding. A record of

2:30 was then accepted as evidence of a high rate of speed, everywhere.

There was a grand rush for standard rank and the number of fraudulent

performances sent forward in order to secure such classification was

overwhelming. This led to many rejections of performances, adroitly

shaped up to deceive, and every rejection made a batch of enemies. But

great as this evil was, there was another that began to manifest itself

very strongly. The Register was rapidly filling up with colts under rules

seven and eight, and everyone of them, as soon as he was able to stand

up, wanted his number, for he was to be kept as a standard stallion. The

public attention was urgently called to the preponderating numbers of

these feebly bred colts, as a menace to the hitherto unimpeded progress

of the grand purpose of establishing a breed. The Breeders’ Association

thereupon took up the standard and revised it, wholly in the direction

of higher qualifications and more stringent requirements. By comparing

the revised standard with the original, above, it will be observed that

rule ten was stricken out, and that rules seven and eight were restricted

to fillies only, thus cutting off the source of danger altogether. The

rates of subsidiary speed were advanced and there was a tightening up

of the requirements in other directions. This revision did not suit all

interests, especially beginners who were just starting to breed their

first colt by a standard horse, but as every one knew there would never

be a time when there would not be just such groundless complaints, the

action received the hearty indorsement and support of all breeders who

kept in view the central object of the standard in building up a breed of

trotters.

When fast horses began to multiply by the thousand, annually, say about

1890-91, we began to hear an increasing number of gibes at the standard

as “a slow coach,” “away behind the times,” “a 2:30 horse was no longer

considered a trotter,” etc., and every one of these taunts had an element

of truth in it. The standard, as the teacher of the breeders of the

country, had not only produced trotters, but _great_ trotters, with

marvelous rapidity. At one time it was the ambition of all breeders to

place their stock inside of the limits of the standard, not only because

it was an honor, but because it added materially to the bank account and

to the value of every animal, so bred, in the establishment. But breeders

both great and small are no longer stimulated to enter a standard with

the antiquated 2:30 rate of speed that is everywhere received with a

sneer. When the standard was formed on the basis of 2:30, it was within

about fifteen seconds of the fastest performance, and if the same ratio

were now preserved, “2:30” would be stricken out and “2:20” inserted

instead. The breeders would again be stimulated to look forward with

hope, and not backward with regret.

Of the numerous criticisms of the standard after its adoption, there

were none of any special force or practicability, but from one source

there was a persistent war made upon it, not because it was unfair in

its principles or administration, nor because it lacked vigor in its

support, but evidently because it was not controlled in Kentucky, and

that the pivotal authority of that control was not placed in the hands of

the manager at Woodburn. It is but just that I should say here that many

of the stanchest and most enthusiastic supporters of the standard and

the Register were Kentuckians, and with the exceptions of two or three

breeders who stood well in their community, and a few others who were

bankrupt in character and morals, there were no enemies to engage in this

war. I would gladly skip over this period, for it is of necessity more

or less personal, but to omit it would leave the history of the times

and of the formation of the breed of trotters incomplete, and liable to

misrepresentation by those who may come after us.

The first public suggestion or demand for a standard, and the first use

of the word “standard” in connection with rules for registration, was

addressed to the Breeders’ Association, in the paragraph quoted above,

from the _Monthly_ for April, 1878. In that paragraph, while no specific

rules were formulated, the whole scope of such rules was foreshadowed.

In the course of correspondence with breeders all over the country as to

their views about the provisions of the proposed standard, I received

from Mr. Henry C. McDowell, of Kentucky, a little slip of paper, perhaps

as large as your hand, marked “copyrighted,” on which were printed a

number of rules that purported to be rules for the admission of certain

animals, trotters and runners, to some book that was not named or

described. This little paper was courteously received and commended as a

step in the right direction.

The idea of inserting the word “copyrighted” seemed to be that it

might serve as a “scare head” and thus deter all makers of books from

attempting to make a book under the provisions of these rules. These

rules were strictly tentative, and they were peddled about for months,

and changed several times to see whether they would be acceptable or

not, and every revised and corrected edition was marked “copyrighted.”

Some of the rules that were, we might say, self-evident, were not very

objectionable, but others again were simply intended to give Woodburn

and those who had their breeding stock from that establishment a great

advantage over all other breeders. The selfish object of the fourth rule

is palpable, as follows: “Any mare, the dam of any mare or stallion that

has produced or sired a horse, mare or gelding, with a record of two

minutes and thirty seconds or better.”

To the original draft of six rules, “rule seven” was afterward added,

which reads: “The full sister of any animal entered under rules one,

two, three, and four.” This was the capsheaf of absurdity, for it not

only made the grandams of trotters standard trotting brood mares, but

all their sisters also. This not only embraced a large number of running

mares, genuine and bogus alike, in Kentucky, but it reached across the

Atlantic and made one of the greatest of English dams of running horses,

and all her famous sisters, standard trotting brood mares in America.

Bonnie Scotland, the great racing sire, never was able to get a trotter

except from old Waterwitch, and upon the strength of that scratch, his

sisters and his mother and his aunts were all made standard trotters.

No wonder this marvelously stupid production came to be known as the

“Pinafore Standard.” [A more extended review of the “Pinafore Standard”

may be found in _Wallace’s Monthly_ for December, 1879, page 831.]

But when we come to consider the ultimate result intended to be reached,

the scheme was not “marvelously stupid”—it was not the work of a fool,

but of the other kind of fellow. The admission of the grandmothers and

all their sisters was not specially intended to bring in the great

English racing mare and all her sisters as standard-bred American

trotters, but it was intended to bring in a great host of Kentucky

running-bred mares that never could trot a mile in four minutes, and

place them on an exact equality of rank with mares that had records of

2:20 or less. This would not only place Kentucky away ahead of the North

in the length of her lines of inheritance, but would place Woodburn away

above all competitors, either North or South, and with a little help of

the Edgar-Bruce type, we would soon have had “twelfth dam, fifteenth

dam,” etc., not one of them named and not one of them honest. Great

local, and especially personal, advantages were to accrue, and the

theory that Kentucky running blood was not the best trotting blood in the

world was to be smashed, and here we reach “the milk in the cocoanut.”

So far as we can understand the conditions as they then existed and

so far as we can analyze the facts developed, this seems to be a fair

interpretation of the impelling motive. In an unfortunate hour I took

up this buntling of the young manager and exposed its absurdities,

addressing the exposure to a highly esteemed personal friend whose name

was connected with the movement, and just as soon as the gentlemen

interested could be got together, every vestige of the “Pinafore”

features was eliminated, the poor old grandmothers and their sisters

being ruthlessly turned out in the cold. This was the first set-back

which Mr. Brodhead received in his enterprise, which was to accomplish so

much for Woodburn, and which ended so disastrously.

There was another feature embraced in the “Pinafore,” and protected by

the same “copyright,” that was of special significance. It was provided

that time made in a public trial, against the watch, should be accepted

as of equal value with time made in a race with other horses. It is

not worth while to stop to consider the question as to whether these

two kinds of performance are of equal merit, and should receive equal

honor, for every honest man will call such a claim a bald absurdity on

its face. Then why has Woodburn, from time immemorial, it will be asked,

always refused to enter a colt in a stake or start one against others? If

you ask the manager he will tell you that Mr. Alexander, the owner, is

opposed to racing in all its forms. Then why does Woodburn, in one form

or other, hold so much stock in the Kentucky Breeders’ Association, one

of the most notorious gambling concerns in the whole country? We will

not press this question too closely. There can be no shadow of doubt,

therefore, that this feature of the “Pinafore” was the special product of

the mind of the manager at Woodburn, for no one of the other gentlemen

would be willing to own it.

The quasi-organization from which, nominally, the “Pinafore Standard”

emanated consisted of the five gentlemen following: Lucas Brodhead,

Henry C. McDowell, Richard S. Veech, James C. McFerran, and Colonel

Richard West. The names of these five gentlemen when appended to any

matter connected with their enterprise and given to the public had no

rank assigned to them, except “Committee on Rules.” This implied that

there was an organization behind them that had appointed them to this

duty, but there never was even a shadow of such an organization. Mr.

Brodhead was manager at Woodburn and ambitious to control the trotting

pedigrees of the whole country, and for the methods employed the reader

is referred to page 430 of this volume. Mr. McDowell is simply Mr.

Brodhead’s echo. In December, 1877, he attended the annual meeting of the

National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, and out of compliment

to Kentucky he was elected president. He was about the city two or three

days, and before he left for home he resigned without ever intimating any

reason why he resigned. Mr. Veech is a man of undoubted integrity and

plenty of brains, and was identified with the Breeders’ Association from

the start. Mr. McFerran and Colonel West are both dead, and while it was

not my privilege to know them intimately, I knew enough of them to trust

them as honorable and honest men. Not long after the appearance of the

original suggestion in the _Monthly_, as given above, that a standard of

qualifications for admission to registration was of paramount importance,

and that the preparation of such a standard was in the special province

of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, Manager Brodhead

caught the idea and the situation, and with Mr. McDowell hurried away to

spend a night with Mr. Veech, near Louisville, and thus forestall the

action the Breeders’ Association might take in the premises. They were

all of one mind as to the importance of keeping Kentucky in the foremost

position as a breeding State, but they were not all of one mind as to the

means best adapted to that end. Mr. Veech was very clear and pronounced

in his views that the way to breed the trotter was to go to the trotter

and not to the runner, but what Brodhead said McDowell said, and that

left him in the minority. Seated around a table, each with a copy of

_Wallace’s Monthly_ containing the table of 2:30 trotters under their

sires, they commenced forming some rules. With “The Great Table” before

them they could not fail to strike the self-evident requirements of a

standard, and two or three of their rules were very good, but as a matter

of course the scheme of the majority to get in all the running-bred mares

possible and enter them as standard trotting mares had to prevail. Hence

the provision for admitting the grandams. Imported Bonnie Scotland was

kept many years in the trotting latitudes, and just got one trotter and

no more at any rate of speed, hence he was a standard horse according

to this scheme, and his dam, Queen Mary, in England, was a standard

trotting brood mare. Now if the dam thus became a standard trotting mare,

why should not Iago, his sire, become a standard trotting sire? This

would have been too glaring and open, and would have been ridiculed as

an absurdity by everybody. The trick had to be carried through quietly

or it could not succeed. At a later period the sisters of all the

standard mares were made standard, and then came the very appropriate

and expressive title of the “Pinafore Standard,” for it literally

embraced “his sisters and his mother and his aunts.” This scheme would

have admitted a vast herd of so-called trotting mares in Kentucky that

had no trotting inheritance, had never trotted themselves, and never

produced a trotter. This part of the scheme was certainly not the work of

the “Committee on Rules,” but the work of an individual for the purpose

of carrying out a selfish and inadmissible scheme to promote local and

personal interests. When the exposure of this scheme came out Woodburn,

with all its influence in Kentucky, could not stand against it an hour,

and every “Pinafore” feature was promptly eliminated.

When the processes of emendation and change in the “Pinafore,” and each

change “copyrighted,” were going forward, the views of the different

members of the “Committee on Rules” did not always harmonize, and when

it came to the selection of a man to do the work, part of the committee

insisted the work should be placed in the hands of John H. Wallace, and

after some discussion a committee consisting of Mr. Brodhead and Mr.

McDowell was deputed to tender this work to Mr. Wallace on such terms as

would be equitable and just. In due time a communication was received

from these gentlemen, informing me of the business upon which they had

been appointed and wishing to know for what compensation I would engage

to compile the book, laying down the conditions upon which it must be

done. Without having a copy of this correspondence before me I can only

give the substance from memory. First, the copyright was to be in the

committee or some member of it; second, the compilations were to be

as the committee directed; and third, the book was to be the property

of the committee when completed. This was a stunner, but I concluded

to play out the rôle they had assigned me and see what they would do.

In my reply I put the case substantially as follows: “Your proposed

book, if ever made, must be made almost, if not quite wholly, from the

first three volumes of the “Trotting Register,” and these volumes are

carefully protected by copyright. I have spent several years of hard

labor in compiling them, and a large amount of money in traveling over

the country tracing and verifying the facts which they contain. You ask

me, in effect, to take my three volumes and to skim all the cream out of

them to make one volume for you. Now, before going an inch further, we

must understand what you are willing to pay for my property, before I can

entertain any proposition to dump it into the lap of your committee.”

Sometimes I have been disposed to lament my hard fate in coming so near

the exalted position of “hired-man” to two such distinguished characters

as Henry C. McDowell and Lucas Brodhead, but I missed it. To this letter

I never received any reply, nor did these gentlemen ever make any report

of their negotiations with me to the “Committee on Rules.”

The next news we had from the “Pinafore” was the announcement that the

book would be compiled at Woodburn, by LeGrand Lucas, and on inquiry

as to his capacity and knowledge of the subject it was learned that he

was a young kinsman of Brodhead’s, perhaps still in his “teens,” who

was employed there as a kind of clerk or bookkeeper. He was evidently

an innocent lad, for he had been installed in his new office only a

very few days when he wrote me for certain numbers of the _Monthly_, in

duplicate. In reply I wrote him that each volume of the “Register” and

each number of the _Monthly_ was legally covered by copyright and that

I could not consent to his taking my property to make up his new book,

and that he must do as I had done—commence at the beginning and hunt for

himself. Poor boy, what could he do? If he were debarred from the use of

the Wallace publications, where on the face of the globe could he get the

information? If cribbing had to be done in order to carry out the scheme,

it would be very indiscreet to do it under the very roof of Woodburn

and under the supervision of its manager. Thus the work languished for

months, and little or no progress was made.

In Chicago there was one James H. Sanders, publishing a paper, whom I had

known for years. He never had an idea of his own in the world, but he

was one of the most notorious and shameless plagiarists that I have ever

known. As an illustration of what I knew about him in this department of

industry and thought, I will give a single example that will honestly

represent many others in my own experience. At one time he was employed

several months as editor of _Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times_, and during

that time I wrote an article for that paper that had some pith and point

in it, but I was afraid to send it for fear Sanders would steal it, so I

called in a capable friend and told him the situation, had him read it

carefully and make some notes of the order of thought that he might know

it if he ever saw it again. The paper was then signed and sent forward.

In two or three days I received an acknowledgment of the communication

effusively thankful for the favor, remarking that by a singular

coincidence our minds had been running in the same channel and that when

my communication was received he already had an article in type taking

the same view of the subject. When the paper came my friend looked it

over and remarked “that man is nothing more than a shameless plagiarist.”

In a short time work on the book, if it were ever begun, came practically

to an end for want of material, and this was probably brought about by

a hint from the proprietor, Mr. Alexander, that Woodburn, with all its

strength, could not afford to sacrifice its good name for honesty, by

taking the property of another man, without his consent. At this juncture

J. H. Sanders, of Chicago, wanted a job, for ready money, and knowing

the situation in Kentucky, published an editorial going to prove that

pedigrees could not be copyrighted, for they belonged to the owners of

the horses, or some other such brainless argument as this. Brodhead and

his echo saw in this the opportunity of their lives, for Sanders wanted

the job, and if my work were to be appropriated they could blame it

all on him. So they hied away to Chicago, and the three worthies, all

fully inspired with the _animus furandi_, were not long in reaching an

agreement. Sanders did not want any share in the book or in the profits

it might yield, but he was ready to do the work for a fixed compensation,

in cash, and to be free from all responsibility for damages or loss. The

compensation, as represented by Sanders, was three thousand dollars.

The negotiations were consummated, announced through the press with

a brilliant flourish of trumpets, and the two gentlemen returned to

Kentucky in high feather. Work on the compilation (?) was soon commenced,

and, as related by an eyewitness, the methods were very simple and

expeditious. Mr. Sanders sat at one side of a table with the three

volumes of “Wallace’s Trotting Register,” and _Wallace’s Monthly_ open

before him, and as he read out the pedigrees in their alphabetical order,

his clerk, on the opposite side of the table, wrote them down. In a very

few weeks the work was done and Sanders put his three thousand dollars in

his pocket. Thus the clerk was paid, his employers were in possession of

his dishonest work, and J. H. Wallace was robbed of the labor of years,

but the instinctive honesty of the public conscience had not yet been

reckoned with.

The book was published under the title of “The Breeder’s Trotting Stud

Book.” The clerical work was well done, closely following the copyrighted

sources from which it was drawn, so closely indeed as to furnish

strong _prima facie_ evidence that it was copied. But this feature of

excellence, if that word can be applied to theft in any form, furnished

literally hundreds of evidences, clear, unmistakable and conclusive,

that from beginning to end it had been copied from the “Register” and

the _Monthly_. Like all works of the kind, those volumes were not free

from errors, the spelling of a name might be wrong, the initials of a

name might have been misplaced or reversed, a date or a location may

have been incorrect, and as all these errors were copied and not one

of them corrected, and there were hundreds of them, each one stood up

as a competent and undisputed witness and told the story of the theft.

But, knowing the character of the people with whom I had to deal, I was

prompted to adopt the methods of the detective in using marked bills,

and then finding those bills on the person of the culprit. Fortunately

there was a very easy way of applying this effective and conclusive

method and I adopted it. Instead of marking bills, I marked pedigrees,

by inserting imaginary crosses. As an illustration, there was a horse

in Delaware called Frank Pierce Jr. Nobody ever knew anything about the

blood of his dam, and I supplied the place with “dam by Tom Titmouse,

pacer,” and then waited for my marked pedigrees to make their appearance.

Nobody ever heard of a horse called “Tom Titmouse” in Delaware or any

other country. In due time the book appeared and there my “marked bills”

came to light in the possession of Lucas Brodhead and Henry C. McDowell.

The piracy was a clean sweep and the evidence of it was just as complete

as the depredation itself. As a matter of course I did not delay in

raising the shout “stop thief,” and after one or two broadsides from the

_Monthly_ giving the extent of the theft and examples of the evidence

to sustain the charge, the moral sense of the breeders of the whole

country, including Kentucky, was aroused, and I was really surprised at

the sudden death of the bantling and its burial out of sight, but still

more surprised that no man opened his head in explanation or defense of

the piracy, and thus was practically confessed the truth of all that

was charged against them. It is said that Mr. Alexander, the proprietor

of Woodburn, tightened the reins on his over-ambitious manager, at this

point, and admonished him that his course had done great injury to the

good name of Woodburn, and that he must change it, and not attempt any

defense of what he had done. Whether this really occurred or not I am not

able to say, but it was just such a course as any wise employer would

adopt toward a reckless employee whose course was destroying the good

name of an establishment. It then appeared to be my duty to go forward

and under a decree of the courts have this stolen property confiscated

and destroyed, according to law, but as the bantling was already very

dead and growing deader every day, with nothing left of it but a trace of

its putrescence in the nostrils of all honest men, I concluded that the

game was not worth the candle.

Among the amusing things that were developed in the progress of this

controversy was Mr. Brodhead’s peculiar views as to what “copyright”

really meant. He got the idea of restricting admission to the “Register”

to animals possessing certain qualifications from the _Monthly_, and

he formulated this idea into five or six rules, expressed in eight or

ten short printed lines and, as he claimed, copyrighted this idea. He

evidently seemed to think he had invented a rat-trap and got his patent

on it, and that no man dare make any rules restricting registration,

so long as he safely held the patent on his rat-trap. He could see no

difference between a patent right and a copyright. An “idea” cannot be

copyrighted, no difference whether it be expressed in one printed line,

or in a dozen. The copyright law is constructed for the special and only

purpose of protecting the author in the results and products of his

labor. The work of seeking, tracing and establishing the pedigrees of

trotting horses had been pushed forward persistently, laboriously and

expensively for more than twelve years, and it had grown into a vast

accumulation of facts of imperishable value to the whole horse world, and

every line of it was protected under the copyright law; but because it

didn’t conform to his “rat-trap” idea he seems to have persuaded himself

that it would be justifiable to hire and pay a man to transfer it from my

possession to his own.

During its very short life and while the memory of the book was retained

in the recollections of the horsemen of that period, it was very

generally, if not invariably, spoken of as “The Tom Titmouse Stud Book.”

It has already been suggested how this name would aptly fit in among my

“marked bills,” but the reason for it has not been made apparent. In

Warren’s romance called “Ten Thousand a Year,” his “delectable,” or to

speak soberly, his “detestable” hero was named “Tittlebat Titmouse,” and

as one of the gentlemen involved in this controversy strongly reminded me

of Warren’s hero, by his arrogance and ignorance, I involuntarily wrote

in the “marked bill” “dam by Tittlebat Titmouse;” but upon looking at it

I concluded it was not good bait, for it was doubtful whether any man in

the world who ever owned a horse would name him after so contemptible

a character. Hence, to make it less conspicuous it was changed to read

“dam by Tom Titmouse, pacer,” and the bait was swallowed in a twinkling.

The Kentucky scheme, from its very inception, had its motive in securing

a local and personal advantage over the breeders of every other section

of the country and hence the provisions of the “Pinafore” standard, from

which the promoters were only driven by exposure and ridicule. The piracy

was consummated as proved by a hundred witnesses that will never die, and

of which the “marked bill” element, such as “Tom Titmouse, pacer,” is an

unmistakable representative. With the inception and consummation both

understood and named, how could we find another name so fit as “The Tom

Titmouse Stud Book?” To this might be added, on an amended title-page:

“Edited by a clerk employed by Lucas Brodhead and Henry C. McDowell of

Kentucky.”

Some three or four years after the death and burial of the “Tom Titmouse”

book and when its odoriferous memory had become less offensive, another

effort was made to get control of the registration business, by the same

parties in Kentucky. Mr. Brodhead did not appear prominently in this

move, but worked through his echo, McDowell. The plan was to present a

monster petition to the National Trotting Association, composed chiefly

of track owners and track followers, to establish a trotting register.

This petition purported to be from breeders, but in fact it embraced

all the “swipes” and stable-boys about Lexington and Woodburn, I was

told, and there were very few actual breeders in the list, and that few

were men who were trying to breed trotters from runners. The movement

was inspired and engineered in good degree from Woodburn, and Brodhead’s

friends were at work in all directions securing the names of the “rag,

tag and bobtail” whose names appeared on the petition, and a very

great noise was raised about what was going to be done. Whether the

association took any action on the petition, or what it was, I have no

recollection, but whatever the disposition made of the petition, it never

was heard of again. To the reader not familiar with the condition of

things in Kentucky at that time, these persistent and renewed attempts

to get control of the registration of trotting horses can hardly be

comprehended. They did not grow out of ruffled tempers merely, as the

result of friction, but out of strictly _business_ considerations.

Kentucky had a great variety of brood mares from which they were trying

to breed trotters, and practically every one of them was tricked out

with more or less running blood as tail-pieces to their pedigrees, while

others were paraded with pedigrees showing a dozen or more successive

crosses by thoroughbred horses, and not one of them with a name, a

history or a breeder. There were many purchasers flocking to Kentucky

with more money than knowledge for the purpose of buying a few animals

to serve as the nucleus for a breeding stud, and it was no uncommon

thing for such purchasers to estimate the value of a pedigree by its

length. When the purchaser got home with his stock, his next step was

to send them to me for registration, and here came in the “business”

consideration. The pedigree having reached the office of the “Register,”

unless it were already known to me, every cross had to be established

circumstantially and specifically before it could be accepted, and at the

precise point where reasonable information failed the pedigree was cut

off. The purchaser then goes back upon the seller, and there the trouble

begins. He writes me an indignant letter. “You’re interfering with my

business, sah; that pedigree is just as I got it from Colonel Jones,

sah; and he’s a gentleman, sah.” It was very seldom, indeed, that a man

of this type could be mollified by assuring him that all pedigrees were

judged by the same rule and requirement, whether they came from Maine or

California or Kentucky. He generally remained an enemy to the “Register”

because “it interfered with his business.” From early in the century,

three or four counties out of about one hundred and twenty in Kentucky

bred running horses and grades and raced them, but no records were kept

of their breeding and nobody knows with certainty to-day anything about

the more remote crosses. For a time the union of two or three trotting

horses upon the top of a line of nameless dams extending ten or fifteen

generations was looked upon as the perfection of a trotting pedigree.

This notion, foolish as it was, gave Kentucky a great advantage over

the breeders of all other sections of the country, and every exposure,

with the evidence, that in nine cases out of ten these lines of nameless

dams were in whole or in part pure fictions, was cutting the ground from

under their supposed superiority in the breeding of their trotters.

Under the arguments and illustrations of the _Monthly_, supported by

the incontrovertible statistics of the “Year Book,” the Kentucky cry

for “more running blood in the trotter,” was silenced as the child of

ignorance and prejudice, and instead of looking for pedigrees tracing

back to Godolphin Arabian, everybody began to look for pedigrees that

traced to individuals and families distinguished for producing trotters,

no difference what blood they possessed. Here the public mind reached

the truth, and in grasping it the boasted predominance of Kentucky was

crushed, and producing trotting blood was again placed on an equality in

all parts of the land. The loss of the pretensions of one section could

not be of any specific pecuniary advantage to any other section, but the

establishing of the truth was of inestimable advantage to all. The loss

of mere “pretentions” would not, in ordinary affairs, be considered a

very great loss, but in this instance it was looked upon as a grievous

wrong, because it interfered with their “business.” Every slippery fellow

who failed to pass a bogus pedigree complained that it interfered with

his “business.” Every gang of cheats that got together and hired the use

of a track for a few days for the purpose of giving their horses bogus

records, when detected, cried out vigorously that this was interfering

with their “business.” Besides these, there were scores, perhaps

hundreds, of others, ready for some such game to cheat the public, but

when they learned the ordeal was severe, their courage failed and they

contented themselves by threatening the “Register” for interfering with

their “business.” Here was an army of jockeys and cheats, and all they

needed to make their numbers formidable was a leader with courage and

money, and whose “business” was their own, to seize registration and

thus recoup the losses they had sustained in their “business.”

In considering the conspiracy that resulted in the sale and transfer of

the Wallace publications to the American Trotting Register Association,

which means simply Lucas Brodhead, there are some antecedent conditions

connected with these publications that need a brief explanation. The

first volume of “Wallace’s American Trotting Register” was published in

this city in 1871 and the second in 1874. An office was opened in this

city in 1875 and the first number of _Wallace’s Monthly_ was issued in

October of that year. The National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders

was organized December 20, 1876. The attendance was large and many of the

States were represented by men of influence and standing. Mr. Charles

Backman was elected president, and L. D. Packer secretary. From the favor

with which the idea of a national organization was received and from

the character of the men participating in it, I voluntarily and without

judicial advice placed in the association the authority to appoint

annually a Board of Censors to examine and decide all questions relating

to disputed pedigrees sent for registration. The plan worked smoothly

and satisfactorily for several years, in some of which there was not a

single case to be examined. My publications were soon past the critical

point, and they seemed to grow from their inherent strength, and not from

pushing or advertising. The Breeders’ Association seemed to take the

opposite chute, and after three or four years it became merely a name.

At first there was trouble in finding a man to take the presidency, but

at last a rich dry goods merchant was found who was willing to take the

presidency, and add five hundred dollars a year to some stake for the

honor conferred; and the secretary, L. D. Packer, was the mere satellite

of the president, and was willing to give two weeks’ work every year for

the privilege of drawing a thousand dollars a year from the treasury. The

annual meetings became a mere formality, with an attendance of three or

four and the two officers, who seemed to re-elect each other year after

year, until the association was finally buried somewhere out in Michigan,

I think, and the money that had accumulated in the treasury was, on his

petition, donated to the secretary in consideration of his valuable

services for so many years in carrying the association from the cradle to

the tomb.

Owing to my relations to the Breeders’ Association, I felt that I was

in honor bound to maintain its good name in the minds of the people,

while every publication in the whole country was laughing at it, and that

this was my duty as well as my interest until the time came for a final

separation from it. True, when I made these efforts to uphold it I had to

put my tongue in my cheek, for I knew that its management, like “the Old

Man of the Sea,” was riding it to death. As my business continued to grow

and prosper, I began to consider the propriety of forming a joint stock

company of breeders, to own and control the property absolutely when I

was ready to retire. Greatly to my surprise this proposition gave offense

to the two gentlemen who managed the association, for I had not alluded

to that in any possible manner. When explained to me it became perfectly

plain that the offense was in the fact that making a legal corporation to

own and control the property would leave no “position” for the president,

no salary for the secretary and no further need for the N. A. of T. H. B.

The Wallace Trotting Register Company, in due time, was incorporated

under the laws of the State of New York, and commenced business October

1, 1889. The publications of the company were the “Register,” the

_Monthly_ and the “Year Book.” The capital stock of the company was fixed

at one hundred thousand dollars, and as work came pouring in upon us

more rapidly than we could handle it, labor became a burden and I had no

time to distribute this stock among the breeders of every State, as I

intended. This was the condition of things in the office in the following

spring when, to my horror, I discovered I had been robbed of something

over fifty-four thousand dollars and the thief escaped to Cuba. The

blow was a stunner, and messages of sympathy came pouring in from all

quarters, with many tenders of pecuniary assistance all of which were

thankfully acknowledged, but all tenders of assistance were declined.

The capitalization at one hundred thousand dollars, and the robbery of

fifty-four thousand dollars, and the company still not crushed, gave Mr.

Brodhead a new view of the possibilities of the future, and inspired him

with a new hope that he might yet reach the ambition of his life and

gain control of the registration of all the trotting pedigrees of the

country. Without much violence to the processes of Brodhead’s mind we can

imagine the way in which he reasoned out the problem. “This has become a

valuable property and is bound to be still more valuable,” he doubtless

reasoned, “and it is possible it can be bought, but if bought it must be

done before that stock is scattered among the breeders of the different

States. There are Russell Allen and Malcolm Forbes and a whole lot of

rich fellows just coming into the trotting horse business and I can show

them that this property would be a good investment. With the money in

one hand and the bluff of starting an opposition Register in the other,

it is possible the property might be got for something like its value.”

He next probably reasoned: “The first thing to consider here, is how to

make that bluff sufficiently imposing and effective, in an authoritative

way; and shall it be a mass meeting or a delegate meeting, and where

shall it be held? I have seen Packer and he evidently wants to know what

there is in it for him and Mali, in case they agree to call a National

convention. They want to perpetuate their offices in their present

so-called National Association. If it should be a mass convention, and

held at Chicago, I could send up a few carloads of farmers’ sons from

around here and every one of them would swear he was a breeder. If it

should be a delegate convention from State Breeders’ Associations, there

are several States that have no such associations, but I could get a

few friends to organize for the purpose of sending delegates. The horse

papers would be a unit on our side, for they have been ‘set on’ so often

and so hard that they would like to see the old bear superseded. Beside

this, every one of those papers has at least the one man who is competent

to succeed Wallace, and every editor who has been in the business six

months thinks he is fully qualified for that place. But the real roar of

the shouting would come from the angry men whom Wallace has disappointed

in refusing to accept their pedigrees or their performances because they

were irregular. These men are very numerous and we must have as many of

them present as possible. I think this plan will work,” he doubtless

reasoned with himself, “if we can only keep Wallace in the dark till we

get things fixed, and to throw him off his guard I will send him three or

four pedigrees to register.”

Thus the plan of the conspiracy, with all the elements to be employed,

were evidently matured in Mr. Brodhead’s mind. There were two points

about which he was specially solicitous. The first was that I should

be kept wholly in the dark as to his movements and purposes, and the

second was some apparently official authority for calling a convention at

Chicago that would be of a nominally “national” character. On invitation

Secretary Packer visited Woodburn, and for a promised consideration it

was all arranged that the President and Secretary of the N. A. of T. H.

B. would call a convention. With the initial step thus safely provided

for, Mr. Brodhead was everywhere, east and west, north and south, beating

up recruits. In a short time, evidently by preconcerted arrangement,

there was an unusual number of horsemen in town, some of them very rich

men, while the greater number were blowers of the Dr. Day type with a

grievance. The horsemen were hustled together by Secretary Packer, in

what was called an impromptu meeting, and there President Mali, after

some apparent hesitation, fulfilled his part of the agreement and called

the convention at Chicago, and thus Mr. Brodhead secured his share—and we

will see how the other side fared further on.

When the convention assembled at Chicago it was indeed a motley mass.

President Mali took his place as president, and called the convention

to order, and Secretary Packer took his place as secretary. This, as I

understand, was not by the choice of the convention, but by virtue of

their positions in the N. A. of T. H. B. It was eventually determined

that the meeting should be composed of delegates from State associations,

and when the associations were called, several of them had never been

heard of before and never have been heard of since. They were bogus

associations, and were gotten up especially for the occasion. Some of the

delegates bore names that never had been heard of in the office of the

“Register,” and it may be inferred they never bred a standard horse. The

names of others, again, were well known in the office from their efforts

to get spurious and unknown crosses accepted. All these men were anxious

for a new management. One man whom I had discharged from my office a few

weeks before represented a New England State. He was guilty of a flagrant

attempt at deception. He was a fawning sycophant, always laughing at his

own supposed wit, and he was known in the office as “Uriah Heep.” The man

who dominated the convention from beginning to end had not been appointed

a delegate by his own association. The whole thing, as a convention,

was about as hollow a sham as was ever enacted in Chicago. Next behind

the gentlemen who by courtesy may be designated as delegates, sat the

moneyed men who were anxiously looking for a good investment for some

of their loose funds, and Brodhead had told them this property was

paying twenty-five per cent. on a capitalization of one hundred thousand

dollars, and he thought it could be made to pay more. Like many other

fools, they thought it was a machine that when fired up in the morning

would run itself. Next to the rich men sat a good sprinkling of farmers’

sons, some carloads of whom had been brought from Kentucky, and all ready

to swear they were breeders. As Brodhead explained this incident to a

gentleman who stated it to me: “If there was any attempt to pack the

convention he was ready to do some packing himself, with these young men

he had brought from Kentucky.”

On the outside circle there was a large number of young men and some

older ones watching the proceedings with great intensity. They were

restless, and some of them looked hungry, and every one of them was

looking for a place if the purchase went through. One had a copy of the

Bungtown _Bugle_ in his pocket containing a report of the racing at the

last county fair, written by him, and he thought that was sufficient

evidence that he was qualified to take charge of the _Monthly_. Another

had made, with his own hands, as he asserted, a tabulated pedigree on

a large scale and shaded the letters beautifully and artistically with

pokeberry juice; and what evidence could be more satisfactory that he was

qualified to take charge of the department of registration? Every one of

them seemed to think that there would be a good place for him in the new

deal, and hence his enthusiasm at every incident that seemed to point in

that direction. Thus the little cormorants as well as the big cormorants

were all anxious for the prey.

While the soreheads were wrangling over how best to get hold of my

property, and what they would do with it when they got it, I had several

hours in the privacy of my own apartments to look over all the conditions

of the situation, and the conclusions I then reached I have never had

reason to change. It, therefore, may be of interest to all to know just

what I thought at that crucial period, and I will give these thoughts as

contemporaneous with the event:

“This meeting is a miserable sham, but the action of Mali and Packer

has given it a pseudo-type of regularity as a national convention of

horsemen, and this idea of ‘regularity’ will carry weight with many who

know nothing of the bottom facts.

“The members of the press will, substantially, be a unit against me, and

ring all the changes on ‘the National convention’ at Chicago, and labor

to make it appear as an uprising of the horsemen of the whole country

against me.

“The meeting is packed by Brodhead with his own satellites whose expenses

he has paid, and embraces a good many rogues who have failed in passing

upon me dishonest pedigrees and spurious records. Besides these there are

several men here, and very active, whose names have never been heard of

before in the horse world.

“Taking these elements together, they are in numbers more formidable than

dangerous, but when led by Brodhead, with what they consider a fair price

in one hand and a club in the other, with the demand ‘take the price or

we’ll take the property,’ the occasion becomes serious.

“The latter alternative means a battle that may last ten years. Ten years

ago these same people employed a man who purloined my literary property

and it was found in their possession. The evidence of the piracy was so

clear that it never was denied.

“Have I time enough, am I strong enough, am I young enough to enter upon

this long battle? Ten years ago I was robbed of my property, but I was

then vigorous and strong; one year ago another thief robbed me of my

money and it was a terrific and lasting strain upon my vitality.

“The days of my years number nearly threescore and ten, so there is no

time to enter upon the uncertainties ‘of the law’s delays.’ From overwork

and the anxieties growing out of family afflictions and the robbery, my

health is shattered. It is time, therefore, that I should seek to rest

rather than to struggle.

“And what about the work to which I have devoted the best years of a

long life? Will it be attacked? Certainly it will be attacked for the

reason that it does not suit Woodburn. Will it be overthrown? No, the

laws of nature cannot be overthrown. The trotter can come only from the

trotter and nobody but an ignoramus or a fool can doubt the truth of this

declaration. The experiences of every year, of every track, and in every

race confirm this central truth and will continue to do so as long as the

world stands.”

From the above reasonings and conclusions, when the offer of one hundred

and thirty thousand dollars was made, in a business form, it was accepted.

When the property was transferred it was on the individual and joint

responsibility of some half a dozen rich men, and they were as gleeful

and happy over their investment as though they had obtained a gold mine

for a song. But, while these men were rejoicing over their acquisition,

there were many others cursing the deception that had been practiced upon

them by promising them places and perquisites and, in short, whatever

they wanted in order to secure their adherence to the conspiracy. Of

all this numerous class, Messrs. Mali and Packer had so little sense as

to make the nature and terms of their agreement public, namely, that

they were to be clothed with the power to annually appoint the Board of

Censors for the new organization. Poor fools! they didn’t know Brodhead.

For a consideration of place they had betrayed a trust to him that as

honorable men they should have sacredly guarded, and the more they

complained the more bitterly they were condemned by all right-thinking

men. Hence, after they had served his purpose he kicked them aside as

he would an old shoe, and thus he punished the traitors with whom he

had dealt. When the multitude of writers, statisticians, etc., who had

received private assurances of “something equally as good” in the new

deal, saw the fate of Mali and Packer, they had sense enough to keep

their mouths shut. A man who knew anything about the trotting families

and their lines of descent was not the kind of man that Mr. Brodhead

wanted to put in charge of registration. The only man who could suit

Mr. Brodhead was the man who would implicitly and without doubt follow

his instructions, right or wrong. When Mr. J. H. Steiner was appointed

Registrar it was wholly evident that this was the purpose of the

proprietor, for of all the men in my knowledge, in any way connected with

trotting horse interests, Mr. Steiner seems to be the most profoundly

ignorant of horse history and horse lineage, and till this day he does

not seem to have learned anything thereof.

At this point the public confidence received a shock from which it has

never recovered, and never will recover. From that day till the present

the estimate of value of the publications of the company, in the minds

of breeders, has been on the “down grade,” and coupled with this is the

ever-obtruding doubt as to whether these publications are managed for

the advantage of the general breeding public, or for the little clique

of which Woodburn is the center. The lack of knowledge displayed has

resulted in a profound disgust. This has been shown most conclusively in

the fate of the poor old _Monthly_. It started out under its new owners

to controvert breeding history and breeding law in which the public had

been thoroughly and conscientiously indoctrinated. The sham pretense

of using the title _Wallace’s Monthly_ instead of _Brodhead’s Monthly_

was “too thin” to deceive any one except the most ignorant. The labored

productions of the weaklings hired to overthrow the truth only tended to

deepen the disgust. The price was lowered as an inducement to support,

but nobody wanted the miserable thing about his house, and thus it died

without a tear except from the eyes of the rich fools who put their money

into it supposing it would live and prosper in the hands of ignorant and

incompetent men.

It is natural for the rich men who put their money so gleefully into this

publishing enterprise, at the instigation of Mr. Brodhead, to try to

get some of it back before the final smash, which is evidently not far

removed, and hence the ignorant and blundering emasculation of the Year

Book, in order to reduce its cost. “The Great Table,” as it was called

for years, embraces all others, and all others are merely subsidiary to

that. This table should be restored in its entirety, for it is worth the

whole of them and double as many more. With every other table thrown

out and this one restored, complete, the breeders would be content. The

Year Book—the great instructor of the past—I have just learned is no

longer published for the breeders or for the press, but for the tracks.

The operation is explained as follows: Every year the secretaries of the

National and the American Trotting Associations send out by express a

lot of blank books, blanks, etc., to each track in good standing and in

this outfit for the year is a copy of the Year Book, which is charged

at the long price. The tables of fastest records, I am told, are quite

carefully made in the offices of these associations themselves, and the

book is thus made a convenience for the tracks. Thus, by this system of

forced loans on the tracks, the Year Book is kept alive. This method of

financing the company will not last long.

A different method has been adopted in order to secure funds from

registration. Money for registration must come from the breeders

themselves directly, and there is no way of forcing them to put up

through the manipulation of intermediary officials. Hence the plan has

been tried of scaring them into it, but with what success I am not

informed. At the annual meeting in April, 1895, I think it was, a

committee was appointed, consisting of Messrs. Brodhead and Boyle, if I

remember, to consider and report to the next meeting amendments to the

standard advancing the requirements for registration, and everybody was

advised to hurry in their pedigrees or they might be excluded. At the

meeting in 1896 the committee did not report, but Mr. Brodhead reported

in a series of resolutions, in which the number of standard dams was

advanced, which suited Woodburn exactly, but there was no advance in

the time to be made, and the tin-cup record against time was carefully

protected. The resolutions were adopted unanimously, and went before the

breeding public as the new advanced standard that would be decided at the

next annual meeting. From time to time the breeders were duly informed

of the proposed advance and cautioned many times to get in while they

could. The annual meeting in April, 1897, came, and instead of a rush of

breeders interested one way or another in the proposed advance, the same

stereotyped half a dozen men were there who had been manipulating the

scare for two years, and not one of them, even Brodhead himself, voted

for the advance. This is no advance at all, in a practical sense, and

would accomplish nothing, and would do no good to anybody except Woodburn

or some other establishment that like her has been breeding trotters for

forty years. It was merely intended for a scare, and it failed under such

circumstances as to fully disclose the object in placing it before the

breeders. The scare is all out of this kind of humbug and deception, and

now what? When the standard was adopted on the basis of 2:30 that rate

of speed was sixteen seconds behind the fastest record then made. To-day

if the standard were placed at 2:20 it would be about sixteen seconds

slower than the fastest time now on record. But this real advance,

which is imperatively demanded by all the considerations of philosophy

and progress, will never be made so long as the standard is under the

control of Woodburn. The reason for this is made obvious by reference to

page 504, etc. Mr. Brodhead’s ambition has been fully gratified, he is

in full and absolute control of the registration of the country, he has

completely demonstrated his incompetency for such a position, and he has

the satisfaction of knowing, if it be a satisfaction, that no sensible

business man on the face of the globe would be willing to pay ten per

cent. of the cost for the property he now controls. And who will say

this is not a righteous retribution for the disreputable means employed,

first and last, to obtain this control?

My life-work in building up a breed of trotting horses and thereby adding

many millions to the value of the horse stock of the country had been

more effective than I had even hoped for. I knew that I had laid the

foundation on the bed-rock of truth, and I knew that the superstructure

had been honestly erected, but I did not know what a deep root my

teachings had taken in the minds of all intelligent and thinking men. In

transferring the property the chief source of my unhappiness was in the

thought that heaven and earth would be moved to destroy what I had done

and overthrow what I had taught. But I had builded wiser and stronger

than I knew, and when the “feather-weights” were hired to pull the house

down and tear up the very roots of the seed I had planted, the people

would not listen to them and nobody would read their vapid utterances.

And thus the effort ended in the death of the _Monthly_. The harvest

of thought was much nearer the reaping time when the transfer was made

than I had supposed, and since then it has been ripening and ripening,

and to-day if any man were heard advocating more running blood in the

trotter, he would with very great unanimity be pronounced either an

ignoramus or a fool, on that question at least.

But, much as I disliked to surrender my life-work to a man whose moral

fiber I had tested and found brittle, the transfer was really “a

blessing in disguise.” It gave me rest, it gave me health, and it gave

me leisure to prosecute the study of the horse of history in fields

hitherto untrodden. The years thus employed in digging after the very

roots of history in the libraries, at home and abroad, have glided by,

affording a continuous enjoyment in the discovery of many things that are

very old and yet entirely new to this generation. Very often, when the

work went slowly, I thought I could again hear the quiet, sympathetic

voice of a Pennsylvania Friend gently prompting me with the remark,

“Thee should remember that thee is no longer a young man.” And now that

my long-promised and pleasant undertaking is completed, it is my very

earnest wish that the thousand friends who have been waiting for it may

enjoy the pleasant surprises it will furnish them as much as I have

enjoyed their exhumation from the archives of long-buried centuries.

APPENDIX

HISTORY OF THE WALLACE PUBLICATIONS.

BY A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR.

Mr. Wallace’s early life and education—Removal to Iowa,

1845—Secretary Iowa State Board of Agriculture—Begins work,

1856, on “Wallace’s American Stud Book,” published 1867—Method

of gathering pedigrees—Trotting Supplement—Abandons Stud

Book, 1870, and devotes exclusive attention to trotting

literature—“American Trotting Register,” Vol. I., published in

1871—Vol. II. follows in 1874—The valuable essay on breeding

the forerunner of present ideas—Standard adopted 1879—Its

history—Battles for control of the “Register”—_Wallace’s

Monthly_ founded 1875—Its character, purposes, history,

writers, and artists—“Wallace’s Year Book” founded 1885—Great

popularity and value—Transfer of the Wallace publications, and

their degeneration.

The history of the series of works known as the Wallace publications,

even in the brief form here contemplated, involves in a large degree the

biography of Mr. Wallace. It is indeed more than the sketch of a long and

indefatigably industrious life-work. It involves as well, in the forty

years of creative labor, the development of a great productive industry,

and of a distinct branch of literature. Mr. Wallace’s labors in the

field of gathering and systematizing American horse history began at a

day when there was no breed of trotters, or no trotting literature. When

he laid aside active work there were both, well established and clearly

defined factors in the nation’s progress, and in all the years from the

commencement he was the central figure in the work of establishing a

breed of trotters, and incomparably the clearest and strongest force in

the direction and upbuilding of a trotting literature. That is the simple

truth of history, which the verdict of time will render it puerile to

deny.

JOHN H. WALLACE was born August 16, 1823, and reared on a farm in

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. As a boy he evinced no particular liking

for farm work, but had a great fondness for reading. He was educated

chiefly at the Frankfort Springs Academy, where he was prepared to

enter the junior class at college. There occurred a little incident at

this time that illustrates how seemingly slight a thing may change the

current of a life. The then member of Congress for that district, Mr.

Dickey, a scholarly man, advised Professor Nicholson, of the Academy,

that if he had a young man in his institution whom he could recommend,

he (Mr. Dickey) would appoint him a cadet to West Point. Mr. Wallace

was selected, provided his father’s consent was forthcoming. When Mr.

Wallace, Sr., was approached on the subject his reply was, “John, I

think there is some better employment in the world for you than studying

the most approved methods of killing men”—and that ended the West Point

incident. Young Mr. Wallace, about this time, became alarmed, however,

at his then persistently delicate health, and decided to seek an outdoor

life rather than one of study. In 1845 he married Miss Ellen Ewing (who

died in 1891), of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and settled on a farm at

Muscatine, Iowa. Iowa was then a new country, and Mr. Wallace did much

in the way of organizing the industrial and educational interests of the

State. There, as related below, he began work in the line in which he

became famous. With an invalid wife he returned to Allegheny in 1872; and

in 1875 in company with the late Benjamin Singerly, of Pittsburg, started

_Wallace’s Monthly_ at New York, which has been his home ever since. Mr.

Wallace in 1893 married Miss Ellen Wallace Veech, a niece of the first

Mrs. Wallace; and since his retirement from active business he has spent

his time, at home and abroad, chiefly in prosecuting investigations into

the horse history of the remote periods, the results of which are seen in

this, his crowning life-work.

We will endeavor here to sketch, in the abstract, the history of Mr.

Wallace’s publications to as great a degree as possible separately,

though they cannot be entirely separated. The “Trotting Register” was an

outgrowth of the “Stud Book,” and _Wallace’s Monthly_ and the “Year Book”

outgrowths of the “Register,” and both auxiliary thereto. The career

and usefulness of all were intertwined, yet each had its own peculiar

mission, and to that extent their histories will be kept distinct.

“WALLACE’S AMERICAN STUD BOOK.”

During the early “fifties” Mr. Wallace, then in the prime of early

manhood, was Secretary of the Iowa State Board of Agriculture, and as

such had much to do with the management of State fairs. He was thus

frequently called upon for information about the pedigrees of animals,

and the need of an authority on horse pedigrees was pointedly and

constantly forced upon his attention. If the pedigree of a cow was asked

for he had only to turn to the “American Herd Book” to find it, but when

the breeding of a horse was wanted there was no authority to which to

turn. Mr. Wallace had been dabbling more or less in such horse literature

as there was at that day, and in 1856 began collecting information with

the ultimate purpose of publishing a stud book of thoroughbred horses—for

the thoroughbred was then here, as in England, supreme as the only horse

of literature. He already possessed certain of the publications that

were the best horse authorities of the day—a file of the _Spirit of the

Times_, Skinner’s _American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine_, and

a number of volumes of the “English Stud Book,” and English _Sporting

Magazine_. Added to these, later, were other sources of information and

misinformation most notable in this latter class being the alleged “Stud

Book” published by Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, of North Carolina, in 1833—an

utterly unreliable work, but the only American stud book in existence

prior to Wallace’s. From these, and every other available source, Mr.

Wallace began to glean and systematically compile the pedigrees of

thoroughbred and so-called thoroughbred horses. Of these sources by far

the most valuable was Skinner’s periodical, begun in Baltimore in 1829.

Novice as he was at the time, Edgar’s work was regarded with more than

suspicion by Mr. Wallace, and, as a matter of caution as well as of

honesty, whenever he borrowed pedigrees from Edgar they were so credited.

Modern methods of investigating pedigrees were not dreamed of by our

compiler then. His principal aim seems to have been to get as large

a collection as possible, and whatever was found in print, whether

newspaper, book, or hand-bill, was taken for granted; and pedigrees

gathered from private sources were, like the others, submitted to

little scrutiny. Neither men’s motives nor their knowledge of what

they represented to know were questioned, and in this way, after years

of labor, a great mass of pedigrees was gathered, written in new form

and order, and the thoroughbred stallions numbered—which was the first

instance of numbering horses in registration. While compiling the

thoroughbred pedigrees, Mr. Wallace also incidentally seized upon such

information as he found about trotting pedigrees and records, and these

he arranged as an appendix to his work. Finally, in 1867, “Wallace’s

American Stud Book,” a great, handsome volume of 1,017 pages, bound

pretentiously in green and gold, was published in New York.

The trotting supplement embraced about 100 pages, and that the editor was

pretty well satisfied with it is shown by a sentence in the preface: “It

is believed that this compilation of trotting horses, embracing over 700

animals, is very nearly perfect, but it is not claimed to be entirely

so.” Of course, from the method of its compilation it was decidedly

imperfect, but it was the best and only compilation of trotting pedigrees

up to that time.

Meanwhile Mr. Wallace was pushing forward the compilation of the second

volume of the “Stud Book,” and in this traveled much, making personal

investigations. In 1870 this was completed, all the ground up to that

year having been gone over, but in the course of the work “a great light”

began to dawn upon the compiler. He found that he had been proceeding on

a wrong plan entirely. Experience in compiling and investigating taught

him that a pedigree may be printed in a newspaper, or even in a book, and

still not be true. He discovered that the sources from which he had drawn

were largely unreliable, that hundreds of pedigrees, through ignorance or

dishonesty, or both, were fabrications and frauds, especially in their

extensions in the maternal lines, and with the realization in full force

of this knowledge came the determination, even though the last page of

the manuscript for the second volume of the “Stud Book” was complete,

that it should never see the light.

At the same time Mr. Wallace had discovered that the trotting supplement

was the part of his “Stud Book” most used and appreciated. He saw that

the trotter was coming to be the horse of the American people, and that

there was a great and new field opening in which a literature had yet

to be formed. His experience with the “Stud Book” gave him the training

necessary for the work before him, and thus equipped, with little capital

outside of his newly acquired knowledge, and marvelous natural industry

and perseverance, with an unusual capacity for hard work, he turned in

1870 to the work before him—the literature of the trotter.

“WALLACE’S AMERICAN TROTTING REGISTER.”

He had as a nucleus the supplement to Volume I. of the “Stud Book,”

added to which was the work done and knowledge gained in compiling the

second volume, together with an increasing library and written data.

Thus in incidentally adding a few pages of trotting pedigrees to his

“Stud Book,” Mr. Wallace had builded better than he knew, but he even

now had little conception of the extent and richness of his new field

of exploration. He traveled all over the country, levying upon every

source of information for his “Trotting Register;” but, taught in the

dear school of experience, depended chiefly upon personal investigation,

taking monthly and yearly less and less for granted. He gradually became

more trained in meeting the natural human fondness for embellishing,

extending and completing pedigrees without reference to fact or evidence,

and the equally common predilection for stating as known facts those

things concerning pedigrees that were only of common report. This work

was excellent training for the more extended duties of the future, and

it gave Mr. Wallace an insight into methods of the olden time, and a

knowledge of men and horses that later made him, backed by uncompromising

honesty, absolute fearlessness, and a quite unusual disregard for

“policy,” a “terror to evil-doers” in the realm of manufacturing in whole

or in part fraudulent pedigrees.

Still the knowledge, the caution, the system that made it almost

impossible in the last years of Mr. Wallace’s administration to impose

a fraud upon the “Register” were of slow, gradual, but constant growth.

The work improved with every volume, with every year of experience, and

the evidence that would be accepted in the compilation of the early

volumes would not suffice later. Mr. Wallace had also the quality of just

as remorselessly overthrowing his own errors as those of others, and

thus a system of correction was continually going along, in which work

_Wallace’s Monthly_, founded in 1875, was a particularly effective agency.

The first volume of the “Trotting Register” was published in 1871,

and was a neat book of 504 pages. It contained, besides the pedigrees

gathered, tables of all trotting and pacing performances up to the close

of 1870, and this was the first time in which the records of the trotting

turf were collected and published. This part of the work entailed a

vast amount of research, including a thorough review of all sporting

papers, annuals and other sources where contemporaneous record of racing

would be liable to be made, but it was a very valuable feature; and,

besides serving as a basis for Mr. Wallace’s future compilations, was

unscrupulously seized upon by imitators who, from time to time, sought to

publish “record books.”

There was also an introduction to the volume entitled, “An Essay on

the True Origin of the American Trotter,” which showed a glimmering of

understanding of the truths of history and of breeding as now understood

by students well grounded in the subject. In the second volume, however,

was an essay that marks an epoch in the literature of breeding. Written

less than three years after the introduction to Volume I., it betrays

the fact that in the intervening years the author had risen suddenly

and broadened infinitely in his study of the science of breeding, and

his understanding of the application thereto of the facts of trotting

history. It advanced then entirely new views, and it was the first

article published, as far as the writer is aware, that rose to an

appreciation of the supremacy of biological laws in horse breeding,

and suggested such a thing as psychical heredity in the transmission

of habits of action. It originated the term “trotting instinct,” so

generally used thereafter, began the discussion of the problem of the

increasing number of fast trotters from pacing ancestors, and wound

up with ten sound propositions or conclusions based throughout on

the law that like begets like. It opened up new and endless lines of

investigation and thought, and at once elevated the discussion to a

scientific plane. This article, written by Mr. Wallace originally for

the _Spirit of the Times_, marked the advent of the school of thought on

breeding now almost universal.

The second volume of the “Register” was published in 1874, and the third

in 1879. The first three volumes of the “Register” contained about 10,000

pedigrees, and the statistical tables in the second and third volumes

were greatly improved and amplified over those in the first. Volume II.

gave a table of sires of 2:30 horses, with the number to the credit of

each sire, and the number of heats to the credit of each performer—a sort

of vague foreshadowing of the famous “Great Table of Trotters under their

Sires,” later to be conceived and developed by Mr. Wallace, and destined

to become the most valuable single trotting compilation yet designed, and

the one now universally used, adopted and imitated. This volume also gave

a table of 2:25 trotters to the close of 1873, arranged in the order of

their speed. The first table of trotters under their sires was published

in _Wallace’s Monthly_, covering the statistics to the end of 1877.

The third volume was much larger than its predecessors. The industry

of breeding trotting and pacing horses was, under the stimulus of the

“Register” and _Wallace’s Monthly_, and other agencies with which Mr.

Wallace was identified, and of a general era of prosperity then dawning,

advancing and extending now at rapid strides, and about this time

certain events of almost inestimable influence on the future of the

business transpired.

In the autumn of 1876 there was formed at New York the National

Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, an organization in which Mr.

Wallace’s influence predominated from its inception until a short time

before its dissolution, for lack of an excuse for existence. This

organization was broadly representative of the best elements in the

breeding business in its virile and useful days, and accepted a sort

of advisory and supervisory control over the “Trotting Register;” and

Volume III. and subsequent volumes were compiled under its authority.

Questions of disputed pedigrees and other such issues affecting breeding

and the record of pedigrees were decided by a Board of Censors appointed

by this association; and, aside from its usefulness in connection with

the “Trotting Register,” it contributed largely to the advancement and

encouragement of breeding by inaugurating colt stakes, and other stakes

designed more especially to attract the breeder than the professional

campaigner.

Before the third volume was through the press the need of some measure

for restricting registration became apparent to Mr. Wallace. The

economics of the “Register” demanded it, but beyond this the need

of systematizing and establishing a specific breed called for some

definition as to what rightfully belonged to that breed. Up to this time

the only rule was the indefinite provision that “anything well related

to trotting blood” might be acceptable as eligible by the compiler of

the “Register.” The problem that confronted those who took a broad

and comprehensive view was to educate public opinion up to that point

where the possibility of establishing a breed of trotters would be

appreciated. As early as April, 1878, _Wallace’s Monthly_ strongly urged

the necessity of a standard, and this was the first suggestion of one

that had been made. At the November meeting of the National Association

of Trotting Horse Breeders that year the Board of Censors in their report

presented a letter from Mr. Wallace advising the adoption of a standard,

a recommendation which the Board indorsed. Meanwhile the matter was

being agitated and discussed in _Wallace’s Monthly_, and affairs were

gradually shaping for action. In the March, 1879, number of the _Monthly_

a standard formulated by certain Kentucky breeders and forwarded by Major

H. C. McDowell was printed and commented upon. It was fair on its face,

but under discussion its weak points were made clear. For instance, its

fourth rule made standard “Any mare the dam of any mare or stallion

that has produced or sired a horse, mare, or gelding with a record of

2:30.” It was pointed out that under this rule the celebrated English

thoroughbred mare Queen Mary would become a standard trotter, for her

son, the race horse Bonnie Scotland, had sired the trotter Scotland.

As other provisions made the sisters and brothers of standard animals

standard, the defects of the Kentucky standard were made patent, and the

Breeders’ Association failed to approve it. Instead, at a meeting at the

Everett House, New York, November 19, 1879, the standard as printed on

pages 519-20, in the framing of which Mr. Wallace and General B. F. Tracy

did the active work, was unanimously adopted.

Under this standard the work of compiling Volume IV., which involved

bringing forward animals registered in preceding volumes, that met its

requirements, and numbering stallions, was carried on.

Meanwhile, some Kentucky gentlemen failed to acquiesce in the standard

decision, and had, or believed they had, other grievances against

the compiler of the “Register.” They proceeded to plan to control

the “Register.” but as in the last chapter of this work Mr. Wallace

gives full details of this and subsequent battles for the control of

registration, this history need not be here repeated.

In the meantime the breeding interest was enjoying remarkable prosperity,

and this was reflected upon and through the “Trotting Register” and

_Wallace’s Monthly_. In 1882 Volume IV. was published, Volume V. in 1886,

and Volume VI. in 1887, these containing about 6,000 pedigrees each.

Volume VII. appeared in 1888, Volume VIII. in 1890, and Volume IX., the

last published by Mr. Wallace, appeared in 1891.

While an adequate discussion of the standard is neither necessary or

possible in this article, it was so obviously part and parcel of the

“Trotting Register” that its history must be briefly outlined. The

standard formulated in 1879 served its purpose well, but it was but an

initial step, and it was fully recognized by Mr. Wallace at the time that

it would have to be revised and strengthened from time to time so as to

keep pace with the progress of the breeders. If the standard to-day is

held in slight esteem, or even in contempt, it is clearly because it has

been allowed to lag far behind the progress of the breed.

Evils grew out of the standard, even in its early years, simply through

a quite general misunderstanding of its purposes and its full meaning.

Standard rank became instantly so popular and so sought after that

thousands of breeders aimed solely to breed into the standard, without

much regard for other necessary qualifications. They seemed to forget

that it was merely a definition of the blood that was eligible to

the “Register,” and not, nor ever intended, to be taken as a general

measuring stick of value. Soon after its adoption an era of great

prosperity came in trotting affairs, with recklessly high prices for

standard animals. With an apparently insatiable market there came an

abnormal expansion of the industry. Thousands of men began breeding

without knowing anything, either practically or theoretically, about the

industry, except how to get into the standard. Hence the overproduction

of not only standard trotting horses, but all kinds of trotting horses

of inferior breeding and little excellence, and the subsequent break in

prices, for all of which the standard has been by inconsiderate persons

blamed.

Not long after its adoption Mr. Wallace saw these dangerous tendencies,

and in the _Monthly_ warned the breeders against them, and early began

agitating for a revision of the rules. But nothing could stem that

rising tide, and at first the opposition to any change in the rules was

vehement and general. The obviously easy gateway into the standard was

through rule seven, and this became the storm center of the discussion.

Mr. Wallace led in the call for the abolition of this rule, and did

it so persistently and well that gradually the leading breeders and

thinkers were won over, but the outcry against a change was so earnest

and so general among the smaller breeders that the National Association

hesitated long. Though a Committee on Revision was appointed as early as

December, 1885, it was not until December 14, 1887, that a revision was

finally effected, the standard being then adopted as printed on pages

520-21.

Every reader can observe, by comparison with the previous standard,

that there was a wise and conservative strengthening of the rules all

along the line. The next step contemplated by Mr. Wallace was not only

a further restricting revision on blood lines, but also an increase in

the speed rate required, an advance from 2:30 to 2:25, then ultimately

to 2:20, his purpose being that the standard should keep pace with the

progress of the breed. But before any of these steps were made the

“Register” passed into other hands—and other theories and practices have

prevailed, with the result that the standard is to-day held in derision

and the value of the “Register” has sunk to the vanishing point. But

before reaching this phase of our history some account of Mr. Wallace’s

other publications is in order.

“WALLACE’S MONTHLY.”

At a very early period in the history of the “Trotting Register”

Mr. Wallace perceived the necessity of there being some medium of

communication with the breeders which he could control. This was one of

several reasons, which need not here be detailed, the outcome of which

was the establishment of the publication which has played a greater part

than any other in developing the trotting literature of to-day, and in

leading American thought on the science of breeding—_Wallace’s Monthly_.

The first number came out in October, 1875, with Benjamin Singerly,

publisher, and John H. Wallace, editor. Mr. Singerly was an uncle of Hon.

William M. Singerly, of the Philadelphia _Record_, and had large printing

establishments in Harrisburg and Pittsburg, Pa. The first twelve numbers

of _Wallace’s Monthly_ were printed in Harrisburg, though published from

the outset from New York. Benjamin Singerly died in August, 1876, from

which time Mr. Wallace carried on the publication himself, from the

little office at 170 Fulton Street, overlooking St. Paul’s churchyard.

In accordance with the time-honored custom in journalism, the first

number of _Wallace’s Monthly_ contained a salutatory outlining its

purposes and its policy, and in almost every detail that policy was

honestly lived up to while Mr. Wallace controlled the magazine. The horse

was to be made the leading, but not the exclusive feature; full trotting

and running summaries with indexes were to be published; correspondence

was invited; and, as a cardinal principle of policy, gambling in any and

all forms was to be uncompromisingly fought against. This last detail

of policy Mr. Wallace rigidly adhered to always. He opposed public

betting in any form and under any pretense, and believed, and acted up

to the belief, that if racing could not be maintained without betting it

were better that grass should grow on the tracks. The first number of

the _Monthly_ contained a descriptive article by “Hark Comstock,” and

some selected matter, but was chiefly the editor’s work—mostly concise

historical matter, dealing with the early progenitors of the trotting

breed.

With each number the _Monthly_ strengthened, until soon it had gathered

around it the brightest writers in the country. Notwithstanding this,

however, the editorial department was always its strongest feature, and

it rapidly became a power in the land. Among the earliest contributors

were “Hark Comstock” (Peter C. Kellogg), always a fluent writer, and one

of the most versatile special pleaders on horse topics known to the turf

press; Charles J. Foster, the gifted “Privateer,” whose work, from a

literary standpoint, was oftentimes a model of finish; “Yah Amerikanski”

(Spencer Borden), and “S. T. H.” (S. T. Harris), both brilliant,

especially in controversy; H. T. Helm, Levi S. Gould, and many others

prominently known in turf literature a quarter of a century ago.

Spirited controversy early became a feature of the _Monthly_, and in

these passages-at-arms the editor was generally found taking a leading

hand. As a writer Mr. Wallace was always above all things forceful. He

fortified himself in theory and fact amply, and his style was so direct,

yet comprehensive, that every shot told, and even those who disagreed

with him were forced to read and admire these spirited discussions. Mr.

Wallace moreover early impressed the public with his uncompromising

honesty, and with the fact that, above all things, he had the courage of

his convictions. There was no dodging issues, no dallying or compromising

with humbug of any sort; a spade was called a spade, and no consideration

of “policy” brought a note of indirection into the _Monthly’s_ editorial

pages. The personality of the editor was ineffaceably stamped on his

magazine, and its influence became potent for good far beyond the

limitations of mere circulation.

The magazine became quickly the leader in thought on breeding subjects,

and hardly an advanced idea that to-day prevails in this field of

literature but can be found first suggested in the _Monthly_. The first

table of trotters under their sires was published in _Wallace’s Monthly_

for 1877; the standard was first suggested in its pages; the pacer as an

origin of trotting speed was first advanced in February and March, 1883;

it was the first to formulate and advocate and put to the test a scale of

points for judging horses; and above all it was the power that educated

breeders to an understanding of breeding on truly scientific principles,

and brought about an acceptance and appreciation of the laws of heredity

as applied to breeding the trotter. And, interspersed with this

continual seeking for the light and the right, there was an amount of

historical matter published that would make the compilation of a valuable

book on the American trotter possible from the _Monthly_ alone. It was,

moreover, continually exposing frauds of history and of pedigrees, and

was as potent in guarding as it was in discovering the truth. It was the

recognized enemy of fraud, of humbug, of false pretense everywhere, and

attacked them in high places as well as low, and that its editor incurred

the enmity of many whose designs attracted the _Monthly’s_ searchlight,

and were thwarted by it, is a fact known of all men.

This, in brief, was the character of the _Monthly_ from its foundation,

until it passed out of Mr. Wallace’s hands. To follow its detailed

history through the nearly sixteen years of Mr. Wallace’s editorship is

not the purpose of this article, but the rather to group the salient

factors that made it what it was, and that have secured for it an

enduring place in trotting history.

The _Monthly_ was from the first illustrated, and the progress in

horse art is well demonstrated by tracing through its pages. Its first

drawings were made by James C. Beard, who came of a race of artists, but

whose attempts at horse portraits were wretched caricatures, one and

all. Still, they seemed to be the best, or rather the least bad, then

obtainable. Mr. Wallace, however, was painfully cognizant of the lack of

truthful portraits of horses, and was not less delighted than surprised

when, one September day in 1878, a young man came into his office, and

exhibited drawings that were so obviously truthful portraitures that

they were a revelation in horse art. A rapid questioning as to whether

he had drawn them, and where he had hidden his light so long, developed

that the young genius was Herbert S. Kittredge, of Pennsylvania. He

was immediately engaged, and his work in the _Monthly_ was the first

reputable horse portraiture in American literature. This gifted,

self-educated genius died in May, 1881, long before his prime, and when

his powers were daily developing. He was the forerunner of Whitney,

Dickey, Morris, and others whose ability to faithfully portray horses is

acknowledged to-day. He had not the mechanical aids—notably the camera—or

processes which they so freely call into play, but in true artistic

ability to draw faithfully, it is doubtful whether this undeveloped

master was the inferior of any artist who has yet made horse portraiture

a specialty in any country.

From year to year the contributory staff of _Wallace’s Monthly_

increased, and always had in its membership a number of the leading

breeders and students. For many years Mr. Wallace did practically all the

editorial work himself, as in fact he did the registration work. But this

gradually outgrew him, and soon his office staff began to increase. First

he removed the office to 212 Broadway, not far from its first location.

Then in May, 1887, the final move was made to commodious offices in the

Stewart Building, at Broadway and Chambers Street, when the office staff

had grown until more than a dozen assistants were employed on all the

publications.

Among the earliest editorial assistants on the _Monthly_ was C. T.

Harris, later trotting editor of the _Spirit of the Times_, and still

more recently of _The Horse Review_, a faithful and conscientious worker.

Later Gurney O. Gue, a clever writer, and exceptionally well grounded in

facts of pedigree and record, occupied a desk with the _Monthly_, and is

now one of Mr. Dana’s “bright young men” on the _Sun_. In 1886 Leslie E.

Macleod became associate editor, and continued in that capacity until

1890. He subsequently became managing editor of _The Horseman_, and later

editorial writer of _The Horse Review_.

Of contributors, among the best known may be named, in addition to those

enumerated as identified with the _Monthly_ at the start, General B.

F. Tracy, Allen W. Thompson, Samuel Hough Terry, “Mark Field” (Jas. M.

Hiatt), “O. W. C.” (O. W. Cook), Thos. B. Armitage, “Mambrino” (H. D.

McKinney), Otto Holstein, “Bill Arp,” “Aurelius” (Rev. T. A. Hendrick),

A. B. Allen, “Fidelis,” Harvey W. Peck, Benjamin W. Hunt, “Roland”

(Leslie E. Macleod), Major Campbell Brown, F. G. Smith, Judge M. W.

Oliver, Prof. Chas. T. Luthy, Colonel F. G. Buford, John P. Ray, “Vision”

(W. H. Marrett), H. C. Goodspeed, and others.

The last number of _Wallace’s Monthly_ issued under Mr. Wallace’s

editorship was published in July, 1891. It then passed to the American

Trotting Register Company, at Chicago, and its degeneration was rapid,

and in a few months it died for lack of brains. Robbed of its virility

and of its purpose, without editorial direction, and aiming only to lead

a _harmless_ existence, and to say or do nothing to offend any one of a

score of directors and hundreds of stockholders, it soon began to lead a

_useless_ existence, and dropped out of the notice of thinking men. It

became the antithesis of all that it had been, and its end was a pitiable

one for a publication with a history of sixteen years of fearless,

honest, able direction.

“WALLACE’S YEAR BOOK.”

Early in the history of the _Monthly_ Mr. Wallace decided to drop

running summaries, and give exclusive attention to trotting and pacing

statistics. These grew so rapidly that they soon became burdensome,

and an outlet became inevitable. Furthermore the adoption of the

standard, depending as it did on records of performances, necessitated

for its application a bureau of statistics, and these considerations

and others—not the least of which was the recognition of “a long-felt

want”—prompted Mr. Wallace to start “Wallace’s Year Book.” The first

volume of this valuable annual was published in May, 1886, covering the

performances for 1885, and contained, besides summaries of all races in

which a heat was trotted in 2:50 or less, a 2:30 list for the year, and

the Great Table of Trotters under their sires. The book contained 273

pages, was bound in flexible cloth, and sold at $1.

An improvement of the greatest value and importance was made in the Great

Table in the first volume of the “Year Book.” This was the addition after

the list of performers under each sire of the names of his sons that

had sired performers, with the number to the credit of each, and of the

performers out of his daughters. It furnished at a glance what a horse

had done, not only of himself, but through his sons and daughters, and

the Great Table thus improved became at once the gauge of trotting blood

by which breeders everywhere estimated the comparative values of the

different families and different sires. It was the most clear, condensed,

yet comprehensive and perfect summing up of all the facts and experiences

of trotting history imaginable, and so apparent is this fact that nothing

original has ever been attempted to replace it, while all compilers,

without exception, imitate it. The Great Table of itself would have

carried any book to success.

The second volume of the “Year Book,” 330 pages, contained in addition to

the same class of matter as its predecessor, tables of sires and dams,

great brood mares, and fastest records. Still further improvements were

made in every year. Volume VI., published for 1890, was a handsomely

bound book of 642 pages, with summaries of all races in which heats were

trotted or paced in 2:40 or better, list of best records slower than

2:40, complete 2:30 lists with extended pedigrees, the Great Table with

the pedigrees of the sires extended, list of 2:20 trotters according to

records, list of 2:20 trotters under their sires, list of great brood

mares, sires of dams, mares the dams of producing sons or daughters,

tables of fastest records, champion trotters from 1845 to 1890, champions

at all ages from yearlings to five-year-olds, champion stallions, table

of 2:20 pacers, and of 2:30 pacers under sires. No such comprehensive and

valuable mass of statistics was ever arranged, and this volume was in

itself a perfect encyclopedia of trotting literature.

No eulogy of the “Year Book” is necessary, for every farmer’s boy knew

before it was three years old that it was indispensable to all horsemen.

It instantly bounded into a place of authority, and to thousands who

felt the “Register” out of reach it was at once “Stud Book” and “Racing

Calendar,” and none of Mr. Wallace’s creations performed a wider public

service, or attained a popularity so broadcast and sudden. The new work

was peculiarly fortunate in having back of it the authority of the

“Register,” and the prestige of a name that had already become world-wide

as rendering everything it bore authoritative—but even allowing for

these advantages the quick popular indorsement of the “Year Book” was an

eloquent testimony to the wisdom of its plan.

CONCLUSION.

The Wallace Trotting Register Company, with a capital of $100,000, was

organized in 1889, and October 1, of that year, all the publications

became the property of this company. The last chapter of this book

details the final transfer to the American Trotting Register Association

in 1891.

With the fortunes of the Wallace publications since that transfer it

may be, perhaps, questioned whether this sketch has anything to do, and

yet it would seem incomplete without the sequel. As already stated,

_Wallace’s Monthly_ degenerated to nothing and died. The “Year Book” has

been emasculated until it is but a shadow, incomplete and unsatisfactory,

of what it was, and is notoriously published at a loss. Its once great

tables are cut from their complete state to be merely the tables of

a single year, and where one complete “Year Book” was in the Wallace

_régime_ the only hand-book necessary, now the student must rummage

through half a dozen, more or less, to ascertain the simplest series of

facts. The standard has been mismanaged, revisions have been made and

rescinded, and no advance has been made in the speed qualifications,

though 2:20 trotters are as common to-day as 2:30 trotters were in 1891.

In consequence, registration has fallen away, and from being a good

purchase at $130,000 in 1891, the “Register” properties to-day are rated

so dubiously far below par as to make the expression of their value in

figures hardly possible. That a period of “hard times” came shortly after

the purchase of the “Register” is true—but the practical wrecking of the

Wallace publications cannot be accounted for solely on the theory of

business depression.

The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development · 第 42 / 44 章

As we have now considered a great triumph, with the causes that led up