The achievements and development of the pacer in the past ten or fifteen
years, since the advent of the Hals, and the swift tribe of trotting-bred
pacers, has been so marked and so great that a special chapter is needed
for its explanation. The old “side-wheeler” has gone—the new, beautifully
gaited, true striding pacing race horse has taken his place. No other
feature of a race meeting brings out the crowd and the enthusiasm equal
to the free-for-all pace. Never before had such races been witnessed
as those first seen in the days of the Big Four—the queen of which was
Mattie Hunter 2:12½, the first great Hal mare to attract the attention
of the world. She was the star of the Big Four, the others being Blind
Tom, Lucy and Rowdy Boy. Later, some of the great free-for-allers were
Little Brown Jug, Brown Hal, Hal Pointer, Robert J, Direct, Joe Patchen,
John R Gentry and many others whose names will be readily remembered by
every horseman. The very mention of these names brings a thrill to the
heart as, toward the last of the century, Robert J, John R. Gentry and
Joe Patchen and Star Pointer began to bring the pacing record to the
two-minute mark. This was first done by Star Pointer, an inbred Hal,
crossed again and again in the thoroughbred blood which, undoubtedly,
gave to the Hals the staying power so characteristic of the family. And
so, looking back, the following article, written by Trotwood December 29,
1892, seems prophetic—that is, if there were such a thing as prophecy.
But, alas, there is not, for prophecy is merely another name for the
cause of the future as foreseen in the present’s effect. And though this
was written thirteen years ago, it is embodied into this history, as
fitting so well the present:
“There can no longer be any doubt that the pacer, as a future product on
the light harness race course, will be a still stronger factor than he
is to-day. Even if desired, it is now not possible to eliminate him from
the light harness breeding world. He has come to stay. It matters not
to us whether the honest, but sturdy, rascal can trace his ancestors to
Marsh’s five-toed orohippos, weighing about forty pounds, and which had
all he could do to keep out of the way of Darwin’s “missing link,” and
thus save himself from drudgery, even before the days of the Silurian
serpents, or whether he was developed in Trojan wars as carved on the
frieze of Grecian temples; the fact remains the same, that to-day he is
here by a large majority, and though snubbed by his more aristocratic
brother, he persistently refuses to stay behind in the procession, and
is never happier than when he can get up a good, rattling fight in a
five-heat race, or stick his common, but inquisitive, nose a few seconds
beyond the trotting record securely placarded on the front of old Father
Time. Flung into the world without prestige, friends or influence; his
coming regarded as the epitome of a breeder’s ill luck; condemned before
he was born, and damned before he could walk; a little too good to kill,
yet hardly good enough to be allowed a square meal once a week that he
might grow up like any other horse; toe-weighted and hobbled and banged
about, and forced to trot in spite of the laws of nature herself, yet the
game and honest little fellow, when relieved of his owner’s prejudices
and hobbles, has flown to the front with the ease of a swallow through
the air and the grace of a game fish in the lake, and now holds the first
record for speed and the chief place on the program in the eye of a grand
stand that paid its way to see an honest horse race.
“It is the old story of the rejected stone, and he now holds up with
surprising popularity his corner of the race horse structure. And yet
twenty years ago a pacer was scarcely allowed on a fashionable race
course; his pedigree, they said, took to the woods on the first cross;
he was regarded by the trotting world as a camel-backed, cat-hammed,
narrow-chested, curby-legged beast who paced because he couldn’t trot,
and was alive because nobody cared to buy powder enough to kill all of
them in the woods of Tennessee and Kentucky. He was allowed to exist on
the race course very much on the same idea that a slave is allowed to
breathe the same air and view the same heaven his master does. He began
his career because he was a good kind of an animal to have around to do
the race act at the pumpkin show and come in along with the fat woman and
the five-legged calf. His coming to the front was his own work; and to
use a classical phrase, he was purely the architect of his own fortune.
The American people are a long time finding out merit, but nothing helps
them to see it as quickly as the image of the American eagle stamped on
the back of a silver dollar—and this the pacer has shown them.
“Despite the oft-repeated theory of ‘the Canadian pacer,’ there is no
doubt that the pacer as now found in Kentucky, Tennessee and the West
came originally from the older Atlantic States, such as Virginia and
the Carolinas, and that he was brought there by our forefathers from
England. The fact that there are pacers in Canada merely proves that in
that Dominion also they have been brought from the mother country. To
trace their origin in England is both a tedious task and a most uncertain
one. Yet, from the best information obtainable, there appears to be but
little doubt that the pacer was originally a product of Spain, where
many years ago he was bred in the purple as a pleasure animal for the
nobility of Andalusia and other Spanish states. In fact, it is more
than probable that he was bred with more care than was bestowed by the
Spanish upon their now favorite animal—the ass. We know that the pacer
was safely domiciled in England as far back as the Norman Conquest, for
in ‘Ivanhoe,’ written by that most painstaking scholar and novelist, Sir
Walter Scott—a man who wrote truer to nature and with as much historic
accuracy as any novelist who has ever lived in England—we find many
allusions to the pacer under the style of the palfrey and the ambler.
“The following is an extract from Ivanhoe, Chapter II., the scene being
in the time of Richard I. In reading it we must remember that the name
jennet did not mean then as now the female of an ass, but it meant the
palfrey which the lay brother was riding. Says Sir Walter: ‘This worthy
churchman rode upon a well-fed, ambling mule, whose furniture was highly
decorated and whose bridle, according to the fashion of the day, was
ornamented with silver bells.... A lay brother, one of those who followed
in the train, had for his use on other occasions one of the most handsome
Spanish jennets ever bred in Andalusia, which merchants used at that time
to import, with great trouble and risk, for the use of persons of wealth
and distinction. The saddle and housings of this superb palfrey were
covered by a long boat cloth which reached nearly to the ground, and on
which were richly embroidered mitres, crosses and other ecclesiastical
emblems.’
“From other writings of Sir Walter Scott we find that the knight usually,
when not in battle, rode upon an ambler, and a page, riding also upon the
same kind of a horse, led the knight’s large war horse, with his armorial
trappings. The fact that in the above extract the mule also paced, goes
to show how strong must have been the pacing instinct in his dam, being
able to overcome entirely the gait of the ass. But to go further into
the history of the pacer in England would be foreign to the ends of this
brief article.
“We will only add that in spite of the fact that many English breeders
assert that not a pacer has been kept in that country for many years,
yet we believe that this is not true and that there are many of them
there to-day. But to return to our own pacer. It is quite easy to trace
his career as he came from the mother colonies, spreading out through
Kentucky, Tennessee and the States of the Northwest, under the name of
the ‘saddle horse,’ by which name he was held in the highest esteem and
filled an humble but most important position in the pioneer work of State
making. Before the roads were cut out through the forests, and when only
blazed Indian paths were the highways of the country, he was an absolute
necessity, and to-day there belongs to him the proud honor of having been
the first common carrier of American civilization. He was with Marion
and Sumter in their partisan warfare in the Carolinas; he saw, no doubt,
with patriotic emotion, the ignoble surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown;
he followed the intrepid Boone across the Alleghanies into Kentucky,
and came along with the immortal Jackson—the man of destiny—into the
‘basin of middle Tennessee.’ Pulling the plow for an honest living
in the rich cornfields during the week, he carried the women and the
children on his back to the primitive church on Sunday. As civilization
advanced he improved with it, being crossed with thoroughbred blood
in rich profusion, until to-day his lines of breeding are thoroughly
established, and by his speed, gameness and bottom he has advanced from
the humble position of the family man-of-all-work to the fleet-footed
king of the light-harness world—from the simple cabin in the clearing,
and the gentle caress of the backwoodman’s family, to the applause of the
grand stand.
“A scrub, indeed! He was here fighting for independence and an honest
living when the forefathers of the Wilkes and Almonts—since old imp.
Messenger is regarded as the fountain head—were courting the favor
of royalty in England ‘that thrift may follow fawning,’ or carrying
soup-drinking Britons on their jolting backs to the wharves of Liverpool,
to be shipped over here as food for Tennessee rifles at New Orleans.
Plebian, did you say? Why, he ought to be pensioned. He is older and more
respectable than the Dutch governors of New York and has a greater claim
to patriotism than half of the pensioners who never smelled the smoke of
battle.
“In Tennessee and Kentucky he has always been a great favorite, and since
the race-track act has been added to his many other accomplishments he is
destined to be yet more popular. But the student who attempts to trace
his development is lost in a maze of thoroughbred blood and ‘native
stock.’ That the ‘pacing-bred pacer’ of to-day is simply a mixture of
the old ambling pacer of Europe, whatever he was, and thoroughbred there
is no doubt in the world. And that this thorough blood has been as good,
if not better, than that in old Messenger himself, is also true. But the
astonishing thing about this amalgamation is the very small per cent of
pacing blood it required to leaven the thoroughbred loaf. A pacing sire
bred to a running mare and that offspring to another running mare, and so
on for several generations, will end with the last, as with the first, in
getting a ‘saddler.’
“We have always regarded this fact as the strongest evidence of the
intensity of the pacing instinct—an instinct that has such a pure and
strong fountain-head somewhere that it is able to overcome the running
instinct, though crossed and recrossed upon the pure running blood, is
abundant evidence of its own purity and prepotency. And the fact that
so many fast pacers are continually thrown from the trotting ranks, now
commonly called ‘trotting-bred pacers,’ is but another illustration
of the same fact. Verily, back somewhere in the past the pacer was a
thoroughbred at his way of going. His remote ancestor, whether in the
myths of fables, or in the woods of northern Germany, or the vine-clad
hills of Spain, or around the frozen lakes of Canada, was an Alexander, a
Julius Caesar and a Napoleon Bonaparte, all in one, in the greatness and
gameness of his gait. How else could the fact that every great family of
trotters is continually throwing pacers be explained by any other theory?
The fact that the trotting breeders have been careless in breeding to
mares of strong pacing instinct or breeding, we admit; but the fact
remains the same that the pacing blood in the pedigree of such trotters
does not appear to have acted as a brake in their way of going, but, on
the contrary, has given to them a smoothness of action and an elasticity
of stride which has carried them to the foremost rank at their gait; and
we are also led to believe that it often requires but a small portion of
pacing fluid to overcome several generations of the diagonal gait in the
veins of the trotting-bred horse.
“Take from the trotting ranks those out of mares or descendants of mares
by old Pilot, Jr., and other pacers, and the truth of this assertion
will be most plainly seen. In fact, every noted family of trotters, such
as the Wilkses and the Almonts—wherever there is any pacing blood, even
away back in the fourth and fifth generation—have to the credit of that
family some pacer who is faster at his way of going than the star trotter
of that family is at his. No Hambletonian trotter has ever attained the
speed that has been shown by Direct, unless it be Nancy Hanks, who has
some pacing blood in her own royal veins and is inclined to pace a bit
herself; nor has any Almont trotter ever equalled Flying Jib and hosts
of others we might mention. Among the Wilkses they are thicker than the
leaves of Valambrosa, until one is forced to believe that the Clay
blood, if such it was, in the pedigree of George Wilkes was about as good
as any the great horse had in his veins.
“These facts being true, it is evident that the pacer is not a scrub.
If he is a scrub, then we are forced to the conclusion that nothing
in all the breeding world may be likened to the intensity of his
cold-bloodedness. This scrub blood overcomes the hot running blood,
though continually diluted for successive generations; and it needs only
a little of it to knock out the hopes of the bluest blooded trotter
descended from Hambletonian lines. If he is a scrub, then he is the
veritable ‘original sire’ of the scrub horse business, which, like that
in man, is ever on top. But as this sin of the pacer helps him to the
wire first, and has given him the harness records of the world, we trust
no trotting moralist will attempt to entirely obliterate it. We don’t
need any crucifixions there! To our mind, we believe that if the curtain
of the past could ever be unrolled upon the pacers of old we would find
that centuries ago he was bred for no other way of going, and bred so
long and so purely and so consistently that in him has been planted an
instinct that will never be obliterated. To argue that a cold-blooded
horse can be thus preponent is to argue against the well-known laws of
heredity!
“In the second place, the pacer has undoubtedly come to stay. The
American people are nothing if not quick in realizing real merit and
honoring it when clearly proven. As they make no pretensions to the shams
of royalty, so are they not bound by the iron rules of court custom from
‘hustling’ to horse-racing. They do not care for so much trappy action;
nor does the matter of a banged tail cut as much of a figure in their
calculations as does the intense patriotism which lies within them for
their own almighty dollar. Passing over the generally admitted fact that
the pacer is naturally faster than the trotter, comes to his speed more
quickly, may be more evenly matched in a race, and is preserved longer by
reason of the smoothness of his gait, there is yet another cause why the
pacer is destined to become more popular.
“A great English commoner, whose ire had been aroused on one occasion by
a member of the House of Lords, in reply, in a speech of burning oratory,
spoke of the aforesaid gentleman as being in his titled position merely
by reason of the fact that he was ‘the accident of an accident.’ There is
no doubt that Hambletonian 10, the present head of the trotting family,
was even more of an accident than the English lord was. Bellfounder
mares of trotting propensities were rarer than imported Messengers, and
if the mating of Abdallah with this mare was not an accident, but the
plan of a thoughtful intellect looking to the future, the descendants of
the man who thought it out should have risen up and told it last month,
that their forefathers might have been honored along with Columbus at
the opening of the World’s Fair. Now the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ is quite
an accident himself. He is here by reason of the fact that many trotting
breeders in their wild vagaries and theories regarding the best way to
breed a trotter, ranging all the way, in the theory of breeding, from
thoroughblood to jackass, have accidentally honored a few thousand
pacing mares with a service to some of their Hambletonians. As a result
the ‘trotting-bred’ pacer is with us. As it is quite impossible for the
trotting turf to get rid of this rascal if they wished to, and as he has
managed to be quite a game and fast money-making machine himself, he has
clinched the popularity of the pacer as a pacer and has stuck a peg in
the map of popular favor that would be hard to be removed.
“And it is safe to say that by reason of the blood of Pilot, Jr., Clay,
Blue Bull, Tom Hal, Pocahontas and many others being so generally
distributed in the pedigrees of trotters, the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ will
continue to come from such trotting sources in the future in geometrical
proportion and to pace in the same ratio. What will be done with them?
Each one, with speed, is simply a money-making machine, and his owner
will not be long in putting him at the work which nature cut out for
him. To destroy him merely because he paces belongs to the dark ages when
the pacing gait was one which made no money, but now, since the pacing
purses have gotten to be so liberal and getting more so each year, it
is only common sense to suppose that owners of pacing horses will begin
to take more pains in their development and their breeding. This will
improve their speed. As it is now, we do not suppose there is a betting
horseman alive who would not give large odds that the pacer will be the
first two-minute horse.
“And in this connection another thing must be taken into consideration.
The pacer’s gait has itself been greatly improved in the last ten
years. He is no longer the rotary-motioned mud-flinger of old, whose
forefeet pawed the air in circles parallel with and above his ears, while
his hind feet described semicircles over the ground, but he is now a
smooth-gaited, straightforward, quick-actioned fellow, with plenty of
knee action in front and the stride of a bullfrog behind, and at his
highest speed it requires more than a glance for one to say whether
he is trotting or pacing. In other words, the pacer has come to be a
well-rounded, symmetrical and well-bred horse. His gait is the poetry of
harness motion, his courage is unquestioned and his staying qualities,
especially with the pacing-bred ones, of whom we are more familiar, are
equal to those of any horse that ever stretched his neck in the home
stretch. In view of these facts it doesn’t require even the grandson of a
prophet to predict he is destined to a still greater career on the light
harness race course.
“We can only judge the future by the past and the present, and with that
in view from a study of the 2:20 list, which a most exclusive list in the
light harness race course, we are startled with the enviable position the
despised side-wheeler holds in that charmed circle this season. There can
be no sham in the 2:20 list. A horse must be able to trot or pace that
enters it. Up to November 15 there were, according to the statistics at
my command, 189 new 2:20 performers; and by new performers we mean horses
that had no record as good as 2:30 trotting or 2:25 pacing before the
opening of this season. Of these 189 new 2:20 performers we find that
the pacers constitute 128 of the number, while the trotters are credited
with sixty-one. This table includes but seven pacers that have lowered
their records from the 2:30 list last year to the 2:20 list this year,
and we use it to get at the number of green horses to enter this list,
and _from_ it we are able _to form_ a more correct idea of the material
coming fresh from both ranks. It cuts off such stars as Kremlin, Stamboul
and Nancy Hanks among trotters, as well as Hal Pointer, Mascot, Guy,
Direct and Storm among pacers.
“But a still more exclusive list is the 2:15 class, and in order to
show your readers what has been accomplished by the new material from
the pacing ranks this year as compared with the same material from the
trotters, we publish that list in full, and in a spirit of generosity we
place the despised pacer on the left in the goat’s place. The fact that
it looks something like the last electoral college, with Cleveland on the
pacer’s side, need not lead any one to think we are at all partisan in
this matter.
“New pacers with records of 2:15 or better:
Flying Gib 2:05¾
Jay-Eye-See 2:06¼
W. Wood 2:07
Robert J. 2:09¾
San Pedro 2:10¾
Wisconsin King 2:11
Online 2 2:11
Walnut Boy 2:11½
Ella Brown 2:11¼
Cleveland S 2:11¾
Prima Donna 2:11¾
Colbert 2:12¼
Dandy O 2:12½
Charley Ford 2:12½
La Belle 2:12½
John R. Gentry 2:12¾
Gilileo Rex 2:12¾
Expert Prince 2:13¼
Fleetfoot 2:14
Henry O 2:14
Eclectic 2:14
To Order, 2 2:14
Rebus 2:14¼
Clint Cliff 2:14½
Joe Jett 2:14½
Chris Smith 2:14½
Lydia Wilkes 2:14½
Diabolo 2:14¾
Merry Chimes 2:14¾
Nuthurst 2:14¾
Bob 2:15
Alhambra 2:15
Blondine 2:15
Wardell 2:15
“New trotters with records of 2:15 or better:
Directum 2:11¼
Muta Wilkes 2:14¼
Azote 2:14½
Hulda 2:14¾
“Total number of pacers not having a record of 2:30 or better in 1891,
but now having a record of 2:15 or better, thirty-four; total number
of trotters, four. Finally, when we consider the fact that a very much
larger number of trotters are trained, or attempted to be trained, than
pacers, these figures become still more expressive of the great future
possibilities lying within the pacer’s reach at a light harness race
horse.”
What wonderful progress has been the pacer’s since the above was written!
If we were to attempt to publish the 2:15 list to-day, it would take the
next issue of the Monthly, there being now about five thousand, while the
2:10 list surpasses belief. Three of them have paced miles better than
two minutes, and such names as Star Pointer, Joe Patchen, John R. Gentry,
Direct, Robert J. and others have made the turf bright with glorious
deeds. Truly the pacer’s development surpasses even prophecy!
(To be continued.)
* * * * *
The Past is Yesterday’s present. Remember it as you build to-day.
Do Farmers Think?
By S. W. WARFIELD.
This pertinent question was suggested by a conversation between a young
farmer—a college graduate—and a young man who had just received his
diploma from one of the leading agricultural colleges of the country.
When questioned by the former as to what vocation he expected to follow,
the latter said: “I guess I’ll be a farmer, because farmers don’t have
to think.” Was the young man correct? After a day’s journey through the
country a very observant and thoughtful man will be forced to acknowledge
that a great many farmers do not seem to think. The amount of high-priced
machinery allowed to rust and ruin in the fields, the haphazard way in
which grain and hay is stacked, the utter indifference displayed in
plowing land and laying off rows, the disregard that is paid to the
washing away of the soil, soil that was thousands of years in forming,
the fertility of which depends upon the actions of the elements for
generations; a soil that, when once gone, is gone forever. We are forced
to admit that all farmers do not think. When we see farmers burning straw
stacks or filling gullies with manure, which will soon rot, float off and
carry all accumulated soil with it, we know in that particular they do
not think. For when a gully is stopped with manure, it is only a question
of time before it will have to be stopped again, and the next time the
task will be greater, for there will not be much adjoining soil with
which to stop it.
When we see a farmer delving with his whole household from daybreak till
dark, denying his children the privilege of a common school education,
trusting to luck and brawn to carry them through life, we have another
illustration of a farmer who does not think. For if he would but think,
he would realize that his sons, after he was dead and gone, would prove
easy victims to the oily tongued sharper and his hard-earned dollars
would go soon to swell the coffers of another man’s son.
A great many farmers do not think, and to them rightly belongs the
disrespectful epithets of “Reuben” and “Hay-seed.”
Admitting the foregoing, we are glad to know that there are a great many
farmers who keep abreast the times, are thoughtful and studious men.
With the vast area of fertile soil capable of producing vastly more of
any crop than is needed, which fact is almost every year proven, with
a herd of middlemen manipulating the crop reports and combining to put
and keep prices down; with this country a network of railroads, one
and all of them clamoring for freight to haul; with shrewd managers
to concoct the “rebate scheme” to counteract the “Interstate Commerce
Law” and “Railroad Commission,” put the farmer of any section in direct
competition with the whole country. When the above facts are considered,
it certainly behooves every farmer to “think” and study so that the
thinking will be on sure footing.
No matter what the past has been, the day of haphazard farming for
success and competency is gone. Farming to-day is a scientific problem,
and a problem that requires all the thought that can be bestowed upon
it. Not a thought for to-day or to-morrow, but long-headed thought that
studies the supply and demand of the year ahead before planting largely
of any one crop or launching into any new enterprise. He must study the
supply and price before he can tell whether to hold wheat or longer feed
his cattle; must know the needs and study the rotation to get the best
results from each crop; must think to be able to properly harvest and
care for each crop as it matures; must think how best to become his own
financier, and not be controlled by any bank or supply merchant. He must
think to live on what he makes and make all that he needs.
The life of a shrewd, thoughtful farmer is the most independent in the
world—a life that the followers of all trades and professions yearn
for, a life acquired only by thought. So, in answering the question, Do
farmers think? we’ll say, If they succeed, they do.