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 Register made enemies—The National Breeder’s Association 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 Register, and I think that every breeder of any standing in Kentucky 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 Register. This matter has been left wholly to the compiler, 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