“Wallace’s American Trotting Register.”
He had as a nucleus the supplement to Volume I. of the “Stud Book,” added to which was the work done and knowledge gained in compiling the second volume, together with an increasing library and written data. Thus in incidentally adding a few pages of trotting pedigrees to his “Stud Book,” Mr. Wallace had builded better than he knew, but he even now had little conception of the extent and richness of his new field of exploration. He traveled all over the country, levying upon every source of information for his “Trotting Register;” but, taught in the dear school of experience, depended chiefly upon personal investigation, taking monthly and yearly less and less for granted. He gradually became more trained in meeting the natural human fondness for embellishing, extending and completing pedigrees without reference to fact or evidence, and the equally common predilection for stating as known facts those things concerning pedigrees that were only of common report. This work was excellent training for the more extended duties of the future, and it gave Mr. Wallace an insight into methods of the olden time, and a knowledge of men and horses that later made him, backed by uncompromising honesty, absolute fearlessness, and a quite unusual disregard for “policy,” a “terror to evil-doers” in the realm of manufacturing in whole or in part fraudulent pedigrees.
Still the knowledge, the caution, the system that made it almost impossible in the last years of Mr. Wallace’s administration to impose a fraud upon the “Register” were of slow, gradual, but constant growth. The work improved with every volume, with every year of experience, and the evidence that would be accepted in the compilation of the early volumes would not suffice later. Mr. Wallace had also the quality of just as remorselessly overthrowing his own errors as those of others, and thus a system of correction was continually going along, in which work Wallace’s Monthly, founded in 1875, was a particularly effective agency.
The first volume of the “Trotting Register” was published in 1871, and was a neat book of 504 pages. It contained, besides the pedigrees gathered, tables of all trotting and pacing performances up to the close of 1870, and this was the first time in which the records of the trotting turf were collected and published. This part of the work entailed a vast amount of research, including a thorough review of all sporting papers, annuals and other sources where contemporaneous record of racing would be liable to be made, but it was a very valuable feature; and, besides serving as a basis for Mr. Wallace’s future compilations, was unscrupulously seized upon by imitators who, from time to time, sought to publish “record books.”
There was also an introduction to the volume entitled, “An Essay on the True Origin of the American Trotter,” which showed a glimmering of understanding of the truths of history and of breeding as now understood by students well grounded in the subject. In the second volume, however, was an essay that marks an epoch in the literature of breeding. Written less than three years after the introduction to Volume I., it betrays the fact that in the intervening years the author had risen suddenly and broadened infinitely in his study of the science of breeding, and his understanding of the application thereto of the facts of trotting history. It advanced then entirely new views, and it was the first article published, as far as the writer is aware, that rose to an appreciation of the supremacy of biological laws in horse breeding, and suggested such a thing as psychical heredity in the transmission of habits of action. It originated the term “trotting instinct,” so generally used thereafter, began the discussion of the problem of the increasing number of fast trotters from pacing ancestors, and wound up with ten sound propositions or conclusions based throughout on the law that like begets like. It opened up new and endless lines of investigation and thought, and at once elevated the discussion to a scientific plane. This article, written by Mr. Wallace originally for the Spirit of the Times, marked the advent of the school of thought on breeding now almost universal.
The second volume of the “Register” was published in 1874, and the third in 1879. The first three volumes of the “Register” contained about 10,000 pedigrees, and the statistical tables in the second and third volumes were greatly improved and amplified over those in the first. Volume II. gave a table of sires of 2:30 horses, with the number to the credit of each sire, and the number of heats to the credit of each performer—a sort of vague foreshadowing of the famous “Great Table of Trotters under their Sires,” later to be conceived and developed by Mr. Wallace, and destined to become the most valuable single trotting compilation yet designed, and the one now universally used, adopted and imitated. This volume also gave a table of 2:25 trotters to the close of 1873, arranged in the order of their speed. The first table of trotters under their sires was published in Wallace’s Monthly, covering the statistics to the end of 1877.
The third volume was much larger than its predecessors. The industry of breeding trotting and pacing horses was, under the stimulus of the “Register” and Wallace’s Monthly, and other agencies with which Mr. Wallace was identified, and of a general era of prosperity then dawning, advancing and extending now at rapid strides, and about this time certain events of almost inestimable influence on the future of the business transpired.
In the autumn of 1876 there was formed at New York the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, an organization in which Mr. Wallace’s influence predominated from its inception until a short time before its dissolution, for lack of an excuse for existence. This organization was broadly representative of the best elements in the breeding business in its virile and useful days, and accepted a sort of advisory and supervisory control over the “Trotting Register;” and Volume III. and subsequent volumes were compiled under its authority. Questions of disputed pedigrees and other such issues affecting breeding and the record of pedigrees were decided by a Board of Censors appointed by this association; and, aside from its usefulness in connection with the “Trotting Register,” it contributed largely to the advancement and encouragement of breeding by inaugurating colt stakes, and other stakes designed more especially to attract the breeder than the professional campaigner.
Before the third volume was through the press the need of some measure for restricting registration became apparent to Mr. Wallace. The economics of the “Register” demanded it, but beyond this the need of systematizing and establishing a specific breed called for some definition as to what rightfully belonged to that breed. Up to this time the only rule was the indefinite provision that “anything well related to trotting blood” might be acceptable as eligible by the compiler of the “Register.” The problem that confronted those who took a broad and comprehensive view was to educate public opinion up to that point where the possibility of establishing a breed of trotters would be appreciated. As early as April, 1878, Wallace’s Monthly strongly urged the necessity of a standard, and this was the first suggestion of one that had been made. At the November meeting of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders that year the Board of Censors in their report presented a letter from Mr. Wallace advising the adoption of a standard, a recommendation which the Board indorsed. Meanwhile the matter was being agitated and discussed in Wallace’s Monthly, and affairs were gradually shaping for action. In the March, 1879, number of the Monthly a standard formulated by certain Kentucky breeders and forwarded by Major H. C. McDowell was printed and commented upon. It was fair on its face, but under discussion its weak points were made clear. For instance, its fourth rule made standard “Any mare the dam of any mare or stallion that has produced or sired a horse, mare, or gelding with a record of 2:30.” It was pointed out that under this rule the celebrated English thoroughbred mare Queen Mary would become a standard trotter, for her son, the race horse Bonnie Scotland, had sired the trotter Scotland. As other provisions made the sisters and brothers of standard animals standard, the defects of the Kentucky standard were made patent, and the Breeders’ Association failed to approve it. Instead, at a meeting at the Everett House, New York, November 19, 1879, the standard as printed on pages 519-20, in the framing of which Mr. Wallace and General B. F. Tracy did the active work, was unanimously adopted.
Under this standard the work of compiling Volume IV., which involved bringing forward animals registered in preceding volumes, that met its requirements, and numbering stallions, was carried on.
Meanwhile, some Kentucky gentlemen failed to acquiesce in the standard decision, and had, or believed they had, other grievances against the compiler of the “Register.” They proceeded to plan to control the “Register.” but as in the last chapter of this work Mr. Wallace gives full details of this and subsequent battles for the control of registration, this history need not be here repeated.
In the meantime the breeding interest was enjoying remarkable prosperity, and this was reflected upon and through the “Trotting Register” and Wallace’s Monthly. In 1882 Volume IV. was published, Volume V. in 1886, and Volume VI. in 1887, these containing about 6,000 pedigrees each. Volume VII. appeared in 1888, Volume VIII. in 1890, and Volume IX., the last published by Mr. Wallace, appeared in 1891.
While an adequate discussion of the standard is neither necessary or possible in this article, it was so obviously part and parcel of the “Trotting Register” that its history must be briefly outlined. The standard formulated in 1879 served its purpose well, but it was but an initial step, and it was fully recognized by Mr. Wallace at the time that it would have to be revised and strengthened from time to time so as to keep pace with the progress of the breeders. If the standard to-day is held in slight esteem, or even in contempt, it is clearly because it has been allowed to lag far behind the progress of the breed.
Evils grew out of the standard, even in its early years, simply through a quite general misunderstanding of its purposes and its full meaning. Standard rank became instantly so popular and so sought after that thousands of breeders aimed solely to breed into the standard, without much regard for other necessary qualifications. They seemed to forget that it was merely a definition of the blood that was eligible to the “Register,” and not, nor ever intended, to be taken as a general measuring stick of value. Soon after its adoption an era of great prosperity came in trotting affairs, with recklessly high prices for standard animals. With an apparently insatiable market there came an abnormal expansion of the industry. Thousands of men began breeding without knowing anything, either practically or theoretically, about the industry, except how to get into the standard. Hence the overproduction of not only standard trotting horses, but all kinds of trotting horses of inferior breeding and little excellence, and the subsequent break in prices, for all of which the standard has been by inconsiderate persons blamed.
Not long after its adoption Mr. Wallace saw these dangerous tendencies, and in the Monthly warned the breeders against them, and early began agitating for a revision of the rules. But nothing could stem that rising tide, and at first the opposition to any change in the rules was vehement and general. The obviously easy gateway into the standard was through rule seven, and this became the storm center of the discussion. Mr. Wallace led in the call for the abolition of this rule, and did it so persistently and well that gradually the leading breeders and thinkers were won over, but the outcry against a change was so earnest and so general among the smaller breeders that the National Association hesitated long. Though a Committee on Revision was appointed as early as December, 1885, it was not until December 14, 1887, that a revision was finally effected, the standard being then adopted as printed on pages 520-21.
Every reader can observe, by comparison with the previous standard, that there was a wise and conservative strengthening of the rules all along the line. The next step contemplated by Mr. Wallace was not only a further restricting revision on blood lines, but also an increase in the speed rate required, an advance from 2:30 to 2:25, then ultimately to 2:20, his purpose being that the standard should keep pace with the progress of the breed. But before any of these steps were made the “Register” passed into other hands—and other theories and practices have prevailed, with the result that the standard is to-day held in derision and the value of the “Register” has sunk to the vanishing point. But before reaching this phase of our history some account of Mr. Wallace’s other publications is in order.