“Wallace’s Year Book.”
Early in the history of the Monthly Mr. Wallace decided to drop running summaries, and give exclusive attention to trotting and pacing statistics. These grew so rapidly that they soon became burdensome, and an outlet became inevitable. Furthermore the adoption of the standard, depending as it did on records of performances, necessitated for its application a bureau of statistics, and these considerations and others—not the least of which was the recognition of “a long-felt want”—prompted Mr. Wallace to start “Wallace’s Year Book.” The first volume of this valuable annual was published in May, 1886, covering the performances for 1885, and contained, besides summaries of all races in which a heat was trotted in 2:50 or less, a 2:30 list for the year, and the Great Table of Trotters under their sires. The book contained 273 pages, was bound in flexible cloth, and sold at $1.
An improvement of the greatest value and importance was made in the Great Table in the first volume of the “Year Book.” This was the addition after the list of performers under each sire of the names of his sons that had sired performers, with the number to the credit of each, and of the performers out of his daughters. It furnished at a glance what a horse had done, not only of himself, but through his sons and daughters, and the Great Table thus improved became at once the gauge of trotting blood by which breeders everywhere estimated the comparative values of the different families and different sires. It was the most clear, condensed, yet comprehensive and perfect summing up of all the facts and experiences of trotting history imaginable, and so apparent is this fact that nothing original has ever been attempted to replace it, while all compilers, without exception, imitate it. The Great Table of itself would have carried any book to success.
The second volume of the “Year Book,” 330 pages, contained in addition to the same class of matter as its predecessor, tables of sires and dams, great brood mares, and fastest records. Still further improvements were made in every year. Volume VI., published for 1890, was a handsomely bound book of 642 pages, with summaries of all races in which heats were trotted or paced in 2:40 or better, list of best records slower than 2:40, complete 2:30 lists with extended pedigrees, the Great Table with the pedigrees of the sires extended, list of 2:20 trotters according to records, list of 2:20 trotters under their sires, list of great brood mares, sires of dams, mares the dams of producing sons or daughters, tables of fastest records, champion trotters from 1845 to 1890, champions at all ages from yearlings to five-year-olds, champion stallions, table of 2:20 pacers, and of 2:30 pacers under sires. No such comprehensive and valuable mass of statistics was ever arranged, and this volume was in itself a perfect encyclopedia of trotting literature.
No eulogy of the “Year Book” is necessary, for every farmer’s boy knew before it was three years old that it was indispensable to all horsemen. It instantly bounded into a place of authority, and to thousands who felt the “Register” out of reach it was at once “Stud Book” and “Racing Calendar,” and none of Mr. Wallace’s creations performed a wider public service, or attained a popularity so broadcast and sudden. The new work was peculiarly fortunate in having back of it the authority of the “Register,” and the prestige of a name that had already become world-wide as rendering everything it bore authoritative—but even allowing for these advantages the quick popular indorsement of the “Year Book” was an eloquent testimony to the wisdom of its plan.