Our people, however, are not ready, and as long as the horse is used for business and pleasure never will be ready to dispense with the trotter; and even though some considerable number might deplore the presence and prominence of the pacer, every one of them would welcome him with great joy if they knew he was a necessary adjunct of the trotter. When we consider the problem of reducing the ratio of pacers and increasing the ratio of trotters in what we produce, there is so much that is old and still imperfectly known in what we incorrectly call our “earlier” period of trotting that we find nothing encouraging in the study. The origin of the principal trotters of the early part of this century, except the direct descendants of Messenger, was so sedulously concealed that it was entirely natural for so many men to conclude that the trotter was not bred, but made by the trainer. When Flora Temple was the queen nobody knew that her speed came from a pacer. Old Kentucky Hunter was a very fast pacer. When Pelham was king nobody knew he had been a pacer. When Highland Maid eclipsed all records nobody knew she was pacing bred and had been a pacer herself. When Vermont Black Hawk was the most popular sire of his day nobody knew that his dam was “Old Narragansett,” a pacer. When Ethan Allen stood at the head of all young trotters the old grey mare, his dam, was, and still remains, entirely unknown, but everybody believes that a large share of his speed came from that mare. Andrew Jackson, the head of the great Clay family, was out of a fast pacing mare. And thus we might extend the list indefinitely. But away back, more than a hundred years before the period of which we are here speaking, pacing and trotting races had become so numerous that they had to be suppressed by legislative enactment. More than two hundred years ago there were pacing races and trotting races in this country, and then as now it seems evident that the form of the action of the prospective colt, whether lateral or diagonal, was uncertain until it appeared. This condition of uncertainty about the secrets of the womb has existed for centuries, as it exists today; and if we were furnished a complete list of all the great trotters of the last two decades that were born pacers we would hardly be willing to believe our own senses. The following short list of such animals as have gone fast at both forms of the gait will serve to illustrate the oneness of the two forms:
This exhibit might be further extended, but the foregoing will suffice for the purpose intended. The only remark that seems needed by way of explanation is that all the animals named, except two (San Pedro and Wardwell), made their records first as trotters.
In surveying the whole situation there is but little encouragement in attempting to solve the problem of how to reduce the ratio of the pacers and at the same time avoid the reduction of the speed of the trotters. The central point in the problem is the development of speed; and so long as the pacer comes to his speed so much quicker and easier than the trotter, and so long as the best pacer is a little faster, as he has always been, than the best trotter, there is no probability that his speed will not be developed. All efforts at repression or exclusion of the pacer from contesting for prizes at public meetings would be futile and, in a sense, unjust. Moreover, this would not be in the province of the breeder and he must work out his plans within the boundaries of his own domain. The laws of heredity apply to either of the two forms of the trot—the lateral and the diagonal—just as certainly as they apply to the two forms united. This is the breeder’s opportunity, and if he grasps it he will make progress slowly but surely. In his breeding selections he must lay it down as an inviolable rule that all pacers, especially pacers with their speed developed, must be excluded, no difference how strongly they may be bred in the best trotting lines. If a horse produces some fillies that, like Maud S., Sunol and hundreds of others, are halfway, or more than halfway, inclined to pace, he must rigorously keep them at the trot and nothing but the trot, unless he sells them. He must study intelligently the pedigrees and produce of the generations away back, and make such selections as are most likely to promote his object and least likely to violate the rule laid down. Of all the varieties of the horse on the face of the globe the American trotter is the typical harness horse. Our civilization no longer requires the saddle to climb through mountain passes, and to follow seldom-trodden paths through the wilderness. For either business or pleasure we travel on wheels, and we want the bold, bounding trotter to propel us. The pacer is the early and only saddle horse in the world, but he is not a harness horse. Aside from the few that will be used as gambling machines, his value will recede while that of the trotter will always advance. In the hands of a man of intelligent and fixed purpose it is certainly possible to breed a family of trotters in which the appearance of a pacer from birth would be of rare occurrence, and the longer such careful selections and purposes are continued the more rare will be the recurrence of the lateral habit of action.
That the development of the speed of the parents was very important, if not necessary to the increased speed of the progeny, was a proposition that was long disputed. Generally, as on other questions, each man argued it from the standpoint of his own stable, but not a few men of clear minds took that side of the question without regard to the potency of the law of heredity. In the early stages of the discussion of this question it was a difficult one to handle effectively. At that time very few sires, and still a less proportion of dams, had ever been regularly developed as trotters, hence the field for generalization was narrow and many of the instances quoted were disputed. For a time the battle raged quite fiercely around Hambletonian, as he was the most prominent stallion of that period, and if a man was trying to build up another family he would rave till he got black in the face against “Bill Rysdyk’s bull.” It is but just to say that the man who led in all this froth and fury against Hambletonian was engaged in breeding what he called “Clay Arabs,” and after dodging his creditors for a number of years his last hoof was sold from him by the sheriff. On the other hand, Hambletonian made his master a rich man, and he left a large estate. Hambletonian was only partially developed, but sufficient to show he was a fast colt for his period. (For full particulars see his history in another chapter.) Abdallah was a very great sire of speed and he was not a developed trotter, but his dam, old Amazonia, was quite fully developed. She won many races and was the fastest trotter of her day. Whether her speed came from a fast pacing ancestry, or whether it came from the reputed “son of Messenger,” as stated when she was bought near Philadelphia, never can be determined. The “son of Messenger” story seemed to be straight, but her form was coarse and plain, and her legs were so hairy that many who knew her best condemned the story; hence, all we can say about her is simply that she was a fast developed trotter. Andrew Jackson had but little trotting inheritance from his sire, and his dam was a fast pacing mare of unknown breeding, but his speed was very fully developed as a trotter, and he became the progenitor of the Clay and the Long Island Black Hawk families, that became famous in trotting history. While this reasoning was true in experience and sound under the canons of science, it was not strong and convincing, for the one and only reason that the basis of the generalization was too narrow and lacked in a sufficient number of cases to convince the understanding of the skeptical. We have had to wait for the accumulation of the experiences of a number of years, and now we have the evidence that is so complete as to be really startling and which no man can gainsay. The following little table embraces all the breeding farms in this country that have produced three or more trotters with records of 2:15 or better, and here the rate of speed is certainly high enough and the foundation is certainly broad enough to furnish just and safe conclusions:
| Leland Stanford | 18 |
| Fashion Stud Farm | 13 |
| William Corbitt | 9 |
| Wm. H. Wilson | 8 |
| C. J. Hamlin | 7 |
| Glenview Farm | 6 |
| Timothy Anglin | 5 |
| Henry C. Jewett | 4 |
| Wm. C. France | 4 |
| Woodburn Farm | 4 |
| Robert G. Stoner | 4 |
| R. S. Veech | 3 |
| C. W. Williams | 3 |
| Highland Farm (Lee, Mass.) | 3 |
| Fairlawn Farm | 3 |
| E. W. Ayers | 3 |
| Charles Backman | 3 |
| George H. Ely | 3 |
| Mrs. S. L. Stout | 3 |
| Monroe Salisbury | 3 |
Quite a number of other breeders have produced one or two that have made records in 2:15 or better, but I think the above list embraces all that have bred three or more with trotting records of 2:15 or better. The table will be a surprise to everybody, but I doubt whether it will be a greater surprise to anybody than it is to myself. At the head of the list stands the late Senator Stanford’s great establishment with eighteen to its credit, but this is not a fair basis of comparison with any other establishment in the whole country, for he had about three hundred mares in the trotting department of his breeding stud—about six times as large as the average of the larger studs of the country. The average number of horses in training, the year round, was about eighty, exclusive of yearlings and the kindergarten. In attempting to institute a comparison, therefore, with the average breeders of the country, we might as well compare the daily receipts of John Wanamaker’s store with those of the little green-grocer on the corner. But at the head of this establishment stood the great Electioneer with his strong breeding and trotting speed well developed, and indeed, in many respects the greatest horse of his generation. He was the sire of eleven in the list, and the remainder were either by his sons or out of his daughters.
Mr. Henry N. Smith, of New York, a prominent Wall Street man, became greatly interested in trotting sport, and in 1868 he organized a trotting stable of his own, which contained some remarkable animals, as will be seen below. His stable was very successful, and this success naturally increased his attachment to the trotting interests. He then determined to establish a breeding farm, and about the year 1869 he purchased the famous old Fashion Course adjoining Trenton, New Jersey, embracing one hundred and forty-five acres of land and provided with an excellent mile track and much stabling that had been constructed years before for running horses. This property he very appropriately named the “Fashion Stud Farm,” and on it he placed the grandest assemblage of developed trotters, for breeding purposes only, that had ever been brought together in this or any other country. His stallions were Jay Gould, 2:20½, Tattler, 2:26, and Gen. Knox, 2:31½. This was Knox’s fastest record, but it was known he had trotted miles, in races, faster than this. The speed of all three horses was developed, and it is evident at a glance that there was only one first-class horse among them. But the great strength of the establishment was in the grand galaxy of mares, some of which I will enumerate, namely. Goldsmith Maid, 2:14, Lady Thorn, 2:18¼, Lucy, 2:18¼, Lady Maud, 2:18¼, Rosalind, 2:21¾, Belle Strickland, 2:26, Western Girl, 2:27, Idol, 2:27, Big Mary, 2:28½, Daisy Burns, 2:28, Music’s Dam (that had produced 2:21½ speed), besides others with slower records or known to have had their speed developed as fast road mares, making in all about thirty mares on the farm, and Mr. Smith claimed that every one of them had shown more or less speed as trotters.
Mr. Smith neither knew nor cared much about pedigrees, in a general sense, and when you came to talk to him about “nicks” and “trotting pitch” and all that kind of tomfoolery, his mind simply recurred to the old adage uttered generations ago: “Trot father, trot mother, trot colt.” His whole philosophy was wrapped up in the one central truth that the horse that could go out and trot fast, when bred on the mare that could go out and trot fast, would produce a colt that would go out and trot fast. This was sufficient for him or indeed for anybody else, for it contains and expresses the whole substance of the laws of heredity. Mr. Smith’s great mares acquired in their training and development new characters and new capacities which they never would have possessed had it not been for the care and skill expended in their training. Here we touch the very marrow of a question around which the scientists of today are warring. Darwin taught that such acquisitions were transmissible, of the truth of which I have no doubt, but a post-Darwinian school has arisen which controverts this position, and claims that it weakens and destroys the whole evolution theory of creation. But it matters not about the hypothesis of evolution concerning things we know, for it is simply an attempt to show how all things might have been created without a Creator. I have read a great deal about evolution and the transmissibility of acquired characters, but in all I have read I never have met with a lesson so broad and so strong as that furnished by Henry N. Smith’s great mares, proving that acquired characters are transmitted.
In instituting a comparison between the high-class products of the Palo Alto and the Fashion Stud Farms, it seems to be necessary to place the premier stallions of the two side and side. They were half-brothers on the side of the sire, but Electioneer had the greatest speed-producing dam of her generation. She was a fast natural trotter herself, and was out of a fast and fully developed trotter. Jay Gould was out of a good road mare by American Star, but nobody has ever said she had any speed, and she was out of a nondescript mare that we know nothing about. Gould’s dam never produced any other trotter with a reputable rate of speed, so far as I have been able to learn. Electioneer was trained and developed by Mr. Backman, but he never was in a race, and consequently he has no official record. After he was taken to Palo Alto he was given quite regular work, and it is beyond all doubt that when in stud condition he could show a quarter in a little better than a 2:20 gait. The difference in the rate of speed, therefore, as between the two horses was not very great, but whatever it was must go to the credit of Jay Gould. But the offspring of Electioneer had a very great advantage over those of Jay Gould in the methodical and skillful development of their speed. In his maternal inheritance as a trotter, as already indicated, Electioneer had a marked superiority, and on an equally high class of developed mares he would have far outstripped his rival. Now, with this attempt at a clean-cut description of the two horses, we are ready to consider the question in its arithmetical elements, and it will be found a plain question of “simple proportion” which anybody can solve in a minute, as follows: “If the Fashion Stud Farm from thirty mares produced thirteen trotters with public records of 2:15 or better, how many of equal capacity should the Palo Alto Farm have produced from three hundred mares?” The answer is one hundred and thirty, but the facts, up to the close of 1896, furnish us with the beggarly number of eighteen.