The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

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.]