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

by John Hankins Wallace

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.”