When the cereal crops of our country are light, or the prices fall below profitable production, the farmer has always a colt or two to sell, thus helping him through the year. In place of constantly importing horses from France, England, and Scotland, where they are raised mostly in paddocks, and paying out annually millions of dollars, it is our duty to be exporting.
As an American I am ashamed when I see paraded at our county or state fairs stallions and mares wearing the "blue ribbon" of superexcellence, with boastful exclamation by the owner of "a thoroughbred imported Percheron, or a thoroughbred imported French coacher, or a thoroughbred imported Scotch Clyde, or a thoroughbred imported English coacher, or a thoroughbred imported English Shire, or a thoroughbred imported English Cleveland Bay!"
The American farmer and his boys look on aghast at the majesty and beauty of these prize winners over our big-headed, crowbar-necked, limp-tailed, peeked-quartered horses called "standard bred!" What standard? "Time standard," as created by a man who is neither a horseman nor a breeder; but because of the lack of intelligent information and want of courage upon the part of a few, this man's ipse dixit has become law for the American breeders until such time as cultured intelligence shall cause them to rebel. It soon will.
It is indeed time for the government to step in and regulate our horse breeding. Of all the national industries there is none of more importance than that of horses. More so in America than in any other country, because our facilities are greater, and results can be greater under proper regulation. Lieut. Robertson has proved to be the right man in the right place, to open the door for glorious results to our nation. No one man or a small body of men can regulate this horse-breeding industry, but as in France, Russia, and England, the government must place its hand and voice.
We are indeed an infant country, but have grown to an age where parental restraint must be used now, if ever. We have millions of farmers in America, breeding annually millions of horses; and except we have another internal war, our horses will soon become a burden and a pest.
There are numbers of rich men throughout the country breeding fancy horses, for sport and speculation, but they only add to the increasing burden of useless animals, except for gambling purposes; for they are neither work horses, coach horses, nor saddle horses. Our farmers of the land are the breeders, as our recent war of the rebellion testified. The war of 1812, the Mexican war of 1847, and the war of 1861 each called for horses at a moment's notice, and our farmers supplied them, destroying foundation bloods for recuperation. From 1861 to 1863 the noble patriotism of our farmers caused them to vie with each other as to who should give the best and least money to help the government; and cannot our government now do something for the strength and sinew of the land, the farmers?
I was dealing in horses, more or less, from 1861 to 1863 (as I had been before and long after), and many was the magnificent horse I saw led out by the farmer for the government, at a minimum price, when, previous to 1861, $400, $500, and even $600 was refused for the same animals. Horses that would prove a headlight to any gentleman's coach in the city, and others that would trot off fourteen to sixteen miles an hour on the road as easy as they would eat their oats, went into the cavalry or artillery or to baggage trains. What were left for recuperation at the close of the war were mongrels from Canada or the Indian and wild lands of the West, and such other lazy brutes as our good farmers would not impose upon the government with or later were condemned by the army buyers. These were largely of the Abdallah type of horse, noted for coarseness, homeliness, also soft and lazy constitutions. No one disputes the brute homeliness of the Abdallah horse, and in this the old and trite saying of "Like begets like" is exemplified in descendants, with which our country is flooded. The speed element of which we boast was left in our mares of Arabian blood through Clay and Morgan, but was so limited in numbers as to be an apology for our present time standard in the breeding of fancy horses. Knowing that Abdallah blood produced no speed, and being largely ignorant as to the breeding of our mares, which were greatly scattered over the land after the war, some kind of a guess had to be made as to the possibility of the colts we were breeding, hence the time standard fallacy. But it has ruined enough men, and gone far enough.
Upon Lieutenant Robertson's proposition, a turn can be made, and a solid base for blood with breeding of all American horses can be demanded by the government for the country's good.
From the earliest history of man, as a people increased in wealth, they gave attention to mental culture with refinement; following which the horse was cultivated to a high blood standard with national pride. From the Egyptians, the Moors, the Romans, and Britons to France, Russia, and Prussia we look, finding the horse by each nation had been a national pride—each nation resorting to the same primitive blood from which to create its type, and that primitive was the Arabian. Scientists have theorized, men have written, and boys have imagined in print, as to some other than the Arabian from which to create a type of horse, and yet through all ages we find that Arabian has been the one stepping stone for each advanced nation upon which blood to build its national horse.
Scientists have reasoned and explored, trying to prove to the contrary, but what have they proved? The Arabian horse still remains the fact.