Chapter XXXIII (2)

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.”

Some three or four years after the death and burial of the “Tom Titmouse” book and when its odoriferous memory had become less offensive, another effort was made to get control of the registration business, by the same parties in Kentucky. Mr. Brodhead did not appear prominently in this move, but worked through his echo, McDowell. The plan was to present a monster petition to the National Trotting Association, composed chiefly of track owners and track followers, to establish a trotting register. This petition purported to be from breeders, but in fact it embraced all the “swipes” and stable-boys about Lexington and Woodburn, I was told, and there were very few actual breeders in the list, and that few were men who were trying to breed trotters from runners. The movement was inspired and engineered in good degree from Woodburn, and Brodhead’s friends were at work in all directions securing the names of the “rag, tag and bobtail” whose names appeared on the petition, and a very great noise was raised about what was going to be done. Whether the association took any action on the petition, or what it was, I have no recollection, but whatever the disposition made of the petition, it never was heard of again. To the reader not familiar with the condition of things in Kentucky at that time, these persistent and renewed attempts to get control of the registration of trotting horses can hardly be comprehended. They did not grow out of ruffled tempers merely, as the result of friction, but out of strictly _business_ considerations. Kentucky had a great variety of brood mares from which they were trying to breed trotters, and practically every one of them was tricked out with more or less running blood as tail-pieces to their pedigrees, while others were paraded with pedigrees showing a dozen or more successive crosses by thoroughbred horses, and not one of them with a name, a history or a breeder. There were many purchasers flocking to Kentucky with more money than knowledge for the purpose of buying a few animals to serve as the nucleus for a breeding stud, and it was no uncommon thing for such purchasers to estimate the value of a pedigree by its length. When the purchaser got home with his stock, his next step was to send them to me for registration, and here came in the “business” consideration. The pedigree having reached the office of the “Register,” unless it were already known to me, every cross had to be established circumstantially and specifically before it could be accepted, and at the precise point where reasonable information failed the pedigree was cut off. The purchaser then goes back upon the seller, and there the trouble begins. He writes me an indignant letter. “You’re interfering with my business, sah; that pedigree is just as I got it from Colonel Jones, sah; and he’s a gentleman, sah.” It was very seldom, indeed, that a man of this type could be mollified by assuring him that all pedigrees were judged by the same rule and requirement, whether they came from Maine or California or Kentucky. He generally remained an enemy to the “Register” because “it interfered with his business.” From early in the century, three or four counties out of about one hundred and twenty in Kentucky bred running horses and grades and raced them, but no records were kept of their breeding and nobody knows with certainty to-day anything about the more remote crosses. For a time the union of two or three trotting horses upon the top of a line of nameless dams extending ten or fifteen generations was looked upon as the perfection of a trotting pedigree. This notion, foolish as it was, gave Kentucky a great advantage over the breeders of all other sections of the country, and every exposure, with the evidence, that in nine cases out of ten these lines of nameless dams were in whole or in part pure fictions, was cutting the ground from under their supposed superiority in the breeding of their trotters. Under the arguments and illustrations of the _Monthly_, supported by the incontrovertible statistics of the “Year Book,” the Kentucky cry for “more running blood in the trotter,” was silenced as the child of ignorance and prejudice, and instead of looking for pedigrees tracing back to Godolphin Arabian, everybody began to look for pedigrees that traced to individuals and families distinguished for producing trotters, no difference what blood they possessed. Here the public mind reached the truth, and in grasping it the boasted predominance of Kentucky was crushed, and producing trotting blood was again placed on an equality in all parts of the land. The loss of the pretensions of one section could not be of any specific pecuniary advantage to any other section, but the establishing of the truth was of inestimable advantage to all. The loss of mere “pretentions” would not, in ordinary affairs, be considered a very great loss, but in this instance it was looked upon as a grievous wrong, because it interfered with their “business.” Every slippery fellow who failed to pass a bogus pedigree complained that it interfered with his “business.” Every gang of cheats that got together and hired the use of a track for a few days for the purpose of giving their horses bogus records, when detected, cried out vigorously that this was interfering with their “business.” Besides these, there were scores, perhaps hundreds, of others, ready for some such game to cheat the public, but when they learned the ordeal was severe, their courage failed and they contented themselves by threatening the “Register” for interfering with their “business.” Here was an army of jockeys and cheats, and all they needed to make their numbers formidable was a leader with courage and money, and whose “business” was their own, to seize registration and thus recoup the losses they had sustained in their “business.”

In considering the conspiracy that resulted in the sale and transfer of the Wallace publications to the American Trotting Register Association, which means simply Lucas Brodhead, there are some antecedent conditions connected with these publications that need a brief explanation. The first volume of “Wallace’s American Trotting Register” was published in this city in 1871 and the second in 1874. An office was opened in this city in 1875 and the first number of _Wallace’s Monthly_ was issued in October of that year. The National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders was organized December 20, 1876. The attendance was large and many of the States were represented by men of influence and standing. Mr. Charles Backman was elected president, and L. D. Packer secretary. From the favor with which the idea of a national organization was received and from the character of the men participating in it, I voluntarily and without judicial advice placed in the association the authority to appoint annually a Board of Censors to examine and decide all questions relating to disputed pedigrees sent for registration. The plan worked smoothly and satisfactorily for several years, in some of which there was not a single case to be examined. My publications were soon past the critical point, and they seemed to grow from their inherent strength, and not from pushing or advertising. The Breeders’ Association seemed to take the opposite chute, and after three or four years it became merely a name. At first there was trouble in finding a man to take the presidency, but at last a rich dry goods merchant was found who was willing to take the presidency, and add five hundred dollars a year to some stake for the honor conferred; and the secretary, L. D. Packer, was the mere satellite of the president, and was willing to give two weeks’ work every year for the privilege of drawing a thousand dollars a year from the treasury. The annual meetings became a mere formality, with an attendance of three or four and the two officers, who seemed to re-elect each other year after year, until the association was finally buried somewhere out in Michigan, I think, and the money that had accumulated in the treasury was, on his petition, donated to the secretary in consideration of his valuable services for so many years in carrying the association from the cradle to the tomb.

Owing to my relations to the Breeders’ Association, I felt that I was in honor bound to maintain its good name in the minds of the people, while every publication in the whole country was laughing at it, and that this was my duty as well as my interest until the time came for a final separation from it. True, when I made these efforts to uphold it I had to put my tongue in my cheek, for I knew that its management, like “the Old Man of the Sea,” was riding it to death. As my business continued to grow and prosper, I began to consider the propriety of forming a joint stock company of breeders, to own and control the property absolutely when I was ready to retire. Greatly to my surprise this proposition gave offense to the two gentlemen who managed the association, for I had not alluded to that in any possible manner. When explained to me it became perfectly plain that the offense was in the fact that making a legal corporation to own and control the property would leave no “position” for the president, no salary for the secretary and no further need for the N. A. of T. H. B.

The Wallace Trotting Register Company, in due time, was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, and commenced business October 1, 1889. The publications of the company were the “Register,” the _Monthly_ and the “Year Book.” The capital stock of the company was fixed at one hundred thousand dollars, and as work came pouring in upon us more rapidly than we could handle it, labor became a burden and I had no time to distribute this stock among the breeders of every State, as I intended. This was the condition of things in the office in the following spring when, to my horror, I discovered I had been robbed of something over fifty-four thousand dollars and the thief escaped to Cuba. The blow was a stunner, and messages of sympathy came pouring in from all quarters, with many tenders of pecuniary assistance all of which were thankfully acknowledged, but all tenders of assistance were declined.

The capitalization at one hundred thousand dollars, and the robbery of fifty-four thousand dollars, and the company still not crushed, gave Mr. Brodhead a new view of the possibilities of the future, and inspired him with a new hope that he might yet reach the ambition of his life and gain control of the registration of all the trotting pedigrees of the country. Without much violence to the processes of Brodhead’s mind we can imagine the way in which he reasoned out the problem. “This has become a valuable property and is bound to be still more valuable,” he doubtless reasoned, “and it is possible it can be bought, but if bought it must be done before that stock is scattered among the breeders of the different States. There are Russell Allen and Malcolm Forbes and a whole lot of rich fellows just coming into the trotting horse business and I can show them that this property would be a good investment. With the money in one hand and the bluff of starting an opposition Register in the other, it is possible the property might be got for something like its value.” He next probably reasoned: “The first thing to consider here, is how to make that bluff sufficiently imposing and effective, in an authoritative way; and shall it be a mass meeting or a delegate meeting, and where shall it be held? I have seen Packer and he evidently wants to know what there is in it for him and Mali, in case they agree to call a National convention. They want to perpetuate their offices in their present so-called National Association. If it should be a mass convention, and held at Chicago, I could send up a few carloads of farmers’ sons from around here and every one of them would swear he was a breeder. If it should be a delegate convention from State Breeders’ Associations, there are several States that have no such associations, but I could get a few friends to organize for the purpose of sending delegates. The horse papers would be a unit on our side, for they have been ‘set on’ so often and so hard that they would like to see the old bear superseded. Beside this, every one of those papers has at least the one man who is competent to succeed Wallace, and every editor who has been in the business six months thinks he is fully qualified for that place. But the real roar of the shouting would come from the angry men whom Wallace has disappointed in refusing to accept their pedigrees or their performances because they were irregular. These men are very numerous and we must have as many of them present as possible. I think this plan will work,” he doubtless reasoned with himself, “if we can only keep Wallace in the dark till we get things fixed, and to throw him off his guard I will send him three or four pedigrees to register.”

Thus the plan of the conspiracy, with all the elements to be employed, were evidently matured in Mr. Brodhead’s mind. There were two points about which he was specially solicitous. The first was that I should be kept wholly in the dark as to his movements and purposes, and the second was some apparently official authority for calling a convention at Chicago that would be of a nominally “national” character. On invitation Secretary Packer visited Woodburn, and for a promised consideration it was all arranged that the President and Secretary of the N. A. of T. H. B. would call a convention. With the initial step thus safely provided for, Mr. Brodhead was everywhere, east and west, north and south, beating up recruits. In a short time, evidently by preconcerted arrangement, there was an unusual number of horsemen in town, some of them very rich men, while the greater number were blowers of the Dr. Day type with a grievance. The horsemen were hustled together by Secretary Packer, in what was called an impromptu meeting, and there President Mali, after some apparent hesitation, fulfilled his part of the agreement and called the convention at Chicago, and thus Mr. Brodhead secured his share—and we will see how the other side fared further on.

When the convention assembled at Chicago it was indeed a motley mass. President Mali took his place as president, and called the convention to order, and Secretary Packer took his place as secretary. This, as I understand, was not by the choice of the convention, but by virtue of their positions in the N. A. of T. H. B. It was eventually determined that the meeting should be composed of delegates from State associations, and when the associations were called, several of them had never been heard of before and never have been heard of since. They were bogus associations, and were gotten up especially for the occasion. Some of the delegates bore names that never had been heard of in the office of the “Register,” and it may be inferred they never bred a standard horse. The names of others, again, were well known in the office from their efforts to get spurious and unknown crosses accepted. All these men were anxious for a new management. One man whom I had discharged from my office a few weeks before represented a New England State. He was guilty of a flagrant attempt at deception. He was a fawning sycophant, always laughing at his own supposed wit, and he was known in the office as “Uriah Heep.” The man who dominated the convention from beginning to end had not been appointed a delegate by his own association. The whole thing, as a convention, was about as hollow a sham as was ever enacted in Chicago. Next behind the gentlemen who by courtesy may be designated as delegates, sat the moneyed men who were anxiously looking for a good investment for some of their loose funds, and Brodhead had told them this property was paying twenty-five per cent. on a capitalization of one hundred thousand dollars, and he thought it could be made to pay more. Like many other fools, they thought it was a machine that when fired up in the morning would run itself. Next to the rich men sat a good sprinkling of farmers’ sons, some carloads of whom had been brought from Kentucky, and all ready to swear they were breeders. As Brodhead explained this incident to a gentleman who stated it to me: “If there was any attempt to pack the convention he was ready to do some packing himself, with these young men he had brought from Kentucky.”

On the outside circle there was a large number of young men and some older ones watching the proceedings with great intensity. They were restless, and some of them looked hungry, and every one of them was looking for a place if the purchase went through. One had a copy of the Bungtown _Bugle_ in his pocket containing a report of the racing at the last county fair, written by him, and he thought that was sufficient evidence that he was qualified to take charge of the _Monthly_. Another had made, with his own hands, as he asserted, a tabulated pedigree on a large scale and shaded the letters beautifully and artistically with pokeberry juice; and what evidence could be more satisfactory that he was qualified to take charge of the department of registration? Every one of them seemed to think that there would be a good place for him in the new deal, and hence his enthusiasm at every incident that seemed to point in that direction. Thus the little cormorants as well as the big cormorants were all anxious for the prey.

While the soreheads were wrangling over how best to get hold of my property, and what they would do with it when they got it, I had several hours in the privacy of my own apartments to look over all the conditions of the situation, and the conclusions I then reached I have never had reason to change. It, therefore, may be of interest to all to know just what I thought at that crucial period, and I will give these thoughts as contemporaneous with the event:

“This meeting is a miserable sham, but the action of Mali and Packer has given it a pseudo-type of regularity as a national convention of horsemen, and this idea of ‘regularity’ will carry weight with many who know nothing of the bottom facts.

“The members of the press will, substantially, be a unit against me, and ring all the changes on ‘the National convention’ at Chicago, and labor to make it appear as an uprising of the horsemen of the whole country against me.

“The meeting is packed by Brodhead with his own satellites whose expenses he has paid, and embraces a good many rogues who have failed in passing upon me dishonest pedigrees and spurious records. Besides these there are several men here, and very active, whose names have never been heard of before in the horse world.

“Taking these elements together, they are in numbers more formidable than dangerous, but when led by Brodhead, with what they consider a fair price in one hand and a club in the other, with the demand ‘take the price or we’ll take the property,’ the occasion becomes serious.

“The latter alternative means a battle that may last ten years. Ten years ago these same people employed a man who purloined my literary property and it was found in their possession. The evidence of the piracy was so clear that it never was denied.

“Have I time enough, am I strong enough, am I young enough to enter upon this long battle? Ten years ago I was robbed of my property, but I was then vigorous and strong; one year ago another thief robbed me of my money and it was a terrific and lasting strain upon my vitality.

“The days of my years number nearly threescore and ten, so there is no time to enter upon the uncertainties ‘of the law’s delays.’ From overwork and the anxieties growing out of family afflictions and the robbery, my health is shattered. It is time, therefore, that I should seek to rest rather than to struggle.

“And what about the work to which I have devoted the best years of a long life? Will it be attacked? Certainly it will be attacked for the reason that it does not suit Woodburn. Will it be overthrown? No, the laws of nature cannot be overthrown. The trotter can come only from the trotter and nobody but an ignoramus or a fool can doubt the truth of this declaration. The experiences of every year, of every track, and in every race confirm this central truth and will continue to do so as long as the world stands.”

From the above reasonings and conclusions, when the offer of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars was made, in a business form, it was accepted.

When the property was transferred it was on the individual and joint responsibility of some half a dozen rich men, and they were as gleeful and happy over their investment as though they had obtained a gold mine for a song. But, while these men were rejoicing over their acquisition, there were many others cursing the deception that had been practiced upon them by promising them places and perquisites and, in short, whatever they wanted in order to secure their adherence to the conspiracy. Of all this numerous class, Messrs. Mali and Packer had so little sense as to make the nature and terms of their agreement public, namely, that they were to be clothed with the power to annually appoint the Board of Censors for the new organization. Poor fools! they didn’t know Brodhead. For a consideration of place they had betrayed a trust to him that as honorable men they should have sacredly guarded, and the more they complained the more bitterly they were condemned by all right-thinking men. Hence, after they had served his purpose he kicked them aside as he would an old shoe, and thus he punished the traitors with whom he had dealt. When the multitude of writers, statisticians, etc., who had received private assurances of “something equally as good” in the new deal, saw the fate of Mali and Packer, they had sense enough to keep their mouths shut. A man who knew anything about the trotting families and their lines of descent was not the kind of man that Mr. Brodhead wanted to put in charge of registration. The only man who could suit Mr. Brodhead was the man who would implicitly and without doubt follow his instructions, right or wrong. When Mr. J. H. Steiner was appointed Registrar it was wholly evident that this was the purpose of the proprietor, for of all the men in my knowledge, in any way connected with trotting horse interests, Mr. Steiner seems to be the most profoundly ignorant of horse history and horse lineage, and till this day he does not seem to have learned anything thereof.

At this point the public confidence received a shock from which it has never recovered, and never will recover. From that day till the present the estimate of value of the publications of the company, in the minds of breeders, has been on the “down grade,” and coupled with this is the ever-obtruding doubt as to whether these publications are managed for the advantage of the general breeding public, or for the little clique of which Woodburn is the center. The lack of knowledge displayed has resulted in a profound disgust. This has been shown most conclusively in the fate of the poor old _Monthly_. It started out under its new owners to controvert breeding history and breeding law in which the public had been thoroughly and conscientiously indoctrinated. The sham pretense of using the title _Wallace’s Monthly_ instead of _Brodhead’s Monthly_ was “too thin” to deceive any one except the most ignorant. The labored productions of the weaklings hired to overthrow the truth only tended to deepen the disgust. The price was lowered as an inducement to support, but nobody wanted the miserable thing about his house, and thus it died without a tear except from the eyes of the rich fools who put their money into it supposing it would live and prosper in the hands of ignorant and incompetent men.

It is natural for the rich men who put their money so gleefully into this publishing enterprise, at the instigation of Mr. Brodhead, to try to get some of it back before the final smash, which is evidently not far removed, and hence the ignorant and blundering emasculation of the Year Book, in order to reduce its cost. “The Great Table,” as it was called for years, embraces all others, and all others are merely subsidiary to that. This table should be restored in its entirety, for it is worth the whole of them and double as many more. With every other table thrown out and this one restored, complete, the breeders would be content. The Year Book—the great instructor of the past—I have just learned is no longer published for the breeders or for the press, but for the tracks. The operation is explained as follows: Every year the secretaries of the National and the American Trotting Associations send out by express a lot of blank books, blanks, etc., to each track in good standing and in this outfit for the year is a copy of the Year Book, which is charged at the long price. The tables of fastest records, I am told, are quite carefully made in the offices of these associations themselves, and the book is thus made a convenience for the tracks. Thus, by this system of forced loans on the tracks, the Year Book is kept alive. This method of financing the company will not last long.

A different method has been adopted in order to secure funds from registration. Money for registration must come from the breeders themselves directly, and there is no way of forcing them to put up through the manipulation of intermediary officials. Hence the plan has been tried of scaring them into it, but with what success I am not informed. At the annual meeting in April, 1895, I think it was, a committee was appointed, consisting of Messrs. Brodhead and Boyle, if I remember, to consider and report to the next meeting amendments to the standard advancing the requirements for registration, and everybody was advised to hurry in their pedigrees or they might be excluded. At the meeting in 1896 the committee did not report, but Mr. Brodhead reported in a series of resolutions, in which the number of standard dams was advanced, which suited Woodburn exactly, but there was no advance in the time to be made, and the tin-cup record against time was carefully protected. The resolutions were adopted unanimously, and went before the breeding public as the new advanced standard that would be decided at the next annual meeting. From time to time the breeders were duly informed of the proposed advance and cautioned many times to get in while they could. The annual meeting in April, 1897, came, and instead of a rush of breeders interested one way or another in the proposed advance, the same stereotyped half a dozen men were there who had been manipulating the scare for two years, and not one of them, even Brodhead himself, voted for the advance. This is no advance at all, in a practical sense, and would accomplish nothing, and would do no good to anybody except Woodburn or some other establishment that like her has been breeding trotters for forty years. It was merely intended for a scare, and it failed under such circumstances as to fully disclose the object in placing it before the breeders. The scare is all out of this kind of humbug and deception, and now what? When the standard was adopted on the basis of 2:30 that rate of speed was sixteen seconds behind the fastest record then made. To-day if the standard were placed at 2:20 it would be about sixteen seconds slower than the fastest time now on record. But this real advance, which is imperatively demanded by all the considerations of philosophy and progress, will never be made so long as the standard is under the control of Woodburn. The reason for this is made obvious by reference to page 504, etc. Mr. Brodhead’s ambition has been fully gratified, he is in full and absolute control of the registration of the country, he has completely demonstrated his incompetency for such a position, and he has the satisfaction of knowing, if it be a satisfaction, that no sensible business man on the face of the globe would be willing to pay ten per cent. of the cost for the property he now controls. And who will say this is not a righteous retribution for the disreputable means employed, first and last, to obtain this control?

My life-work in building up a breed of trotting horses and thereby adding many millions to the value of the horse stock of the country had been more effective than I had even hoped for. I knew that I had laid the foundation on the bed-rock of truth, and I knew that the superstructure had been honestly erected, but I did not know what a deep root my teachings had taken in the minds of all intelligent and thinking men. In transferring the property the chief source of my unhappiness was in the thought that heaven and earth would be moved to destroy what I had done and overthrow what I had taught. But I had builded wiser and stronger than I knew, and when the “feather-weights” were hired to pull the house down and tear up the very roots of the seed I had planted, the people would not listen to them and nobody would read their vapid utterances. And thus the effort ended in the death of the _Monthly_. The harvest of thought was much nearer the reaping time when the transfer was made than I had supposed, and since then it has been ripening and ripening, and to-day if any man were heard advocating more running blood in the trotter, he would with very great unanimity be pronounced either an ignoramus or a fool, on that question at least.

But, much as I disliked to surrender my life-work to a man whose moral fiber I had tested and found brittle, the transfer was really “a blessing in disguise.” It gave me rest, it gave me health, and it gave me leisure to prosecute the study of the horse of history in fields hitherto untrodden. The years thus employed in digging after the very roots of history in the libraries, at home and abroad, have glided by, affording a continuous enjoyment in the discovery of many things that are very old and yet entirely new to this generation. Very often, when the work went slowly, I thought I could again hear the quiet, sympathetic voice of a Pennsylvania Friend gently prompting me with the remark, “Thee should remember that thee is no longer a young man.” And now that my long-promised and pleasant undertaking is completed, it is my very earnest wish that the thousand friends who have been waiting for it may enjoy the pleasant surprises it will furnish them as much as I have enjoyed their exhumation from the archives of long-buried centuries.