Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1905

Chapter II: Part 2

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The resulting rock, after being crushed, is passed through screens which separate it in three sizes, from one and one-half inch up going for export, between that and one-fourth inch for domestic, and the dust and one-fourth inch pieces being ground up and sold for direct use or to small factories.

The Century Phosphate Co. has installed a system of dryers and do not wash the rock, but dry it thoroughly in mechanical dryers and then screen and separate it as above.

The reason the larger pieces are as a rule of higher grade than the smaller, is that the dirt and impurity is mostly on the surface of the rock and the greater the proportion of surface to volume the lower the grade in B. P. L. and the higher in iron and alumina.

Owners and operators of mines are gradually turning their attention to labor-saving devices for primary operations, and for systems of reclaiming the immense amount of waste that has heretofore gone on, both in the mining and the preparation of the rock.

One marked step forward in the business is the establishment of a small mixing plant for making complete fertilizers, and the commencing of operations on a large acid phosphate factory, with prospects for additional ones later on.

At least ten per cent of the present output is thrown away to prepare the high grade rock necessary, and this waste will make good 13 per cent acid phosphate, so that every year 50,000 tons of valuable material is absolutely thrown away. This is more phosphate rock than is annually used by any one fertilizer factory in the world, so far as known to the writer. This waste product could easily be transported to a local factory for an average cost of less than 50 cents per ton. Sulphuric acid can be bought laid down at Mt. Pleasant for $7 per ton. The mixing and other preparation will not exceed $2 per ton, so that using half acid and half rock the cost of the acid phosphate will not be more than $4.75 per ton, while it will probably sell for at least $8 per ton. From these figures we appear to be throwing into the waste pile at present material that should represent a profit of not less than $162,500 per annum. That this will be allowed to continue does not appear likely. The question might arise, however, “What will you do with the acid phosphate thus manufactured to keep from overcrowding or at least injuring the market?” I should answer this by calling attention to the immense area of land in Maury, Lawrence, Lewis and Hickman counties, known as “The Barrens,” which are gradually being denuded of their timber for cordwood that is shipped to Mt. Pleasant for use in drying the phosphate rock. There are at least 250,000 acres of this land, which is now readily purchasable at $3 per acre, with the cord wood on it. The wood alone will yield in value more than this price, thus leaving the land clear. Now, it has been demonstrated at Lawrenceburg, Summertown, Loretto, St. Joseph, Hohenwald and numerous other places that systematic and intelligent farming, even with the meager supply of fertilizer (almost entirely in the shape of bone meal) that has been used, will bring these lands up to a point where they will bring from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat or from twenty-five to thirty bushels of corn per acre. Such lands that have been so brought up readily sell for from $10 to $40 per acre, according to location.

From experiments it has been ascertained that the principal element of plant food lacking in these soils is phosphoric acid. The application of 275 pounds of acid phosphate per acre each year on these lands would consume right at our doors the entire output of the proposed acid factory, even if none were sold elsewhere. This appears chimerical to the casual observer, I must confess, but a careful investigation will demonstrate the soundness of the position taken.

A feature throwing some light on the development of the business at Mt. Pleasant is shown by the following table:

The lengths of track built in each year are as follows:

L. & N. R. R. Private Parties.

Year. Feet. Miles. Feet. Miles.

1896 200 .04
1897 1,106 .21 10,343 1.96
1898 4,403 .83 2,386 .45
1899 4,857 .92 30,965 5.86
1900 23,835 4.51 33,152 6.28
1901 250 .05 1,364 .26
1903 29,040 5.50
------ ---- ------- -----
Totals 34,651 6.56 107,250 20.31

In addition to these tracks, there are about six miles of narrow gauge tracks and about eight or nine sidings and spurs have been built in Lawrence County for loading cordwood for shipment to Mt. Pleasant.

In Hickman County, the N. C. & St. L. Ry. has built and acquired by purchase from private owners about seven miles of track, which it is now engaged in extending three miles farther up Swan and Blue Buck creeks, and some five or six miles of private tracks have been built.

The following table shows the production of phosphate rock in Tennessee, 1894-1904:

Quantity
Year. (Long tons). Value.

1894 19,188 $ 67,158
1895 38,515 82,160
1896 26,157 57,370
1897 128,723 193,115
1898 308,107 498,392
1899 462,561 1,272,022
1900 450,856 1,352,568
1901 394,139 1,186,033
1902 454,078 1,341,161
1903 445,510 1,434,660
1904 540,000 1,944,000
------- ---------
Total 3,267,834 $9,428,639

With more or less frequency, according to whether the news supply is sufficiently good to enable them to get “their per column,” correspondents fire into the several papers of the State some sensational head-liny article about the new “discovery of phosphate rock at Crossroadsville, 5 to 40 feet thick, analyzing from 60 to 90 per cent bone phosphate of lime.” For fear of being behindhand with the news all the papers copy it, and before the report can be corrected to its proper reality of from 6 to 9 per cent, it has been heralded to the four corners of the earth and its effect on future and pending sales can better be imagined than estimated.

If one will take the reports of the geological survey he will find that every possible deposit of phosphate rock in the State is absolutely and positively located. There will be no new discoveries. Of course there will be much new development, but the location of such development will have been discovered long before.

The principal localities in the State where operations are now in progress, are: Mt. Pleasant, Kleburn, Jameson and Century, in Maury County; Lower Swan Creek, Twomey and Totty’s Bend, in Hickman County; near Gallatin, in Sumner County; Wales Station, in Giles County, and near Nashville, in Davidson County.

The principal localities where developments will gradually take place as the demands of the business require are: Southport, Estes Bend, Bear Creek, Neeley’s Valley, Little Bigby, West Fork, *Baptist Branch and *Leiper’s Creek, in Maury County; Richland Creek, in Giles County; Station Camp Creek, in Sumner County; north and west of Franklin, in Williamson County; Brentwood and Bellevue, in Davidson County; Beech River, in Decatur County; Tom’s Creek, Buffalo River, *Hurricane Creek and Cane Creek, in Perry County; *Forty-eight Mile Creek, in Wayne County; *Upper Swan and *Indian Creek, in Lewis County; *Lower Swan, *Indian Creek, Ship’s Bend, Gray’s Bend, Persimmon, Haleys and *Leatherwood creeks, in Hickman County.

* Blue rock.

Anything exploited outside of these known and designated deposits is very apt to prove either a flash in the pan or will be found to be only worked by the newspaper correspondents at so much per column.

Of the present working localities the principal one is Mt. Pleasant, and while the property owners there are beginning to figure a little on how much they have left, still the prevailing impression that Mt. Pleasant is about through mining is an exceedingly mistaken one. With the present rate of output, the visible supply of the Mt. Pleasant field proper will last for seven years longer, without taking into consideration the Southport field, which is practically part of the Mt. Pleasant field. With the Southport field mining will last here at the present rate of output for eleven years. It is very easy to understand that as work progresses at Mt. Pleasant and the end comes more nearly in sight, some miners drop out by selling, some by working out their small deposits and these naturally go to the other fields above referred to. In none of the other fields is found the persistently uniform high grade brown rock of Mt. Pleasant except Southport, Century and Kleburn, in the two latter of which operations are now in progress, and in the former the extension of the Mt. Pleasant Southern Railway will soon cause development work there.

As these deposits afford practically the same grade of rock as Mt. Pleasant proper, they will be worked out simultaneously with it and will cater to the same market.

With their knowledge that the visible supply of this character of rock is comparatively limited, producers are gradually increasing their prices, and by reason of such increase they are slowly reducing their output and giving opportunity for the marketing of the lower grades in the other fields, notably the Swan Creek and Indian Creek deposits in Hickman County.

This, of course, means that the producers at Mt. Pleasant will make more money from their product, and that it will last a considerably longer time, so that it is safe to say that mining in force will be carried on at Mt. Pleasant and kindred localities for at least twenty years.

During the next decade, to supply the diminution of Mt. Pleasant’s output, will come the gradual development of the vast blue rock field of Maury, Hickman and Lewis counties, and the white rock of Perry and Decatur counties, which form the backbone of the phosphate industry in Tennessee, and whose millions of tons will cause these counties to be considered the phosphate reservoir of the world for the next seventy-five or one hundred years.

The change of base will be gradual and easy, and the trade will have ample opportunity and time to adjust its operations so as to utilize the lower grade blue rock as it becomes advisable and necessary to do so. Its many points of superiority for acidulation and for direct use without acidulation will largely make up for its lower grade, and as a mining proposition it more nearly approaches a technical field of operation.

The blue rock field proper covers a territory bounded approximately by a trapezoid having as its four corners Centreville, in Hickman County; Kinderhook and Mt. Joy, in Maury County, and Lewis Monument, in Lewis County. Traversing this territory are Duck River, Indian, Swan, Blue Buck and Cathey’s creeks, and their tributaries, and outcropping along these valleys and underlying the ridges between them are deposits of blue rock running in bone phosphate from 60 per cent to 78 per cent, with less than 3 per cent iron and alumina, that will aggregate in the neighborhood of 40,000,000 tons.

This field will soon be developed by the extension of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis branch up Swan Creek and the Louisville & Nashville branch down Swan Creek, with side lines and spurs leading off each, surveys for which have been made, and work on construction will soon be under way.

If, however, the Florence Northern Railroad should ever be built from Florence to Nashville it will run through the heart of this territory as well as the magnificent iron deposits of Wayne and Lewis.

With the above road and a road from Huntsville on the southeast to Milan on the northwest all of the phosphate territory would be fully developed, and this section of Maury, Hickman, Lewis, Perry, Giles, Davidson and Williamson counties would be the site of more fertilizer factories than will be found elsewhere in the world in the same space.

Contributary to such prospective development is the present opening up of pyrites deposits at Pyriton, near Talladega, Ala., with ore running two to four units higher than the Virginia ores, and while from four to six units lower than the best Spanish ores, it is much more free burning than the latter, and with its advantage in freight rates, will likely give manufacturers equally as good a product at a lower price.

The vein of pyrites is about one and one-half miles long and from four to fifteen feet thick and has been exploited to a depth of 430 feet, the ore improving in quality with the depth. It is reported by manufacturers who have used it to be the freest burning pyrites ore known, leaving only about ½ of 1 per cent of the sulphur in the cinder and containing no deleterious ingredients. The deposits are controlled by the Alabama Pyrites Company and the Southern Sulphur Ore Company, the latter owned by Messrs. Carpenter & Howard, of Columbia, their vein running from eight to fifteen feet thick. The railroad into this deposit has been built from the Louisville & Nashville, at Talladega, a distance of twenty miles, at a cost of nearly $400,000.

The consumption of fertilizers has increased 200 per cent in the United States in the past twelve years, and while the visible supply of phosphate rock is rapidly decreasing, the consumption of fertilizers is almost as rapidly increasing, and with this fact in view, the large fertilizer companies are and have been for several years gradually buying up phosphate lands to provide themselves for the future. This tendency has put a large amount of phosphate property in such strong hands that little or no danger is possible of the old scramble to sell, with its attendant low prices. At the same time, a considerable amount of land valuable for its phosphate deposits is still uncontrolled by manufacturers, so that a healthy competition in the business is still open.

The amount of fertilizer used in Middle Tennessee is almost a minus quantity, but this state of things cannot long exist. The horse worked continuously without feeding soon dies, and so it will be, nay already is, with much of our land in the “dimple of the universe.”

Farmers know that the crops of ten years ago cannot be raised to-day and are all waking up to the fact that something is needed. The large stock-raiser, who husbands his stable manure, can partially take care of the thin spots on his land. But the small farmer, the backbone of the country, whose acres do not afford him land sufficient to till and still have the rich pastures necessary to raise much stock, contents himself with simply wearing out his farm, selling it at a low price, generally with the mediation of the sheriff, and moving elsewhere for better or more probably for worse. To this class the use of fertilizer in Tennessee is practically unknown, but their successors of the next few decades will form, as is the case in other States, the bulk of the fertilizer consumers, and when this comes to pass Tennessee will indeed have come into her own.

The use of fertilizer in the cotton States has enabled the planters to continue year after year to raise the enormous crops of cotton and has also enabled them to diversify their crops by being able to produce the same yield of cotton on a less number of acres.

So fertilizers will enable the Middle Tennessee farmers to raise the same amount of feed on fewer acres, leaving more land to grow up to blue grass, and our present greatly depreciated live stock interests will come up by leaps and bounds until we will rival the famous blue grass section of Kentucky, if we do not far outstrip it.

When one stops to consider (1) that the wheat crop alone annually removes from the soil of the United States more phosphoric acid than is the equivalent of twice the amount of phosphate rock produced in the country; and (2) that over half of the amount mined is exported so that the fertilizers used in the United States return to the soil only one-fourth of the phosphoric acid that is taken away by the wheat crop alone, without considering the other crops, we can readily see that the consumption of fertilizer and phosphate rock not only will, but of right ought to, enormously increase, and that the industry is a permanent one that will last without cessation or danger of serious interruption as long as the world eats bread. That it has been and still is being developed almost entirely by outside capital is one of the features that seems to attend the development of practically all the industries of the State.

A complete analysis of a dry sample of average “brown rock,” which the writer had made several years ago, may be of interest, and is as follows:

Moisture .87
Combined water and organic matter 1.53
Sand and insoluble matter 2.76
Peroxide of iron 2.40
Alumina 1.99
Lime 49.07
Magnesia .24
Carbonic acid 1.08
Equals carbonate of lime, 2.41.
Fluorine 2.98
Sulphuric acid 1.03
Phosphoric acid 35.62
Equals bone phosphate of lime, 77.78.
-----
Total 99.57

The rock which is exported from Tennessee goes to England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Austria and Japan. The domestic rock is consumed by the various fertilizer factories all over that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, some of the principal points being Philadelphia, Pa.; Buffalo, N. Y.; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, Ill.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Lynchburg, Staunton, Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, S. C.; Charlotte and Winston, N. C.; Macon and Atlanta, Ga.; Meridian, Miss.; Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile, Ala.

In conclusion, a word might be appropriate on the subject of the direct use of raw ground phosphate rock as a fertilizer, without acidulation.

The experiment stations of the great States of Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey have made exhaustive experiments with this material, and their bulletins may be had by any farmer desiring them, showing that this material has given results that prove it to be more valuable for many soils than the acidulated phosphate. The great State of Tennessee, on the other hand, without any practical experiments to back it up, in the face of the opinions of some of its most eminent chemists and experts, continues on its statute book an absolute prohibition against the sale of this material within its borders.

Mr. Cyril Hopkins, of the Illinois Experiment Station, says that the discovery of the Tennessee phosphate deposits is the greatest thing that ever happened for the farmers of Illinois.

Each year many carloads of this material are shipped into other States and wherever it has been used its use is spreading, yet these people have to pay more in freight alone than it would cost the average Tennessee farmer at his farm.

Immense deposits of this rock exist in Tennessee high enough in grade to meet the requirements for direct use, and if this prohibition were removed, almost every county seat in the sixth and seventh congressional districts would have phosphate mills to supply the local trade, just as they have flour mills.

The next Legislature should certainly correct the errors of the past by allowing the Tennessee farmer to exercise the same amount of free agency, common sense judgment as his fellows of the other States.

The principal mines in Tennessee are shown in the table on the following page:

A History of the Hals

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

CHAPTER II.

THE PACER’S FAST DEVELOPMENT.

De Record’s Gwine Down.

De pat’idge is in de cohn-field, his courtin’ days am pas’,
He am waitin’ fur de hunter wid his gun and whiky flas’,
De squirl’s in de hickernut, de shell am droppin’ ’roun’,
But de pacer’s still de racer, and
de
record’s
gwine
down!

De coon am up de white-oak, an’ de price er powder’s riz,
He am layin’ up de coon-grease dat am good fur rheumatiz.
De ’possum’s way up yonder whar de wild grape’s turnin’ brown,
But de pacer holds de market, and
he
keeps
dat
record
down!

Oh, ebery thing am risin’, and’ hog-meat’s in de sky,
E’en de chickens got de panic an’ hev gone to roostin’ high!
De onliest thing dat’s fallin’—an it makes de trotter frown—
Am de pacin’ race-horse record, and
dat
keeps
on
gwine
down!

OLD WASH.

The achievements and development of the pacer in the past ten or fifteen years, since the advent of the Hals, and the swift tribe of trotting-bred pacers, has been so marked and so great that a special chapter is needed for its explanation. The old “side-wheeler” has gone—the new, beautifully gaited, true striding pacing race horse has taken his place. No other feature of a race meeting brings out the crowd and the enthusiasm equal to the free-for-all pace. Never before had such races been witnessed as those first seen in the days of the Big Four—the queen of which was Mattie Hunter 2:12½, the first great Hal mare to attract the attention of the world. She was the star of the Big Four, the others being Blind Tom, Lucy and Rowdy Boy. Later, some of the great free-for-allers were Little Brown Jug, Brown Hal, Hal Pointer, Robert J, Direct, Joe Patchen, John R Gentry and many others whose names will be readily remembered by every horseman. The very mention of these names brings a thrill to the heart as, toward the last of the century, Robert J, John R. Gentry and Joe Patchen and Star Pointer began to bring the pacing record to the two-minute mark. This was first done by Star Pointer, an inbred Hal, crossed again and again in the thoroughbred blood which, undoubtedly, gave to the Hals the staying power so characteristic of the family. And so, looking back, the following article, written by Trotwood December 29, 1892, seems prophetic—that is, if there were such a thing as prophecy. But, alas, there is not, for prophecy is merely another name for the cause of the future as foreseen in the present’s effect. And though this was written thirteen years ago, it is embodied into this history, as fitting so well the present:

“There can no longer be any doubt that the pacer, as a future product on the light harness race course, will be a still stronger factor than he is to-day. Even if desired, it is now not possible to eliminate him from the light harness breeding world. He has come to stay. It matters not to us whether the honest, but sturdy, rascal can trace his ancestors to Marsh’s five-toed orohippos, weighing about forty pounds, and which had all he could do to keep out of the way of Darwin’s “missing link,” and thus save himself from drudgery, even before the days of the Silurian serpents, or whether he was developed in Trojan wars as carved on the frieze of Grecian temples; the fact remains the same, that to-day he is here by a large majority, and though snubbed by his more aristocratic brother, he persistently refuses to stay behind in the procession, and is never happier than when he can get up a good, rattling fight in a five-heat race, or stick his common, but inquisitive, nose a few seconds beyond the trotting record securely placarded on the front of old Father Time. Flung into the world without prestige, friends or influence; his coming regarded as the epitome of a breeder’s ill luck; condemned before he was born, and damned before he could walk; a little too good to kill, yet hardly good enough to be allowed a square meal once a week that he might grow up like any other horse; toe-weighted and hobbled and banged about, and forced to trot in spite of the laws of nature herself, yet the game and honest little fellow, when relieved of his owner’s prejudices and hobbles, has flown to the front with the ease of a swallow through the air and the grace of a game fish in the lake, and now holds the first record for speed and the chief place on the program in the eye of a grand stand that paid its way to see an honest horse race.

“It is the old story of the rejected stone, and he now holds up with surprising popularity his corner of the race horse structure. And yet twenty years ago a pacer was scarcely allowed on a fashionable race course; his pedigree, they said, took to the woods on the first cross; he was regarded by the trotting world as a camel-backed, cat-hammed, narrow-chested, curby-legged beast who paced because he couldn’t trot, and was alive because nobody cared to buy powder enough to kill all of them in the woods of Tennessee and Kentucky. He was allowed to exist on the race course very much on the same idea that a slave is allowed to breathe the same air and view the same heaven his master does. He began his career because he was a good kind of an animal to have around to do the race act at the pumpkin show and come in along with the fat woman and the five-legged calf. His coming to the front was his own work; and to use a classical phrase, he was purely the architect of his own fortune. The American people are a long time finding out merit, but nothing helps them to see it as quickly as the image of the American eagle stamped on the back of a silver dollar—and this the pacer has shown them.

“Despite the oft-repeated theory of ‘the Canadian pacer,’ there is no doubt that the pacer as now found in Kentucky, Tennessee and the West came originally from the older Atlantic States, such as Virginia and the Carolinas, and that he was brought there by our forefathers from England. The fact that there are pacers in Canada merely proves that in that Dominion also they have been brought from the mother country. To trace their origin in England is both a tedious task and a most uncertain one. Yet, from the best information obtainable, there appears to be but little doubt that the pacer was originally a product of Spain, where many years ago he was bred in the purple as a pleasure animal for the nobility of Andalusia and other Spanish states. In fact, it is more than probable that he was bred with more care than was bestowed by the Spanish upon their now favorite animal—the ass. We know that the pacer was safely domiciled in England as far back as the Norman Conquest, for in ‘Ivanhoe,’ written by that most painstaking scholar and novelist, Sir Walter Scott—a man who wrote truer to nature and with as much historic accuracy as any novelist who has ever lived in England—we find many allusions to the pacer under the style of the palfrey and the ambler.

“The following is an extract from Ivanhoe, Chapter II., the scene being in the time of Richard I. In reading it we must remember that the name jennet did not mean then as now the female of an ass, but it meant the palfrey which the lay brother was riding. Says Sir Walter: ‘This worthy churchman rode upon a well-fed, ambling mule, whose furniture was highly decorated and whose bridle, according to the fashion of the day, was ornamented with silver bells.... A lay brother, one of those who followed in the train, had for his use on other occasions one of the most handsome Spanish jennets ever bred in Andalusia, which merchants used at that time to import, with great trouble and risk, for the use of persons of wealth and distinction. The saddle and housings of this superb palfrey were covered by a long boat cloth which reached nearly to the ground, and on which were richly embroidered mitres, crosses and other ecclesiastical emblems.’

“From other writings of Sir Walter Scott we find that the knight usually, when not in battle, rode upon an ambler, and a page, riding also upon the same kind of a horse, led the knight’s large war horse, with his armorial trappings. The fact that in the above extract the mule also paced, goes to show how strong must have been the pacing instinct in his dam, being able to overcome entirely the gait of the ass. But to go further into the history of the pacer in England would be foreign to the ends of this brief article.

“We will only add that in spite of the fact that many English breeders assert that not a pacer has been kept in that country for many years, yet we believe that this is not true and that there are many of them there to-day. But to return to our own pacer. It is quite easy to trace his career as he came from the mother colonies, spreading out through Kentucky, Tennessee and the States of the Northwest, under the name of the ‘saddle horse,’ by which name he was held in the highest esteem and filled an humble but most important position in the pioneer work of State making. Before the roads were cut out through the forests, and when only blazed Indian paths were the highways of the country, he was an absolute necessity, and to-day there belongs to him the proud honor of having been the first common carrier of American civilization. He was with Marion and Sumter in their partisan warfare in the Carolinas; he saw, no doubt, with patriotic emotion, the ignoble surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown; he followed the intrepid Boone across the Alleghanies into Kentucky, and came along with the immortal Jackson—the man of destiny—into the ‘basin of middle Tennessee.’ Pulling the plow for an honest living in the rich cornfields during the week, he carried the women and the children on his back to the primitive church on Sunday. As civilization advanced he improved with it, being crossed with thoroughbred blood in rich profusion, until to-day his lines of breeding are thoroughly established, and by his speed, gameness and bottom he has advanced from the humble position of the family man-of-all-work to the fleet-footed king of the light-harness world—from the simple cabin in the clearing, and the gentle caress of the backwoodman’s family, to the applause of the grand stand.

“A scrub, indeed! He was here fighting for independence and an honest living when the forefathers of the Wilkes and Almonts—since old imp. Messenger is regarded as the fountain head—were courting the favor of royalty in England ‘that thrift may follow fawning,’ or carrying soup-drinking Britons on their jolting backs to the wharves of Liverpool, to be shipped over here as food for Tennessee rifles at New Orleans. Plebian, did you say? Why, he ought to be pensioned. He is older and more respectable than the Dutch governors of New York and has a greater claim to patriotism than half of the pensioners who never smelled the smoke of battle.

“In Tennessee and Kentucky he has always been a great favorite, and since the race-track act has been added to his many other accomplishments he is destined to be yet more popular. But the student who attempts to trace his development is lost in a maze of thoroughbred blood and ‘native stock.’ That the ‘pacing-bred pacer’ of to-day is simply a mixture of the old ambling pacer of Europe, whatever he was, and thoroughbred there is no doubt in the world. And that this thorough blood has been as good, if not better, than that in old Messenger himself, is also true. But the astonishing thing about this amalgamation is the very small per cent of pacing blood it required to leaven the thoroughbred loaf. A pacing sire bred to a running mare and that offspring to another running mare, and so on for several generations, will end with the last, as with the first, in getting a ‘saddler.’

“We have always regarded this fact as the strongest evidence of the intensity of the pacing instinct—an instinct that has such a pure and strong fountain-head somewhere that it is able to overcome the running instinct, though crossed and recrossed upon the pure running blood, is abundant evidence of its own purity and prepotency. And the fact that so many fast pacers are continually thrown from the trotting ranks, now commonly called ‘trotting-bred pacers,’ is but another illustration of the same fact. Verily, back somewhere in the past the pacer was a thoroughbred at his way of going. His remote ancestor, whether in the myths of fables, or in the woods of northern Germany, or the vine-clad hills of Spain, or around the frozen lakes of Canada, was an Alexander, a Julius Caesar and a Napoleon Bonaparte, all in one, in the greatness and gameness of his gait. How else could the fact that every great family of trotters is continually throwing pacers be explained by any other theory? The fact that the trotting breeders have been careless in breeding to mares of strong pacing instinct or breeding, we admit; but the fact remains the same that the pacing blood in the pedigree of such trotters does not appear to have acted as a brake in their way of going, but, on the contrary, has given to them a smoothness of action and an elasticity of stride which has carried them to the foremost rank at their gait; and we are also led to believe that it often requires but a small portion of pacing fluid to overcome several generations of the diagonal gait in the veins of the trotting-bred horse.

“Take from the trotting ranks those out of mares or descendants of mares by old Pilot, Jr., and other pacers, and the truth of this assertion will be most plainly seen. In fact, every noted family of trotters, such as the Wilkses and the Almonts—wherever there is any pacing blood, even away back in the fourth and fifth generation—have to the credit of that family some pacer who is faster at his way of going than the star trotter of that family is at his. No Hambletonian trotter has ever attained the speed that has been shown by Direct, unless it be Nancy Hanks, who has some pacing blood in her own royal veins and is inclined to pace a bit herself; nor has any Almont trotter ever equalled Flying Jib and hosts of others we might mention. Among the Wilkses they are thicker than the leaves of Valambrosa, until one is forced to believe that the Clay blood, if such it was, in the pedigree of George Wilkes was about as good as any the great horse had in his veins.

“These facts being true, it is evident that the pacer is not a scrub. If he is a scrub, then we are forced to the conclusion that nothing in all the breeding world may be likened to the intensity of his cold-bloodedness. This scrub blood overcomes the hot running blood, though continually diluted for successive generations; and it needs only a little of it to knock out the hopes of the bluest blooded trotter descended from Hambletonian lines. If he is a scrub, then he is the veritable ‘original sire’ of the scrub horse business, which, like that in man, is ever on top. But as this sin of the pacer helps him to the wire first, and has given him the harness records of the world, we trust no trotting moralist will attempt to entirely obliterate it. We don’t need any crucifixions there! To our mind, we believe that if the curtain of the past could ever be unrolled upon the pacers of old we would find that centuries ago he was bred for no other way of going, and bred so long and so purely and so consistently that in him has been planted an instinct that will never be obliterated. To argue that a cold-blooded horse can be thus preponent is to argue against the well-known laws of heredity!

“In the second place, the pacer has undoubtedly come to stay. The American people are nothing if not quick in realizing real merit and honoring it when clearly proven. As they make no pretensions to the shams of royalty, so are they not bound by the iron rules of court custom from ‘hustling’ to horse-racing. They do not care for so much trappy action; nor does the matter of a banged tail cut as much of a figure in their calculations as does the intense patriotism which lies within them for their own almighty dollar. Passing over the generally admitted fact that the pacer is naturally faster than the trotter, comes to his speed more quickly, may be more evenly matched in a race, and is preserved longer by reason of the smoothness of his gait, there is yet another cause why the pacer is destined to become more popular.

“A great English commoner, whose ire had been aroused on one occasion by a member of the House of Lords, in reply, in a speech of burning oratory, spoke of the aforesaid gentleman as being in his titled position merely by reason of the fact that he was ‘the accident of an accident.’ There is no doubt that Hambletonian 10, the present head of the trotting family, was even more of an accident than the English lord was. Bellfounder mares of trotting propensities were rarer than imported Messengers, and if the mating of Abdallah with this mare was not an accident, but the plan of a thoughtful intellect looking to the future, the descendants of the man who thought it out should have risen up and told it last month, that their forefathers might have been honored along with Columbus at the opening of the World’s Fair. Now the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ is quite an accident himself. He is here by reason of the fact that many trotting breeders in their wild vagaries and theories regarding the best way to breed a trotter, ranging all the way, in the theory of breeding, from thoroughblood to jackass, have accidentally honored a few thousand pacing mares with a service to some of their Hambletonians. As a result the ‘trotting-bred’ pacer is with us. As it is quite impossible for the trotting turf to get rid of this rascal if they wished to, and as he has managed to be quite a game and fast money-making machine himself, he has clinched the popularity of the pacer as a pacer and has stuck a peg in the map of popular favor that would be hard to be removed.

“And it is safe to say that by reason of the blood of Pilot, Jr., Clay, Blue Bull, Tom Hal, Pocahontas and many others being so generally distributed in the pedigrees of trotters, the ‘trotting-bred pacer’ will continue to come from such trotting sources in the future in geometrical proportion and to pace in the same ratio. What will be done with them? Each one, with speed, is simply a money-making machine, and his owner will not be long in putting him at the work which nature cut out for him. To destroy him merely because he paces belongs to the dark ages when the pacing gait was one which made no money, but now, since the pacing purses have gotten to be so liberal and getting more so each year, it is only common sense to suppose that owners of pacing horses will begin to take more pains in their development and their breeding. This will improve their speed. As it is now, we do not suppose there is a betting horseman alive who would not give large odds that the pacer will be the first two-minute horse.

“And in this connection another thing must be taken into consideration. The pacer’s gait has itself been greatly improved in the last ten years. He is no longer the rotary-motioned mud-flinger of old, whose forefeet pawed the air in circles parallel with and above his ears, while his hind feet described semicircles over the ground, but he is now a smooth-gaited, straightforward, quick-actioned fellow, with plenty of knee action in front and the stride of a bullfrog behind, and at his highest speed it requires more than a glance for one to say whether he is trotting or pacing. In other words, the pacer has come to be a well-rounded, symmetrical and well-bred horse. His gait is the poetry of harness motion, his courage is unquestioned and his staying qualities, especially with the pacing-bred ones, of whom we are more familiar, are equal to those of any horse that ever stretched his neck in the home stretch. In view of these facts it doesn’t require even the grandson of a prophet to predict he is destined to a still greater career on the light harness race course.

“We can only judge the future by the past and the present, and with that in view from a study of the 2:20 list, which a most exclusive list in the light harness race course, we are startled with the enviable position the despised side-wheeler holds in that charmed circle this season. There can be no sham in the 2:20 list. A horse must be able to trot or pace that enters it. Up to November 15 there were, according to the statistics at my command, 189 new 2:20 performers; and by new performers we mean horses that had no record as good as 2:30 trotting or 2:25 pacing before the opening of this season. Of these 189 new 2:20 performers we find that the pacers constitute 128 of the number, while the trotters are credited with sixty-one. This table includes but seven pacers that have lowered their records from the 2:30 list last year to the 2:20 list this year, and we use it to get at the number of green horses to enter this list, and _from_ it we are able _to form_ a more correct idea of the material coming fresh from both ranks. It cuts off such stars as Kremlin, Stamboul and Nancy Hanks among trotters, as well as Hal Pointer, Mascot, Guy, Direct and Storm among pacers.

“But a still more exclusive list is the 2:15 class, and in order to show your readers what has been accomplished by the new material from the pacing ranks this year as compared with the same material from the trotters, we publish that list in full, and in a spirit of generosity we place the despised pacer on the left in the goat’s place. The fact that it looks something like the last electoral college, with Cleveland on the pacer’s side, need not lead any one to think we are at all partisan in this matter.

“New pacers with records of 2:15 or better:

Flying Gib 2:05¾
Jay-Eye-See 2:06¼
W. Wood 2:07
Robert J. 2:09¾
San Pedro 2:10¾
Wisconsin King 2:11
Online 2 2:11
Walnut Boy 2:11½
Ella Brown 2:11¼
Cleveland S 2:11¾
Prima Donna 2:11¾
Colbert 2:12¼
Dandy O 2:12½
Charley Ford 2:12½
La Belle 2:12½
John R. Gentry 2:12¾
Gilileo Rex 2:12¾
Expert Prince 2:13¼
Fleetfoot 2:14
Henry O 2:14
Eclectic 2:14
To Order, 2 2:14
Rebus 2:14¼
Clint Cliff 2:14½
Joe Jett 2:14½
Chris Smith 2:14½
Lydia Wilkes 2:14½
Diabolo 2:14¾
Merry Chimes 2:14¾
Nuthurst 2:14¾
Bob 2:15
Alhambra 2:15
Blondine 2:15
Wardell 2:15

“New trotters with records of 2:15 or better:

Directum 2:11¼
Muta Wilkes 2:14¼
Azote 2:14½
Hulda 2:14¾

“Total number of pacers not having a record of 2:30 or better in 1891, but now having a record of 2:15 or better, thirty-four; total number of trotters, four. Finally, when we consider the fact that a very much larger number of trotters are trained, or attempted to be trained, than pacers, these figures become still more expressive of the great future possibilities lying within the pacer’s reach at a light harness race horse.”

What wonderful progress has been the pacer’s since the above was written! If we were to attempt to publish the 2:15 list to-day, it would take the next issue of the Monthly, there being now about five thousand, while the 2:10 list surpasses belief. Three of them have paced miles better than two minutes, and such names as Star Pointer, Joe Patchen, John R. Gentry, Direct, Robert J. and others have made the turf bright with glorious deeds. Truly the pacer’s development surpasses even prophecy!

(To be continued.)

* * * * *

The Past is Yesterday’s present. Remember it as you build to-day.

Do Farmers Think?

By S. W. WARFIELD.

This pertinent question was suggested by a conversation between a young farmer—a college graduate—and a young man who had just received his diploma from one of the leading agricultural colleges of the country. When questioned by the former as to what vocation he expected to follow, the latter said: “I guess I’ll be a farmer, because farmers don’t have to think.” Was the young man correct? After a day’s journey through the country a very observant and thoughtful man will be forced to acknowledge that a great many farmers do not seem to think. The amount of high-priced machinery allowed to rust and ruin in the fields, the haphazard way in which grain and hay is stacked, the utter indifference displayed in plowing land and laying off rows, the disregard that is paid to the washing away of the soil, soil that was thousands of years in forming, the fertility of which depends upon the actions of the elements for generations; a soil that, when once gone, is gone forever. We are forced to admit that all farmers do not think. When we see farmers burning straw stacks or filling gullies with manure, which will soon rot, float off and carry all accumulated soil with it, we know in that particular they do not think. For when a gully is stopped with manure, it is only a question of time before it will have to be stopped again, and the next time the task will be greater, for there will not be much adjoining soil with which to stop it.

When we see a farmer delving with his whole household from daybreak till dark, denying his children the privilege of a common school education, trusting to luck and brawn to carry them through life, we have another illustration of a farmer who does not think. For if he would but think, he would realize that his sons, after he was dead and gone, would prove easy victims to the oily tongued sharper and his hard-earned dollars would go soon to swell the coffers of another man’s son.

A great many farmers do not think, and to them rightly belongs the disrespectful epithets of “Reuben” and “Hay-seed.”

Admitting the foregoing, we are glad to know that there are a great many farmers who keep abreast the times, are thoughtful and studious men.

With the vast area of fertile soil capable of producing vastly more of any crop than is needed, which fact is almost every year proven, with a herd of middlemen manipulating the crop reports and combining to put and keep prices down; with this country a network of railroads, one and all of them clamoring for freight to haul; with shrewd managers to concoct the “rebate scheme” to counteract the “Interstate Commerce Law” and “Railroad Commission,” put the farmer of any section in direct competition with the whole country. When the above facts are considered, it certainly behooves every farmer to “think” and study so that the thinking will be on sure footing.

No matter what the past has been, the day of haphazard farming for success and competency is gone. Farming to-day is a scientific problem, and a problem that requires all the thought that can be bestowed upon it. Not a thought for to-day or to-morrow, but long-headed thought that studies the supply and demand of the year ahead before planting largely of any one crop or launching into any new enterprise. He must study the supply and price before he can tell whether to hold wheat or longer feed his cattle; must know the needs and study the rotation to get the best results from each crop; must think to be able to properly harvest and care for each crop as it matures; must think how best to become his own financier, and not be controlled by any bank or supply merchant. He must think to live on what he makes and make all that he needs.

The life of a shrewd, thoughtful farmer is the most independent in the world—a life that the followers of all trades and professions yearn for, a life acquired only by thought. So, in answering the question, Do farmers think? we’ll say, If they succeed, they do.

Nature Nuggets

By H. ALISON WEBSTER.

The sexuality of plants has been known from the time of Camerarius, 1691; and yet, what farmer looks to the strains of the seeds he plants? How many farmers buy their seed corn in the ear? The fact that like begets like should never be overlooked.

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Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 2, November 1905Chapter II: Part 2

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