212 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



fair as between the 15th day of August and the last of September. 

 The American Trotting Association alone has about sixty or seventy 

 meetings — about sixty meetings a week during that period, and you 

 can imagine the number of horses it takes to supply them all with 

 horses. There is a great deal said, as you men know who read the 

 harness papers, about the cause of the decrease in the harness horse 

 and there have been made long arguments. Some of them have said 

 it is because the parent association didn't have the right kind of 

 legislation ; others said it was because the Registry association wasn't 

 sufficiently busy, and others have said it was another thing, that 

 breeding began to decrease when the American Trotting Association 

 was formed. We premeditatively close our eyes to the real cause. 

 No one of these things had anything to do with the breeding of har- 

 ness horses. The coming of the automobile made the road horse less 

 in demand from year to year, and even the man that didn't buy an 

 automobile was driven from the road with his road horse. This 

 didn't leave any outlet to the breeders of horses that weren't effi- 

 cient in racing, and consequently that and the strict enforcement of 

 the anti-betting laws in a good many of the states have reduced the 

 breeders. When the physician changed from his good old road- 

 horse to a pile of inanimate, bad-smelling junk, we lost more breed- 

 ers than from any other cause, because the physician, when his old 

 road mare got sore-footed, he bred her and raised a good colt. On 

 the other hand, more horses measure up to the standard required at 

 the tracks than ever before. There is during the meet season a 

 scarcity of horses, and this is one of the things that the rules com- 

 mittee has to take into very careful consid'eration — that is to adopt 

 such rules, if possible, that will give you more horses to draw from 

 and at the same time so that the rule will not be a discouragement 

 to the breeder. These are problems that are not easy to solvt.. They 

 are hard to get at. A proposition was made by a gentleman who is 

 connected with the harness racing early in the year that all horses 

 that had not reduced their record in the last two years should be 

 eligible to the 3-minute class. This matter came up before the rules 

 committee and it had a great deal of discussion and a great deal of 

 thought, and finally there was adopted for recommendation to the 

 congress of the American Trotting Association a rule that provides 

 that harness horses with the record of 2 : 12 on a mile track, and 2 :16 

 on a half-mile track, that haven't reduced their record in the last 

 two years — that is since 1917 — should be eligible automatically to 

 the 2:12 class and to the 2:16 class — the 2:12 on a mile track and 



