NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 99 
mating them with the imported coach breeds. We haven't given much 
consideration to anything but speed, and it is surprising how many of the 
farmers in this and other states have been breeding horses with the ex- 
pectation of producing a record-breaker in speed, and have lost sight of 
the essential characteristics of utility and finish and beauty. While it 
may be justifiable to sacrifice these points if we succeed in getting speed, 
and if we are breeding for speed and nothing else, the great majority of 
the horses of American blood that are being produced to-day are not in 
the speed class; and if we will take the breeding of some of these horses 
that are not considered high-priced from the standard of speed produc- 
tion, they will constitute our most valuable horses. While these horses 
illustrated here are trotting-bred and have no doubt a liberal amount of 
speed, none of them have raised records or have extreme speed; but they 
have those other qualities that are more desirable for this purpose than 
extreme speed. The heavy harness horse is not required to have ex- 
treme speed, but he must have good road gait. So if the breeding for 
speed we will give some attention to these qualities that are essential to 
the high-class harness horse, and that the market is putting emphasis 
upon to-day more than ever before and is willing to pay higher prices for, 
I believe we will find it exceedingly profitable; and in addition to that I 
believe we will be doing a great service to the American farmer and agri- 
culturist, and to the horse users of the world, in developing what we have 
here in our native stock into high-class horse. 
We have been accustomed to look too much to the foreign breeders for 
our domestic animals. We occasionally hear some words of criticism 
concerning the government going into this breeding work. Sometimes you 
will hear the criticism that it is going to cost too much; that it takes a 
long time to do this work. Do you know that the government spends 
more in the construction of a single battleship than this horse-producing 
work is likely to cost in a quarter of a century? And the navy depart- 
ment fires in fifteen minutes more value in ammunition than the govern- 
ment is putting into this horse-breeding work in years. I think the 
American government and the American breeder, uniting together, can 
develop these strains until we can produce some of the most superior type 
of horses that have ever been produced in the world. And there is the 
same reason for improving other breeds of animals, and when we take up 
that work we are going to bring about types of animals that will be 
peculiarly suited to American conditions and will meet the demands as 
well or better than those produced in foreign countries. The work may 
not all be succeessful; it may not all terminate as we anticipate; it may 
take a longer time than vre anticipate. It is not an easy matter to fix 
types. We have fixed three distinct types of American horses already, 
and they have furnished excellent horses, and they will be improved from 
year to year. At the great International show and our great State Fairs 
each year we find the animals coming out in better form and with a higher 
degree of excellence; and so it will be with our horses that we take up 
in this way. If some of these endeavors are failures, and we do nothing 
but prove the negative and the inadvisability of doing some things, it will 
probably be worth as much as a positive result. So I think the work that 
the government has inaugurated is along right lines; and while it may 
