406 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



conclusions may be honestly reached from different standpoints, 

 but running against a fixed and certain date, as in this case, is 

 like running against a two-edged sword. 



In conclusion, the Hackney is merely the dear-bought and far- 

 fetched fashion of the hour. A few years ago he was "something 

 new in horses," just as the modiste has "something new in 

 'dresses." He was found in England, where there are no flies, 

 without a tail, and as that was the fashion in England we must 

 have horses in America without tails, notwithstanding the mil- 

 lions of torments they have to endure without the natural means 

 of defense. As hack-a-bouts they are good horses, but their 

 "churn-dasher" style of action will never become acceptable to 

 the American people. 



A few years since a quite persistent attempt, backed by un- 

 limited wealth and all the prestige that metropolitan "fashion" 

 -and "society" could bestow, was made, particularly in New 

 York, to create a Hackney "boom" in America. All that element 

 in the social life of our great cities that affects a disdain for 

 things distinctively American, and particularly for American 

 horses, and that glories in the stultifying habit of aping things 

 "English, ye know," took up the Hackney fad with unbounded 

 enthusiasm. As a" park and road horse the American horse the 

 incomparable trotting-bred driver was to be incontinently 

 crowded out of the driveways, the markets and the shows. The 

 National Horse Show Association, whose annual show at Madi- 

 son Square Garden is the great social fete of the year in New 

 York, lent all its powerful influence to forward the Hackney 

 "boom," which was, it must in fairness be said, consistent; for 

 the miscalled National Horse Show has always catered more to 

 foreign horses and foreign customs in horsemanship than to 

 American horses and horsemen. Men of great wealth and prom- 

 inence established extensive Hackney studs, imported famous 

 prize- winning stallions and mares, and there was only one thing 

 left to be done, and that was to convert the American people to 

 the belief that the driving horse they had been breeding and 

 developing with a special purpose and care the fleetest and most 

 versatile harness horse in the world was inferior to an imported 

 nondescript. In that attempt the Hackney advocates have failed 

 in America as completely as did Mr. Blunt and others in Eng- 

 land, when they sought to make racing men believe that the 

 Arab was a better race horse than the English thoroughbred. 



