534 THE HORSE OP AMERICA. 



Woodburn, I was told, and there were very few actual breeders 

 in the list, and that few were men who were trying to breed trot- 

 ters 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 peti- 

 tion, 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 registra- 

 tion 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 knowl- 

 edge 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 wibh 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 re- 

 mained an enemy to the "Register" because "it interfered with his 

 business." From early in the century, three or four counties 



