522 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



from their general apathy in dealing with the facts. Scores of racing stables are 

 in existence, with hundreds of owners, and thousands of horses. Yet there were 

 not half-a-dozen jockeys riding between March and September, 1902, who reached 

 the first class, only eighteen who had won more than twenty races, and only twenty- 

 six who had reached, or passed, a dozen victories in all. After all, not so many 

 jockeys are required to supply the demand without the necessity for famine prices. 

 Sixty would be ample, and I shall never believe that in the length and breadth of 

 the United Kingdom there are not three score lads who have the requisite physical 

 and intellectual capacity for winning races and knowing their business. What do 

 the few favourites do that justifies their fancy prices ? When there was such a run 

 upon Americans, did they never get shut in ? Did they always keep their animals 

 straight in a punishing finish ? And when we depended entirely upon a few 

 equally favourite British performers who certainly knew how to ricle a finish for 

 the benefit of the Stands, did they never throw away a race at the start ? Did they 

 never lose it by racing to the last corner and leaving their animals nothing to call 

 upon as they neared the judge's box? In this matter, as in all others, competition 

 is the one thing that will lead to improvement ; but competition we shall never have 

 till owners and trainers give their stable-boys more chances, and let a lad race now 

 and then purely to educate him in his business. While every one struggles to win 

 stakes as soon as possible, and as often as possible, every one is naturally bound to 

 try for the fashionable jockey whom owner, trainer, and public alike demand. But 

 with a little patience affairs would straighten themselves out again easily enough. 

 Jockey Reform is no more easy, and can be no more rapid than Two-year-old 

 Reform. But the former is as vitally important to the success of the Turf as a 

 national institution, as the latter is to the continuation and improvement of the 

 thoroughbred. 



Writing, in 1879, on the racehorse in training, William Day supported the opinion 

 concerning Jockey Reform previously expressed by John Scott, of Whitewall, that 

 the weights should be raised, arguing from such facts as that in 1831, when Squire 

 Osbaldestone undertook to ride 200 miles in ten hours, 1 2st. was carried four 

 miles twenty-eight times by horses who did that distance in periods varying from 

 Tranbys eight minutes to the ten minutes fifteen seconds of the oldest ; or that 

 Voltigeur could sweat week after week with i2st. on his back; or that Rataplan, 

 Fisherman, Ckandos, and Vespasian all carried 8st. ylb. as two-year-olds without 

 taking any harm ; or, finally, that in 1878, in the three great handicaps at Goodwood, 



