22 THE ENGLISH TURF 



he calls in the aid of an expert, upon whose advice he can 

 rely. 



Owners of the present day may be divided into two 

 classes those who race for sport, and those who affect 

 racing with a view to making money at it. Of the former 

 class there are nothing like so many as there used to be. 

 Time was when there was a breeding or a racing stud, or 

 both, attached to the possessions of many great noblemen, 

 and such took to the sport as a matter of course, but as 

 a general rule patronised a certain circuit, or a certain 

 number of meetings, breeding and running their own horses 

 year after year and looking upon the whole thing as a 

 necessary accompaniment of wealth and position. The 

 railway system worked a change: the general fall in rents 

 tended to curtail the operations of the landed class, and 

 then by degrees the ranks of owners were swelled by the 

 merely moneyed men. The modern English millionaire 

 seems to incline to racing, and he it is who has put the 

 prices up all round. Trainers and jockeys are now paid many 

 times more than they were fifty years ago, and altogether 

 racing is a more expensive pastime. As regards the trainer, 

 his expenses have been almost as much increased as those 

 of the owner, but the fees paid to jockeys, and the huge 

 retainers which some of them earn, are quite beyond the 

 means of the class of men who owned horses a generation 

 or two since, and such have for the most part retired. 



Whether the Turf at large is benefited by the advent of 

 the millionaire is open to doubt. Breeders certainly secure 

 advantages which were denied to them in the long ago, and 

 the owner of a really good horse can always find a market 

 if he wishes to sell. But the prices all round have become 

 most unduly inflated, and in consequence an altogether false 

 value is asked and often given for horses who are the talk 

 of the moment. The result of this is that breeding and 

 owning has become too much of a lottery. Men go into it 

 because they hear of a team of yearlings averaging over 

 a thousand guineas, or because the two-year-old winner 

 of a single race has changed hands for ten thousand; thus 

 the whole thing becomes more a commercial speculation 



