Mr. Wallace’s early life and education—Removal to Iowa, 1845—Secretary Iowa State Board of Agriculture—Begins work, 1856, on “Wallace’s American Stud Book,” published 1867—Method of gathering pedigrees—Trotting Supplement—Abandons Stud Book, 1870, and devotes exclusive attention to trotting literature—“American Trotting Register,” Vol. I., published in 1871—Vol. II. follows in 1874—The valuable essay on breeding the forerunner of present ideas—Standard adopted 1879—Its history—Battles for control of the “Register”—Wallace’s Monthly founded 1875—Its character, purposes, history, writers, and artists—“Wallace’s Year Book” founded 1885—Great popularity and value—Transfer of the Wallace publications, and their degeneration.
The history of the series of works known as the Wallace publications, even in the brief form here contemplated, involves in a large degree the biography of Mr. Wallace. It is indeed more than the sketch of a long and indefatigably industrious life-work. It involves as well, in the forty years of creative labor, the development of a great productive industry, and of a distinct branch of literature. Mr. Wallace’s labors in the field of gathering and systematizing American horse history began at a day when there was no breed of trotters, or no trotting literature. When he laid aside active work there were both, well established and clearly defined factors in the nation’s progress, and in all the years from the commencement he was the central figure in the work of establishing a breed of trotters, and incomparably the clearest and strongest force in the direction and upbuilding of a trotting literature. That is the simple truth of history, which the verdict of time will render it puerile to deny.
John H. Wallace was born August 16, 1823, and reared on a farm in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. As a boy he evinced no particular liking for farm work, but had a great fondness for reading. He was educated chiefly at the Frankfort Springs Academy, where he was prepared to enter the junior class at college. There occurred a little incident at this time that illustrates how seemingly slight a thing may change the current of a life. The then member of Congress for that district, Mr. Dickey, a scholarly man, advised Professor Nicholson, of the Academy, that if he had a young man in his institution whom he could recommend, he (Mr. Dickey) would appoint him a cadet to West Point. Mr. Wallace was selected, provided his father’s consent was forthcoming. When Mr. Wallace, Sr., was approached on the subject his reply was, “John, I think there is some better employment in the world for you than studying the most approved methods of killing men”—and that ended the West Point incident. Young Mr. Wallace, about this time, became alarmed, however, at his then persistently delicate health, and decided to seek an outdoor life rather than one of study. In 1845 he married Miss Ellen Ewing (who died in 1891), of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and settled on a farm at Muscatine, Iowa. Iowa was then a new country, and Mr. Wallace did much in the way of organizing the industrial and educational interests of the State. There, as related below, he began work in the line in which he became famous. With an invalid wife he returned to Allegheny in 1872; and in 1875 in company with the late Benjamin Singerly, of Pittsburg, started Wallace’s Monthly at New York, which has been his home ever since. Mr. Wallace in 1893 married Miss Ellen Wallace Veech, a niece of the first Mrs. Wallace; and since his retirement from active business he has spent his time, at home and abroad, chiefly in prosecuting investigations into the horse history of the remote periods, the results of which are seen in this, his crowning life-work.
We will endeavor here to sketch, in the abstract, the history of Mr. Wallace’s publications to as great a degree as possible separately, though they cannot be entirely separated. The “Trotting Register” was an outgrowth of the “Stud Book,” and Wallace’s Monthly and the “Year Book” outgrowths of the “Register,” and both auxiliary thereto. The career and usefulness of all were intertwined, yet each had its own peculiar mission, and to that extent their histories will be kept distinct.
During the early “fifties” Mr. Wallace, then in the prime of early manhood, was Secretary of the Iowa State Board of Agriculture, and as such had much to do with the management of State fairs. He was thus frequently called upon for information about the pedigrees of animals, and the need of an authority on horse pedigrees was pointedly and constantly forced upon his attention. If the pedigree of a cow was asked for he had only to turn to the “American Herd Book” to find it, but when the breeding of a horse was wanted there was no authority to which to turn. Mr. Wallace had been dabbling more or less in such horse literature as there was at that day, and in 1856 began collecting information with the ultimate purpose of publishing a stud book of thoroughbred horses—for the thoroughbred was then here, as in England, supreme as the only horse of literature. He already possessed certain of the publications that were the best horse authorities of the day—a file of the Spirit of the Times, Skinner’s American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, and a number of volumes of the “English Stud Book,” and English Sporting Magazine. Added to these, later, were other sources of information and misinformation most notable in this latter class being the alleged “Stud Book” published by Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, of North Carolina, in 1833—an utterly unreliable work, but the only American stud book in existence prior to Wallace’s. From these, and every other available source, Mr. Wallace began to glean and systematically compile the pedigrees of thoroughbred and so-called thoroughbred horses. Of these sources by far the most valuable was Skinner’s periodical, begun in Baltimore in 1829. Novice as he was at the time, Edgar’s work was regarded with more than suspicion by Mr. Wallace, and, as a matter of caution as well as of honesty, whenever he borrowed pedigrees from Edgar they were so credited.
Modern methods of investigating pedigrees were not dreamed of by our compiler then. His principal aim seems to have been to get as large a collection as possible, and whatever was found in print, whether newspaper, book, or hand-bill, was taken for granted; and pedigrees gathered from private sources were, like the others, submitted to little scrutiny. Neither men’s motives nor their knowledge of what they represented to know were questioned, and in this way, after years of labor, a great mass of pedigrees was gathered, written in new form and order, and the thoroughbred stallions numbered—which was the first instance of numbering horses in registration. While compiling the thoroughbred pedigrees, Mr. Wallace also incidentally seized upon such information as he found about trotting pedigrees and records, and these he arranged as an appendix to his work. Finally, in 1867, “Wallace’s American Stud Book,” a great, handsome volume of 1,017 pages, bound pretentiously in green and gold, was published in New York.
The trotting supplement embraced about 100 pages, and that the editor was pretty well satisfied with it is shown by a sentence in the preface: “It is believed that this compilation of trotting horses, embracing over 700 animals, is very nearly perfect, but it is not claimed to be entirely so.” Of course, from the method of its compilation it was decidedly imperfect, but it was the best and only compilation of trotting pedigrees up to that time.
Meanwhile Mr. Wallace was pushing forward the compilation of the second volume of the “Stud Book,” and in this traveled much, making personal investigations. In 1870 this was completed, all the ground up to that year having been gone over, but in the course of the work “a great light” began to dawn upon the compiler. He found that he had been proceeding on a wrong plan entirely. Experience in compiling and investigating taught him that a pedigree may be printed in a newspaper, or even in a book, and still not be true. He discovered that the sources from which he had drawn were largely unreliable, that hundreds of pedigrees, through ignorance or dishonesty, or both, were fabrications and frauds, especially in their extensions in the maternal lines, and with the realization in full force of this knowledge came the determination, even though the last page of the manuscript for the second volume of the “Stud Book” was complete, that it should never see the light.
At the same time Mr. Wallace had discovered that the trotting supplement was the part of his “Stud Book” most used and appreciated. He saw that the trotter was coming to be the horse of the American people, and that there was a great and new field opening in which a literature had yet to be formed. His experience with the “Stud Book” gave him the training necessary for the work before him, and thus equipped, with little capital outside of his newly acquired knowledge, and marvelous natural industry and perseverance, with an unusual capacity for hard work, he turned in 1870 to the work before him—the literature of the trotter.
He had as a nucleus the supplement to Volume I. of the “Stud Book,” added to which was the work done and knowledge gained in compiling the second volume, together with an increasing library and written data. Thus in incidentally adding a few pages of trotting pedigrees to his “Stud Book,” Mr. Wallace had builded better than he knew, but he even now had little conception of the extent and richness of his new field of exploration. He traveled all over the country, levying upon every source of information for his “Trotting Register;” but, taught in the dear school of experience, depended chiefly upon personal investigation, taking monthly and yearly less and less for granted. He gradually became more trained in meeting the natural human fondness for embellishing, extending and completing pedigrees without reference to fact or evidence, and the equally common predilection for stating as known facts those things concerning pedigrees that were only of common report. This work was excellent training for the more extended duties of the future, and it gave Mr. Wallace an insight into methods of the olden time, and a knowledge of men and horses that later made him, backed by uncompromising honesty, absolute fearlessness, and a quite unusual disregard for “policy,” a “terror to evil-doers” in the realm of manufacturing in whole or in part fraudulent pedigrees.
Still the knowledge, the caution, the system that made it almost impossible in the last years of Mr. Wallace’s administration to impose a fraud upon the “Register” were of slow, gradual, but constant growth. The work improved with every volume, with every year of experience, and the evidence that would be accepted in the compilation of the early volumes would not suffice later. Mr. Wallace had also the quality of just as remorselessly overthrowing his own errors as those of others, and thus a system of correction was continually going along, in which work Wallace’s Monthly, founded in 1875, was a particularly effective agency.
The first volume of the “Trotting Register” was published in 1871, and was a neat book of 504 pages. It contained, besides the pedigrees gathered, tables of all trotting and pacing performances up to the close of 1870, and this was the first time in which the records of the trotting turf were collected and published. This part of the work entailed a vast amount of research, including a thorough review of all sporting papers, annuals and other sources where contemporaneous record of racing would be liable to be made, but it was a very valuable feature; and, besides serving as a basis for Mr. Wallace’s future compilations, was unscrupulously seized upon by imitators who, from time to time, sought to publish “record books.”
There was also an introduction to the volume entitled, “An Essay on the True Origin of the American Trotter,” which showed a glimmering of understanding of the truths of history and of breeding as now understood by students well grounded in the subject. In the second volume, however, was an essay that marks an epoch in the literature of breeding. Written less than three years after the introduction to Volume I., it betrays the fact that in the intervening years the author had risen suddenly and broadened infinitely in his study of the science of breeding, and his understanding of the application thereto of the facts of trotting history. It advanced then entirely new views, and it was the first article published, as far as the writer is aware, that rose to an appreciation of the supremacy of biological laws in horse breeding, and suggested such a thing as psychical heredity in the transmission of habits of action. It originated the term “trotting instinct,” so generally used thereafter, began the discussion of the problem of the increasing number of fast trotters from pacing ancestors, and wound up with ten sound propositions or conclusions based throughout on the law that like begets like. It opened up new and endless lines of investigation and thought, and at once elevated the discussion to a scientific plane. This article, written by Mr. Wallace originally for the Spirit of the Times, marked the advent of the school of thought on breeding now almost universal.
The second volume of the “Register” was published in 1874, and the third in 1879. The first three volumes of the “Register” contained about 10,000 pedigrees, and the statistical tables in the second and third volumes were greatly improved and amplified over those in the first. Volume II. gave a table of sires of 2:30 horses, with the number to the credit of each sire, and the number of heats to the credit of each performer—a sort of vague foreshadowing of the famous “Great Table of Trotters under their Sires,” later to be conceived and developed by Mr. Wallace, and destined to become the most valuable single trotting compilation yet designed, and the one now universally used, adopted and imitated. This volume also gave a table of 2:25 trotters to the close of 1873, arranged in the order of their speed. The first table of trotters under their sires was published in Wallace’s Monthly, covering the statistics to the end of 1877.
The third volume was much larger than its predecessors. The industry of breeding trotting and pacing horses was, under the stimulus of the “Register” and Wallace’s Monthly, and other agencies with which Mr. Wallace was identified, and of a general era of prosperity then dawning, advancing and extending now at rapid strides, and about this time certain events of almost inestimable influence on the future of the business transpired.
In the autumn of 1876 there was formed at New York the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, an organization in which Mr. Wallace’s influence predominated from its inception until a short time before its dissolution, for lack of an excuse for existence. This organization was broadly representative of the best elements in the breeding business in its virile and useful days, and accepted a sort of advisory and supervisory control over the “Trotting Register;” and Volume III. and subsequent volumes were compiled under its authority. Questions of disputed pedigrees and other such issues affecting breeding and the record of pedigrees were decided by a Board of Censors appointed by this association; and, aside from its usefulness in connection with the “Trotting Register,” it contributed largely to the advancement and encouragement of breeding by inaugurating colt stakes, and other stakes designed more especially to attract the breeder than the professional campaigner.
Before the third volume was through the press the need of some measure for restricting registration became apparent to Mr. Wallace. The economics of the “Register” demanded it, but beyond this the need of systematizing and establishing a specific breed called for some definition as to what rightfully belonged to that breed. Up to this time the only rule was the indefinite provision that “anything well related to trotting blood” might be acceptable as eligible by the compiler of the “Register.” The problem that confronted those who took a broad and comprehensive view was to educate public opinion up to that point where the possibility of establishing a breed of trotters would be appreciated. As early as April, 1878, Wallace’s Monthly strongly urged the necessity of a standard, and this was the first suggestion of one that had been made. At the November meeting of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders that year the Board of Censors in their report presented a letter from Mr. Wallace advising the adoption of a standard, a recommendation which the Board indorsed. Meanwhile the matter was being agitated and discussed in Wallace’s Monthly, and affairs were gradually shaping for action. In the March, 1879, number of the Monthly a standard formulated by certain Kentucky breeders and forwarded by Major H. C. McDowell was printed and commented upon. It was fair on its face, but under discussion its weak points were made clear. For instance, its fourth rule made standard “Any mare the dam of any mare or stallion that has produced or sired a horse, mare, or gelding with a record of 2:30.” It was pointed out that under this rule the celebrated English thoroughbred mare Queen Mary would become a standard trotter, for her son, the race horse Bonnie Scotland, had sired the trotter Scotland. As other provisions made the sisters and brothers of standard animals standard, the defects of the Kentucky standard were made patent, and the Breeders’ Association failed to approve it. Instead, at a meeting at the Everett House, New York, November 19, 1879, the standard as printed on pages 519-20, in the framing of which Mr. Wallace and General B. F. Tracy did the active work, was unanimously adopted.
Under this standard the work of compiling Volume IV., which involved bringing forward animals registered in preceding volumes, that met its requirements, and numbering stallions, was carried on.
Meanwhile, some Kentucky gentlemen failed to acquiesce in the standard decision, and had, or believed they had, other grievances against the compiler of the “Register.” They proceeded to plan to control the “Register.” but as in the last chapter of this work Mr. Wallace gives full details of this and subsequent battles for the control of registration, this history need not be here repeated.
In the meantime the breeding interest was enjoying remarkable prosperity, and this was reflected upon and through the “Trotting Register” and Wallace’s Monthly. In 1882 Volume IV. was published, Volume V. in 1886, and Volume VI. in 1887, these containing about 6,000 pedigrees each. Volume VII. appeared in 1888, Volume VIII. in 1890, and Volume IX., the last published by Mr. Wallace, appeared in 1891.
While an adequate discussion of the standard is neither necessary or possible in this article, it was so obviously part and parcel of the “Trotting Register” that its history must be briefly outlined. The standard formulated in 1879 served its purpose well, but it was but an initial step, and it was fully recognized by Mr. Wallace at the time that it would have to be revised and strengthened from time to time so as to keep pace with the progress of the breeders. If the standard to-day is held in slight esteem, or even in contempt, it is clearly because it has been allowed to lag far behind the progress of the breed.
Evils grew out of the standard, even in its early years, simply through a quite general misunderstanding of its purposes and its full meaning. Standard rank became instantly so popular and so sought after that thousands of breeders aimed solely to breed into the standard, without much regard for other necessary qualifications. They seemed to forget that it was merely a definition of the blood that was eligible to the “Register,” and not, nor ever intended, to be taken as a general measuring stick of value. Soon after its adoption an era of great prosperity came in trotting affairs, with recklessly high prices for standard animals. With an apparently insatiable market there came an abnormal expansion of the industry. Thousands of men began breeding without knowing anything, either practically or theoretically, about the industry, except how to get into the standard. Hence the overproduction of not only standard trotting horses, but all kinds of trotting horses of inferior breeding and little excellence, and the subsequent break in prices, for all of which the standard has been by inconsiderate persons blamed.
Not long after its adoption Mr. Wallace saw these dangerous tendencies, and in the Monthly warned the breeders against them, and early began agitating for a revision of the rules. But nothing could stem that rising tide, and at first the opposition to any change in the rules was vehement and general. The obviously easy gateway into the standard was through rule seven, and this became the storm center of the discussion. Mr. Wallace led in the call for the abolition of this rule, and did it so persistently and well that gradually the leading breeders and thinkers were won over, but the outcry against a change was so earnest and so general among the smaller breeders that the National Association hesitated long. Though a Committee on Revision was appointed as early as December, 1885, it was not until December 14, 1887, that a revision was finally effected, the standard being then adopted as printed on pages 520-21.
Every reader can observe, by comparison with the previous standard, that there was a wise and conservative strengthening of the rules all along the line. The next step contemplated by Mr. Wallace was not only a further restricting revision on blood lines, but also an increase in the speed rate required, an advance from 2:30 to 2:25, then ultimately to 2:20, his purpose being that the standard should keep pace with the progress of the breed. But before any of these steps were made the “Register” passed into other hands—and other theories and practices have prevailed, with the result that the standard is to-day held in derision and the value of the “Register” has sunk to the vanishing point. But before reaching this phase of our history some account of Mr. Wallace’s other publications is in order.
At a very early period in the history of the “Trotting Register” Mr. Wallace perceived the necessity of there being some medium of communication with the breeders which he could control. This was one of several reasons, which need not here be detailed, the outcome of which was the establishment of the publication which has played a greater part than any other in developing the trotting literature of to-day, and in leading American thought on the science of breeding—Wallace’s Monthly. The first number came out in October, 1875, with Benjamin Singerly, publisher, and John H. Wallace, editor. Mr. Singerly was an uncle of Hon. William M. Singerly, of the Philadelphia Record, and had large printing establishments in Harrisburg and Pittsburg, Pa. The first twelve numbers of Wallace’s Monthly were printed in Harrisburg, though published from the outset from New York. Benjamin Singerly died in August, 1876, from which time Mr. Wallace carried on the publication himself, from the little office at 170 Fulton Street, overlooking St. Paul’s churchyard.
In accordance with the time-honored custom in journalism, the first number of Wallace’s Monthly contained a salutatory outlining its purposes and its policy, and in almost every detail that policy was honestly lived up to while Mr. Wallace controlled the magazine. The horse was to be made the leading, but not the exclusive feature; full trotting and running summaries with indexes were to be published; correspondence was invited; and, as a cardinal principle of policy, gambling in any and all forms was to be uncompromisingly fought against. This last detail of policy Mr. Wallace rigidly adhered to always. He opposed public betting in any form and under any pretense, and believed, and acted up to the belief, that if racing could not be maintained without betting it were better that grass should grow on the tracks. The first number of the Monthly contained a descriptive article by “Hark Comstock,” and some selected matter, but was chiefly the editor’s work—mostly concise historical matter, dealing with the early progenitors of the trotting breed.
With each number the Monthly strengthened, until soon it had gathered around it the brightest writers in the country. Notwithstanding this, however, the editorial department was always its strongest feature, and it rapidly became a power in the land. Among the earliest contributors were “Hark Comstock” (Peter C. Kellogg), always a fluent writer, and one of the most versatile special pleaders on horse topics known to the turf press; Charles J. Foster, the gifted “Privateer,” whose work, from a literary standpoint, was oftentimes a model of finish; “Yah Amerikanski” (Spencer Borden), and “S. T. H.” (S. T. Harris), both brilliant, especially in controversy; H. T. Helm, Levi S. Gould, and many others prominently known in turf literature a quarter of a century ago.
Spirited controversy early became a feature of the Monthly, and in these passages-at-arms the editor was generally found taking a leading hand. As a writer Mr. Wallace was always above all things forceful. He fortified himself in theory and fact amply, and his style was so direct, yet comprehensive, that every shot told, and even those who disagreed with him were forced to read and admire these spirited discussions. Mr. Wallace moreover early impressed the public with his uncompromising honesty, and with the fact that, above all things, he had the courage of his convictions. There was no dodging issues, no dallying or compromising with humbug of any sort; a spade was called a spade, and no consideration of “policy” brought a note of indirection into the Monthly’s editorial pages. The personality of the editor was ineffaceably stamped on his magazine, and its influence became potent for good far beyond the limitations of mere circulation.
The magazine became quickly the leader in thought on breeding subjects, and hardly an advanced idea that to-day prevails in this field of literature but can be found first suggested in the Monthly. The first table of trotters under their sires was published in Wallace’s Monthly for 1877; the standard was first suggested in its pages; the pacer as an origin of trotting speed was first advanced in February and March, 1883; it was the first to formulate and advocate and put to the test a scale of points for judging horses; and above all it was the power that educated breeders to an understanding of breeding on truly scientific principles, and brought about an acceptance and appreciation of the laws of heredity as applied to breeding the trotter. And, interspersed with this continual seeking for the light and the right, there was an amount of historical matter published that would make the compilation of a valuable book on the American trotter possible from the Monthly alone. It was, moreover, continually exposing frauds of history and of pedigrees, and was as potent in guarding as it was in discovering the truth. It was the recognized enemy of fraud, of humbug, of false pretense everywhere, and attacked them in high places as well as low, and that its editor incurred the enmity of many whose designs attracted the Monthly’s searchlight, and were thwarted by it, is a fact known of all men.
This, in brief, was the character of the Monthly from its foundation, until it passed out of Mr. Wallace’s hands. To follow its detailed history through the nearly sixteen years of Mr. Wallace’s editorship is not the purpose of this article, but the rather to group the salient factors that made it what it was, and that have secured for it an enduring place in trotting history.
The Monthly was from the first illustrated, and the progress in horse art is well demonstrated by tracing through its pages. Its first drawings were made by James C. Beard, who came of a race of artists, but whose attempts at horse portraits were wretched caricatures, one and all. Still, they seemed to be the best, or rather the least bad, then obtainable. Mr. Wallace, however, was painfully cognizant of the lack of truthful portraits of horses, and was not less delighted than surprised when, one September day in 1878, a young man came into his office, and exhibited drawings that were so obviously truthful portraitures that they were a revelation in horse art. A rapid questioning as to whether he had drawn them, and where he had hidden his light so long, developed that the young genius was Herbert S. Kittredge, of Pennsylvania. He was immediately engaged, and his work in the Monthly was the first reputable horse portraiture in American literature. This gifted, self-educated genius died in May, 1881, long before his prime, and when his powers were daily developing. He was the forerunner of Whitney, Dickey, Morris, and others whose ability to faithfully portray horses is acknowledged to-day. He had not the mechanical aids—notably the camera—or processes which they so freely call into play, but in true artistic ability to draw faithfully, it is doubtful whether this undeveloped master was the inferior of any artist who has yet made horse portraiture a specialty in any country.
From year to year the contributory staff of Wallace’s Monthly increased, and always had in its membership a number of the leading breeders and students. For many years Mr. Wallace did practically all the editorial work himself, as in fact he did the registration work. But this gradually outgrew him, and soon his office staff began to increase. First he removed the office to 212 Broadway, not far from its first location. Then in May, 1887, the final move was made to commodious offices in the Stewart Building, at Broadway and Chambers Street, when the office staff had grown until more than a dozen assistants were employed on all the publications.
Among the earliest editorial assistants on the Monthly was C. T. Harris, later trotting editor of the Spirit of the Times, and still more recently of The Horse Review, a faithful and conscientious worker. Later Gurney O. Gue, a clever writer, and exceptionally well grounded in facts of pedigree and record, occupied a desk with the Monthly, and is now one of Mr. Dana’s “bright young men” on the Sun. In 1886 Leslie E. Macleod became associate editor, and continued in that capacity until 1890. He subsequently became managing editor of The Horseman, and later editorial writer of The Horse Review.
Of contributors, among the best known may be named, in addition to those enumerated as identified with the Monthly at the start, General B. F. Tracy, Allen W. Thompson, Samuel Hough Terry, “Mark Field” (Jas. M. Hiatt), “O. W. C.” (O. W. Cook), Thos. B. Armitage, “Mambrino” (H. D. McKinney), Otto Holstein, “Bill Arp,” “Aurelius” (Rev. T. A. Hendrick), A. B. Allen, “Fidelis,” Harvey W. Peck, Benjamin W. Hunt, “Roland” (Leslie E. Macleod), Major Campbell Brown, F. G. Smith, Judge M. W. Oliver, Prof. Chas. T. Luthy, Colonel F. G. Buford, John P. Ray, “Vision” (W. H. Marrett), H. C. Goodspeed, and others.
The last number of Wallace’s Monthly issued under Mr. Wallace’s editorship was published in July, 1891. It then passed to the American Trotting Register Company, at Chicago, and its degeneration was rapid, and in a few months it died for lack of brains. Robbed of its virility and of its purpose, without editorial direction, and aiming only to lead a harmless existence, and to say or do nothing to offend any one of a score of directors and hundreds of stockholders, it soon began to lead a useless existence, and dropped out of the notice of thinking men. It became the antithesis of all that it had been, and its end was a pitiable one for a publication with a history of sixteen years of fearless, honest, able direction.
Early in the history of the Monthly Mr. Wallace decided to drop running summaries, and give exclusive attention to trotting and pacing statistics. These grew so rapidly that they soon became burdensome, and an outlet became inevitable. Furthermore the adoption of the standard, depending as it did on records of performances, necessitated for its application a bureau of statistics, and these considerations and others—not the least of which was the recognition of “a long-felt want”—prompted Mr. Wallace to start “Wallace’s Year Book.” The first volume of this valuable annual was published in May, 1886, covering the performances for 1885, and contained, besides summaries of all races in which a heat was trotted in 2:50 or less, a 2:30 list for the year, and the Great Table of Trotters under their sires. The book contained 273 pages, was bound in flexible cloth, and sold at $1.
An improvement of the greatest value and importance was made in the Great Table in the first volume of the “Year Book.” This was the addition after the list of performers under each sire of the names of his sons that had sired performers, with the number to the credit of each, and of the performers out of his daughters. It furnished at a glance what a horse had done, not only of himself, but through his sons and daughters, and the Great Table thus improved became at once the gauge of trotting blood by which breeders everywhere estimated the comparative values of the different families and different sires. It was the most clear, condensed, yet comprehensive and perfect summing up of all the facts and experiences of trotting history imaginable, and so apparent is this fact that nothing original has ever been attempted to replace it, while all compilers, without exception, imitate it. The Great Table of itself would have carried any book to success.
The second volume of the “Year Book,” 330 pages, contained in addition to the same class of matter as its predecessor, tables of sires and dams, great brood mares, and fastest records. Still further improvements were made in every year. Volume VI., published for 1890, was a handsomely bound book of 642 pages, with summaries of all races in which heats were trotted or paced in 2:40 or better, list of best records slower than 2:40, complete 2:30 lists with extended pedigrees, the Great Table with the pedigrees of the sires extended, list of 2:20 trotters according to records, list of 2:20 trotters under their sires, list of great brood mares, sires of dams, mares the dams of producing sons or daughters, tables of fastest records, champion trotters from 1845 to 1890, champions at all ages from yearlings to five-year-olds, champion stallions, table of 2:20 pacers, and of 2:30 pacers under sires. No such comprehensive and valuable mass of statistics was ever arranged, and this volume was in itself a perfect encyclopedia of trotting literature.
No eulogy of the “Year Book” is necessary, for every farmer’s boy knew before it was three years old that it was indispensable to all horsemen. It instantly bounded into a place of authority, and to thousands who felt the “Register” out of reach it was at once “Stud Book” and “Racing Calendar,” and none of Mr. Wallace’s creations performed a wider public service, or attained a popularity so broadcast and sudden. The new work was peculiarly fortunate in having back of it the authority of the “Register,” and the prestige of a name that had already become world-wide as rendering everything it bore authoritative—but even allowing for these advantages the quick popular indorsement of the “Year Book” was an eloquent testimony to the wisdom of its plan.
The Wallace Trotting Register Company, with a capital of $100,000, was organized in 1889, and October 1, of that year, all the publications became the property of this company. The last chapter of this book details the final transfer to the American Trotting Register Association in 1891.
With the fortunes of the Wallace publications since that transfer it may be, perhaps, questioned whether this sketch has anything to do, and yet it would seem incomplete without the sequel. As already stated, Wallace’s Monthly degenerated to nothing and died. The “Year Book” has been emasculated until it is but a shadow, incomplete and unsatisfactory, of what it was, and is notoriously published at a loss. Its once great tables are cut from their complete state to be merely the tables of a single year, and where one complete “Year Book” was in the Wallace régime the only hand-book necessary, now the student must rummage through half a dozen, more or less, to ascertain the simplest series of facts. The standard has been mismanaged, revisions have been made and rescinded, and no advance has been made in the speed qualifications, though 2:20 trotters are as common to-day as 2:30 trotters were in 1891. In consequence, registration has fallen away, and from being a good purchase at $130,000 in 1891, the “Register” properties to-day are rated so dubiously far below par as to make the expression of their value in figures hardly possible. That a period of “hard times” came shortly after the purchase of the “Register” is true—but the practical wrecking of the Wallace publications cannot be accounted for solely on the theory of business depression.
Such in brief outline has been the story of the founding of these works, which in their own upbuilding helped incalculably to upbuild one of the nation’s great industries. The present works may be destroyed or pass away, but the true Wallace works cannot. Mr. Wallace’s works have a place in horse history, secure, unique, alone. Created, we might say from nothing, they each and all grew and prospered in his care and guidance, and became powers for good and auxiliaries of industry. If he is a benefactor who causes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before, how much the more is he whose labor and genius have enriched ten thousand farms, and been the most potent single influence in developing a productive industry the extent of which can only be estimated in millions. Mr. Wallace’s works will live after him. In speaking once on the transient nature of fame, a distinguished lawyer, a man of national reputation, said: “After I am gone I will be remembered as a successful lawyer among many other successful lawyers, but Mr. Wallace’s name will live as long as a horse exists on the earth.” We rarely judge contemporaries justly. It needs the softening perspective of time in which to lose the dimming prejudices of the present; and however much these works may be appreciated to-day, their true worth, what they accomplished, and the productive genius, purposeful industry, and plain, consistent honesty from which they were evolved will only be clearly seen and fully conceded by the historian of the future.