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KENTUCKY BREEDERS NEED ORGANIZATION. When we urged the organization of the thoroughbred breeders of the blue- grass some four years ago, foreseeing the necessity for sucli an organization to combat the conditions which led to the wave of hostile legislation to racing, we found it impossible to persuade the thoroughbred breeders to organize. We could not persuade them that through organization and eo-operation they could better the condition of racing by fighting the crooks and harpies who had gotten control of many tracks and the gamblers and poolroom keepers who made or racing a business, and a crooked business at that, instead of a sport; prevent i.arm being done by the good men unfamiliar with the sport, and hostile to it because of the conditions, under which it was being conducted. We now believe that had such an organization been perfected, witli thorough co-operation between the breeders of the blue grass, with funds raised by a nominal annual contribution of from to for eacli mare owned by each breeder, the Hughes bill in New York would not have been passed, but racing would have been continued in Louisiana and reestablished in .Missouri and Illinois by this time. But the independent, individual, "unbundled" blue grass breeder had no thought of co-operation or of compact organization, so that the only efforts made by them were spasmodic aud fruitless. Some gentlemen were sent to New York to appear before the committee considering the Hughes bill. The charge was made by members of the New York Jockey Club whether true or not we have never known that the Jockey Club paid the expenses for going. There was no representative of tlie Kentucky breeders who was authorized to visit New. Orleans to throw the weight of the producers of thoroughbreds against the condition under which racing was conducted there to educate the people of Louisiana, who were interested in the preservation of racing, to the benefits that would come from the enactment of laws similar to the Percy-Gray law of New YorR, after whicli the law creating the Racing Commission of Kentucky was modeled. It is too late now to prevent infinite damage having been done to racing, but it is not too late for such an organization to be formed and for it to be of great service, if the idea of co-operation, mutual assistance and mutual contributions to a common cause can be gotten into the heads or the thoroughbred breeders. Lexington. Ky., Herald.
