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A CANADIAN VIEW OF RACING. Kotblag reveals the wave of prosperity or the wave .0 bard times ill such 11 startling manner as horse breeding. We all remember, some of us with painful memories, shoal fifteen or eighteen years ago wbea the horse was of little ■ore ralne than the common farm cow. In those dark days good !:• rses were put on thi market and sold down as low as S75. 985, S40, !f:!4 and even S20. and in many cases were -riven away in order to avoid the expense .0 1 ling them. When one reads the newspapers of today and 1 r that horses are being sold for , 4io each, |5,00O each. 0.4MHt each, 5,000 each and even .v.-.o. uNj eaeh, with an offer the other day of ¥75. 000 for a trotting hers., one begins to wonder if they are not dreaming of the oU days f 100 00 .a-00 for the best of them. Dalmatian was sold the other day Tor a secret price of stu oco or o,0oo. Basbtl was sidd the other dav on a cablegram for . :;o.oim and Basbtl is only a tillv. At a public sale nieren h:irs. s soM for over 2,000, one of the best in the bun 4] bringing ,100. At another public aaetlon ale the Brat live horses sold for over .0O0, tl, e beat "i f them going for .*7.ooo and another tor 1910.sh,300. The total lot at that sale bmnghl 0.00:1. or an average of ,000 a pi ■. The remarkable feat are of it was thai these sales ■ ere held in New York, where lietting on races has been made illegal -it looks as if the horse buyers figured it out that there were other places in the world In race baUSjea outside "f New York. But the big prices Bsc horses are not confined to the United States. Canada has had its share of the baoaa. New ahe question arises: What baa brougbi B bent this most satisfactory state of affairs, so far as the horse business is concerned. We think thai there run be hut one answer to that and that is that the price of horses has steadily increased during the past years on account of that Increased interest taked in races and horse shows. It ea_ nol be argued that it was on aci-ount of tin fart thai own horses were being used for tratiie am! pleasure, as the aUtOaaahOe, the trolley car, the B-Otoreycie and bicycle have all entered the an na once oeeapied exclusively by the bsrae and each of them has gained a large number of votaries. Tic trotter, pacer ami nmidng horse has received nearly all iis Impetus from the race track. The ranufaig horse or thoroughbred is very valuable for croaslug wiiii ordinary marcs to produce hunter or stable horbea, but the real power behind the throne that uives impetus for the bleeding of them Is lot racing purposes. Il at aim.-. si iinpnssihle to ftgnre out the iiumeiise mount of money invested in the running, trotting and pacing horses of today. Including the numerous racing plants, the innumerable atables and the breeding establishments and the numerous farms devoted to the raising and feeding of thousands of horses to be prepared for the races. There is no other department of agricultural Industry that lias nearly so many men employed as that of horse breeding and yet there ate men, both in the United States anil Canada, weo think that they are called by tiod and elected by the nation to do all they can to ruin papers, to destroy this great industry. There is no other branch id the agricultural Industry where so many men are employed as there is in the breeding of trotting and running horses and in the buying and selling of these horses and yet we have men. Innumerable men, who never contribute a dollar bill to the building up of the nation, or 10 any productive work, who will stand on the platform, or use their Influence through tie- newspapers to destroy this gajeal industry. The one consolation about these men and their fads is that they are of short duration. Most of them are grafters ami self -seekers and the people soon foul them our and the places that know them today will knew them no more. Industries of value and Institutions of merit will stand the storm of ages, while men and their fads are as llies on the wheil of time. They are here today and tomorrow they are gone forever. The race track and the lleet-footed horse is as old as the world and they will exist lo the end of lime. The iMOfcntaker may disappear and his place be taken by the parl-mutuel machine, but speculation on hiuse races will probably go on forever, while horse breeding and horse training will last while the world lasts. nadlan Sportsman.
