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t C . NO-FIGURE AMERICAN BLOODSTOCK c Valuable and Famous American. Lines Forced Into Neglect and Obscurity by Propaganda in Favor of the Bruce Lowe Figure Family Delusion. BY SALVATOR. Just previous to the close of the great Saratoga meeting the "peak" of the racing season in this country a. list of the winners of the two-year-old : stakes there was presented to us, our attention was s called to he fact that "every one of them" belonged to the "figure" families, and those who do j not believe in the Bruce Lowe gospel were invited j 5 to think it over,. -with the admonition that "facts I are stubborn things." However, they can also be decidedly ironical. " Our "figure" propagandist in preparing his preachment neglected to wait until the Saratoga meeting , was over and, in particular, until the top-liner . among its two-year-old events,, the Hopeful Stakes, of an importance and value equal almost to all the ; rest combined, had been decided. When the result I was in it toppled over his card palace, for the . winner, Leonardo II., comes from a native American i no-figure family, his dam Ethel Pace, by Troubadour, . going back to old Maria West. In addition , thereto, his sire, Sweep, is a son of Bon Brush, another scion of the same native tribe. And still again, Sweeps dam, Pink Domino, was by Domino, whose -dam, Mannie Gray, was by Enquirer, another . no-figure pariah. When we add the fact that on the same day Leonardo II. triumphed. Exterminator won the , Saratoga Cup, the premier event of the same meeting . for older performers, and that he, too, is a member of a native no-figure family, we have another "stubborn thing" to consider.: Life, I suppose, on the turf and off, is chiefly composed of .facts, those items- so dear to the soul of Mr. Gradgrind. But in themselves they- count for far less than the- way in which .they are construed and connected. Some people can take any kind of a fact, no matter what, and make it turn out a song or a sermon at their own sweet will. Others, who measure everything by rule of thumb, interpret one only in the starkest and most literal way, unmindful of the truth larger than any fact that "the letter killeth, the spirit maketh to live." Still others will behold one through a mist of illusion which transforms it into a castle in Spain. And so on through a gamut as wide as the world and interminable as eternity. Viewing the "figure-fact" regarding the two-year-old stake winners at Saratoga, not in isola- ; tion, but as a product of its factors, one may well ask if it had not been surprising for any other to have been the. case? And if this be queried, I will refer to another fact developed during that same Saratoga meeting. As I scarce need to. remark, it is at Saratoga, and during this meeting, that the Fasig-Tiptou Co. conducts a series of auction sales" at which the cream of the yearlings annually pro- . dueed in the United States are offered to the high- est bidder. As I write there lie before me the catalogues of all but one of these sales. Scrutinizing them I find that they include some 20S differ- , ont yearlings-; and, classifying their pedigrees, I j find that of these 25S yearlings but twenty-four , trace to native American non-figure families in the direct female line. That is to say, there were about .eleven "figurc"-bred yearlings to every non- . figure one. This indicates clearly the lines along which breeding is now being conducted in this j country. Iu one of these catalogues, which lists forty-one yearlings, only two are from non-figure families. In another, listing forty-four, there are . jnly three. In another, listing thirty-four, there J is only one. j Now, in the face of such conditions as these, , is it any wonder that "figure-family" representa- t Ives won alL.but one of the Saratoga two-year-old , stakes? I think not particularly as foals- from - non-figure dams are discounted in. advance by all . the pundits and propagandists, arc discriminated j against by a host of turfmen who have become , thoroughly saturated with the figure-fantasy and, J in short, from the day they are foaled even be- j fore that, indeed labor under a heavy handicap. HARM DONE OUR AMERICAN FAMILIES. j Nobody who has not studied or observed events as , they have occurred and accumulated into history 1 i behind us can have any idea of the mischief .which the Bruce Lowe propaganda . has. worked, to. our. native , American, families, which a few generations ago, , were furnishing us with so large a percentage 1 of our best performers of all ages. There are two i , things, in . especial, that have worked powerfully I i toward this result. One was the disqualification, i from- the pages of the English Stud Book, of all 1 horses with the- native American "stain." The ! second was when,- a dozen or so years ago, racing went on the rocks temporarily, owing to adverse 1 legislation, and values dropped almost to the bottom of the bottomless pit of depreciation.- Breeders then "weeded out" itheir studs with an unsparing hand, and, in so doing, followed the advice of the Bruce i Lowe theorists largely, discarding their non-figure j 1 mares in favor of the figure ones In this way , j J there have been wiped out of- Americas studs, all but a small remnant of the class of mares of which a j formerly they so largely consisted and by the use of which so many breeding triumphs had been won. Never was there a more instructive example of i what fashion and propaganda can achieve than this i instance affords. And back of it, of course, there i was an adroitly camouflaged commercial purpose. v Our good cousins across the water; while gathering i their garments about them so that they be not 5 contaminated by any American blood-stains, were C at the same time, and have remained, as they al- J -i ways will remain, keen for the American dollar. It s served them well to discredit the Yankees produc- 1 tions in his own eyes and, at the same time, to I boost their own. It was a game in which "both ends were worked against the middle," and, still in , the language of the street, "to the limit" with -not even a "blue sky law to indicate what the , limit was. And the grotesque, and pathetic part a of it all is that the patient who has so incredibly j bled himself is still complacently opening his j veins and letting out the blood until he has. reached j that condition which the pedigrees of the two- year-old Saratoga stake winners and the yearlings j; sold there last summer Indicate. Mr. W. S. Vosburgh, in his always urbane but quietly , effective way. said in one of his essays contributed to Daily Racing Form last spring that " the "Figure System," from his point of view, was a grand thing to sell horses with and nothing I more. There was a world of truth of "facts" in this statement, let fall en passant by Americas C foremost authority upon the thoroughbred horse. I1 As a matter of "fact" they ought to build a monu- I ment to Bruce Lowe at Newmarket higher than the spire of Canterbury Cathedral. Inndeed, a million might fitly be spent upon it, for he has been the means of diverting into the pockets of British breeders streams of American gold that otherwise would never have found its; way there, And here another ironic "fact" obtrudes itself namely, that C Bruce Lowe himself like many another famed inventor, died, as he had lived during the latter part of his life, almost a pauper! 1 When: one looks back over the past history of 1 the American turf and analyzes the pedigrees of a host of the great performers which graced it, all r; bred outside the figure formula, one cannot repress a feeling of mingled sadness and chagrin when he surveys the scene today and notes that these fami- -lies, with a few lingering exceptions, have been "weeded out" and such of their representatives as still persist are apologized for and discriminated u against. Though at the same time--they are producing, despite the handicaps and obstacles that be- set them, such cup horses as Exterminator and two- olds as Leonardo II. s
