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: Here and There on the Turf Breeding Now and Ten Years Ago. Greater Prosperity of the Turf. Prospects of New Racing Fields. Some Notes of Warning. In some things ten years sometimes brings about great and radical changes. This is the case in thoroughbred breeding in the decade covering the years 1912-1922. Contrasting conditions in tLu industry now and in 1912 are so adequately portrayed in the Lexington Herald of a recent tbite that it 13 teproduced here: "Catesby Woodford, Bourlnu country breeder, decides to send consignment cf sixty-two thoroughbred:- to Germany for :Je. "So brief a sentence could not mvc graphically depict the difleience between the status of the thoroughbred industry today s nd the condition in which the breeding and racing of thoroughbreds were ten years ago, in 1912. Could one present a graphic contrast between the conditions that impelled Catesby Woodford to ship sixty-two thoroughbreds to Germany and the conditions that led to the sale of George Longs thoroughbreds ten days or two weeks ago, it would reveal not only the growth in public interest in breeding and racing thoroughbreds, but the difference in public sentiment that gives fair assurance of the permanency of racing. "In 1912 it seemed as if the thoroughbred industry would quickly become extinct in the United States. There is, so far as we know, no firm that was so successful in the breeding of thoroughbreds as the firm of Clay and Woodford, composed of CoL E. F. Clay of Runnymede and Col. Catesby Woodford of Raceland. The annals of the turf are bright with the history of horses bred by them and there were no studs that excelled the studs of those two noted breeders in blood and individuality. Thst Sir. Woodford should have felt impelled to follow the example of James B. Haggin, Thomas F. Carson and other noted bietders and scud hs tiJI.:ons and broodmares to foreign countries in the hope of securing even a most moderate price therefor, gives striking emphasis to the conditions that existed a brief decade ago. "Major Carson sent to South America a mare that produced the greatest horse that ever raced in South America, a horse that won over 00,000 and was sold for 00,000. The value of the progeny of the mares that were shipped from Kentucky in those famine years would today be beyond computation. "The change in racing conditions in the j United States is largely due to the leadership J of the racing men of Kentucky! The first step j toward the rehabilitation of racing was the j 2 . . 1 , : creation of the State Racing Commission, which h destroyed the control the bookmakers had fast- ; encd upon racing and drove them from the tracks. The next great step was the organi-. zation of the Kentucky Jockey Club. Due to 0 these two events, within a comparatively y short period stakes and purses have been in- - creased many fold, racing has been put on a a higher plane and the confidence of the public C in racing as a sport has been greatly augmented. p "The Kentucky Jockey Club made the Ken-1 1- tucky Derby a real stake race of a financial d value many times greater than any race for r three-year-olds previously run in this country. r. Due to that example, other associations gave e larger stakes, until in the year 1922 there are at least four 0,000 stakes for three-year-olds s the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Bel- - mont and the Latonia Special. The Kentucky Jockey Club also established the Latonia Championship and the Kentucky Jockey Club 3 Stakes; made the Kentucky Futurity a stake B race and thereby set an example that has been j emulated by the associations in Maryland, New 7 York, Canada and, to a large extent, in Cuba and Mexico. "There is ground to believe that racing will 1 be permanently re-established in Illinois, and 1 reason to hope that in the not distant future 2 it will be re-established in California, Missouri and New Jersey, from which states it t was properly driven because of the evil practices - which found their expression in Glou-- " cester and Guttenburg, and in the dens of iniquity, miscalled race tracks, around St. Louis. "Comparing 1812 with 1922, there is every r reason for those who love racing for those i . who have a passion for breeding horses as well 1 as for those who not only love it but make a L livelihood from it to feel great satisfaction; but there are possibilities of dangers inherent in the present situation that should be faced and overcome. "Whenever and wherever the monetary question . becomes the chief interest, either of those i who own horses or of those who own tracks, racing is in danger. If the financial value of the purses and the stakes becomes the sole thought of the owners of horses, or the profits from the tracks the chief concern of the owners of the tracks, racing will again be in danger as it was in 1912. "The Kentucky Jockey Club has rendered most valuable service. The Kentucky Racing Commission has been of inestimable service. But as yet there is not the spirit that must become thoroughly and widely dominant before racing is safe. There is still too much of the old spirit that controlled the tracks in the days when the chief interest of the owners of the tracks was to make money from that ownership, and the chief interest of the officials of the tracks was to prevent any adverse criticism by covering up, instead of exposing, any sore spot."
