wilderness
08-26-2009, 11:07 AM
Here's an excerpt from an article.
Considering today's SAME market for harness racing books?
It's difficult to imagine that that this excerpt/article was written and published seventy-nine years ago in 1930.
WITH the appearance of a new book of horse stories and the like by Secretary Gocher of the National Trotting Association comes the reflection that, after all, the market for a volume of that sort is very limited—much more so than anybody not having had experience in the field would imagine.
And there have been quite a number of such books. The first (which also is the best, and of which far more copies were sold than of any other like volume), was one supposed to have been written by Hiram Woodruff, who died in the late sixties, at which time he was head and shoulders above all the other drivers of trotting horses, and in addition was a man of such sterling character in all the relations of life that his name stood for a lot with everybody interested in horses. In many respects Hiram Woodruff was of the same type as Ed Geers, who came on the stage long after Woodruff was dead, but got into the spotlight and stayed there, as a trainer and driver and high class gentleman till the day he met tragic death on the race track through an accident to the horse he was driving. Geers also wrote a book about harness horses, but of that something will be said later on.
When Woodruff's book was published a much larger percentage of the population of this country was interested in harness racing than is at present the case. Everybody, in a manner of speaking, drove horses, and not only was a famous trotter known to every man, woman and child by reputation if not otherwise, but pictures of the steed were to be found everywhere—in livery stables, saloons, hotel lobbies and in private residences whose occupants were "horsey," as indeed who was not in those halcyon days?
Considering today's SAME market for harness racing books?
It's difficult to imagine that that this excerpt/article was written and published seventy-nine years ago in 1930.
WITH the appearance of a new book of horse stories and the like by Secretary Gocher of the National Trotting Association comes the reflection that, after all, the market for a volume of that sort is very limited—much more so than anybody not having had experience in the field would imagine.
And there have been quite a number of such books. The first (which also is the best, and of which far more copies were sold than of any other like volume), was one supposed to have been written by Hiram Woodruff, who died in the late sixties, at which time he was head and shoulders above all the other drivers of trotting horses, and in addition was a man of such sterling character in all the relations of life that his name stood for a lot with everybody interested in horses. In many respects Hiram Woodruff was of the same type as Ed Geers, who came on the stage long after Woodruff was dead, but got into the spotlight and stayed there, as a trainer and driver and high class gentleman till the day he met tragic death on the race track through an accident to the horse he was driving. Geers also wrote a book about harness horses, but of that something will be said later on.
When Woodruff's book was published a much larger percentage of the population of this country was interested in harness racing than is at present the case. Everybody, in a manner of speaking, drove horses, and not only was a famous trotter known to every man, woman and child by reputation if not otherwise, but pictures of the steed were to be found everywhere—in livery stables, saloons, hotel lobbies and in private residences whose occupants were "horsey," as indeed who was not in those halcyon days?