Paid for the horse $320 Freight 12 Bank discount 420 Board 60 Paid cappers 150 Groom 55 Feed 18 1,035 ---- ------ Profit $1,765
Now that’s what Tummy would call “financial acumen.” I bought a horse at an auction sale for $320, shipped him to another county in the same state and sold him for $2,800. It gradually dawned on me that there was more money in the selling than there was in the breeding and raising. Tummy was a wise boy, but I was beginning to learn a few things myself.
The same paper published the following, October 1, 1905:
The easy money I made on the sale of Les Epinards as narrated in the last issue, emboldened me to try a new dodge. A fair was being held in Winnipeg. While there I fell in with a horse breeder who had a number of Percherons on his farm, some distance to the east of that town. At his invitation I visited the farm and was somewhat surprised at the prices he quoted for fine-looking stallions. One two-year-old of necessary size and shape he offered me for $300. It was not any part of my business to tell him who I was, and I am inclined to think he took me for a farmer from the states. In the horse peddling business the less people know about you the better and easier it is for the peddler, so I never corrected him. I bought the horse, imported him across the imaginary line dividing the two countries duty free by making affidavit he was to be used exclusively for breeding purposes and by satisfying the authorities with the pedigree furnished me by the Canadian that he was a pure-bred animal.
With the rich selected feed my groom knew how to mix, helped along with artistic grooming and care, Transmigrator—the name he was to be known by—waxed fat and sleek. I could truthfully say he was imported, but as he was a bit shy on prize winnings I could not harp much on that score. Blue ribbons were cheap, however, and when we decked him out with a supply of them, he looked as fit as the majority of horses I sold for certain importers. Inasmuch as his pedigree was written in English, and certified to by officials with easy names to pronounce, I resolved to give the company a bargain, and put his price at $2,500. I always did believe in being generous. I might just as easily have sold for $3,000, but I threw off $500 on account of the understandable pedigree.