NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AMATEUR MEN The tone and the spirit of the great revival of aquatic sport that followed the Civil War was largely professional, and although amateur clubs were springing up all over the country, as yet no body of men dared to come forward and say who was an amateur ; in fact the sport was in a most anomalous condition ; every association had its own definition, and often clubs themselves worked out the status of their members by their own peculiar rules. The amateur oarsman rowed freely against professionals in open races; and in New England, where the sport was in a particu larly bad moral condition, the amateurs rowed with the professionals for money. Indeed, the average professional oarsman was a much better sort of person than the amateur who maintained his dishonest position only because he was good enough to beat most of the other amateurs, but not fast enough to have a chance with the better professional scullers.
The men who really had at heart the interests of rowing saw that the condition would drive every gentleman out of the sport, and that real amateur rowing would soon cease to exist. To feel the pulse of the rowing clubs, and to find out whether or not the amateur spirit had died, two pamphlets were widely circulated, —" Who is the Amateur? " by William B. Curtis of Chicago, and " What is an Amateur ?" by James Watson of New York. The little books found hearty endorsement among the bettor rowing men, and Mr. Curtis, thus encouraged, issued a call for a convention which should (I) establish a national definition of an amateur, (2) elect a committee to decide all disputed rowing questions, (3) establish a national amateur regatta, and (4) revise the laws of boat racing. Each club in the United States was invited to send delegates, and asked if they would, in the failure of representation, " accept the action of the convention as an authority to regulate the unsettled condition of the amateur question." The circular was none too well received, and out of the three hundred and fifty rowing clubs less than a hundred replies came back, while only twenty-seven clubs attended the first meeting on August 28, 1872, in De Garmo Hall, 14 Fifth Avenue, New York. The meeting was in the charge of John C. Babcock of the Nassau Boat Club and James Watson of the Atalanta Boat Club. The clubs represented were the Crescent,
Pennsylvania Barge, Malta, Quaker City, Un dine, and Vesper Clubs of Philadelphia, together with a representative of the Schuylkill Navy ; New York had delegates from the Atalanta, Athletic Club of Harlem, Friendship, Gulick, Nassau, and Sappho; the other clubs were Co lumbia, Brooklyn; Oneida, Jersey City ; Triton, Newark; Neptune, West New Brighton ; Ar gonauta, Bergen Point ; Palisade, Yonkers ; Mutual, Albany ; Riverside, Rochester; Vesper, Glenmont, New York ; Union, Boston ; Narra gansett, Providence ; Analostan, Washington, District of Columbia ; Chicago, Illinois; Excel sior, Detroit, and the Wah-wah-sum, Saginaw, Michigan.
The meeting discussed the situation very thoroughly, and the result was the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen to control amateur rowing, with the executive power vested in a board of nine men, three to be elected each year for a term of three years. This board was to pass upon the amateur standing of all oarsmen as well as to hold a regatta each year to deter mine the amateur championships. The definition of an amateur caused considerable debate ; one section wanted to adopt the English definition and to exclude all artisans and other manual laborers from the races, but this was not passed, and the definition agreed upon was that an amateur is " one who does not enter into an open competition or for a stake, public or admission money, or against any professional for a prize, or who has never taught, pursued, or assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises as a means of liveli hood, or who has not been employed in or about boats or on the water." This definition spread alarm among the " ama choors," and many clubs refused to acknowledge it, while the rowing writers nearly all criticised it as a harsh and unjust ruling. Of the twenty seven clubs that had attended the convention, only sixteen joined the new association, and it looked for a time as though it must be a failure. The clubs of the Schuylkill Navy and the better clubs of New York were the only supporters, with the Union Boat Club of Boston ; but the men at the head kept on, and, with the knowledge that they were right, had the support of the small element who believed in rowing as an amateur sport.