thletic Union. The last named acted as
secretary of the commission, and during three years conducted an
extensive correspondence in collecting data, as well as following up
various clues that might prove useful in the determination of the
question at issue. When all available evidence had been gathered the
whole matter was compiled and laid before the special commission, which
spent several months in going over the mass of data and argument.

Briefs were addressed to the commission, by Chadwick in support of his
contention that Base Ball was developed from the English game of
"Rounders," and by his opponents, who claimed a purely American origin
for the national game.

The similarity of the two games, Chadwick contended, was shown in the
fact that "Rounders" was played by two opposing sides of contestants,
on a special field of play, in which a ball was pitched or tossed to an
opposing batsman, who endeavored to strike the ball out into the field,
far enough to admit of his safely running the round of the bases before
the ball could be returned, so as to enable him to score a run, the side
scoring the most runs winning the game. This basic principle of
"Rounders," Chadwick contended, is identical with the fundamental
principle of Base Ball.

[Illustration: BASE BALL ON NATIVE SOIL]

Those who maintained the strictly American origin of Base Ball were
unwilling to admit a connection with any game of any other country,
except in so far as all games of ball have a certain similarity and
family relationship. It was pointed out that if the mere tossing or
handling of a ball, or striking it with some kind of stick, could be
accepted as the origin of our game, it would carry it far back of
Anglo-Saxon civilization--beyond Rome, beyond Greece, at least to the
palmy days of the Chaldean Empire. It was urged that in the early
'forties of the nineteenth century, when anti-British feeling still ran
high, it is most unlikely that a sport of British origin would have been
adopted in America. It was recalled that Col. James Lee, who was one of
the moving spirits in the original effort to popularize Base Ball in New
York City, and an organizer of the Knickerbocker Ball Club in 1845, had
asserted that the game of Base Ball was chosen instead of and in
opposition to Cricket on the very ground that the former was a purely
American game, and because of the then existing prejudice against
adopting any game of foreign invention. The champ