August 16, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Miles C. Collier tells the story of how horses continued to play a central role in the urban fabric of America even after the advent of the automobile...and why the car was seen as a godsend when it came into widespread use.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next to
story from Miles C. Collier, the founder of the REVS
Institute in Naples, Florida, a former race car driver and
an expert on all things transportation, heck, all things automotive. Today,
Miles shares with us the story of why cars might
have saved the city from the four legged beasts known
(00:34):
as horses.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What people don't realize is we think of the Industrial Revolution,
and we think of the advent of steam, and it's
often described as the age of steam, as well as
possibly the age of electricity, because street trolley cars and
electric light bulbs and things were all invented in the
late nineteenth century. But in fact, if you look at
(00:59):
the data, that period was really the age of the horse.
The horse was omnipresent. The horse was critical for the
working out of modern industrialized society. Now why is that
Because if we want to think about steam and electricity
as being wholesale forms of energy, there were no retail
(01:23):
sources other than the horse. So a trainload of goods
could arrive at the station of a city and it
came over hundreds of miles and it was hundreds of
tons of stuff. But then you had the problem of
getting it from the depot to the doorstep, and that
required individualized or retail transportation to do it, and there
(01:47):
was no other retail transportation other than the horse. So
it's counterintuitive, But as steam and electricity became more and
more prevalent in the eighteen eighties, nineties, and nineteen hundreds
and nineteen tens, the population of horses living in the
(02:10):
urban fabric increased. Concomitately, totally counterintuitive, The highest population of
working horses in the United States was in nineteen ten.
There were twenty six million working horses. And I'm not
talking about my friend Flicka sticking his head over the
(02:30):
fence that you give two cubes of sugar to. I'm
talking about horses that lived in high rise stables in
the middle of the urban fabric and that were required
to keep society going. And the impact that horses had
on society was overwhelming, and because of their presence, viewed
(02:54):
in general by society as incredibly damaging, destructive, environment mentally destructive,
dangerous to life and limb bad for human morality, and
so on and so on. In other words, the horse
was as vilified in nineteen ten as the automobile is
today that I found absolutely fascinating. Now, let's consider one
(03:16):
of the most impactful aspects of the horse economy, and
that was if you have twenty six million working horses,
and boy did they work. They were viewed by the
public in those days as biological machines, okay, which is
just we shudder to think of that. But they were
not viewed as being sentient, They were not viewed as
(03:37):
having feelings. They were literally biological machines. And each and
every individual biological machine required five acres of fodder producing
agricultural land in order to be sustained for one year.
Let's do the math. Twenty six million times five is
(03:57):
one hundred and thirty million acres under cultivation to just
support the biological machine, the horse working in cities. What
was the manifestation of that? Look at photographs of New
England in the eighteen nineties and nineteen hundreds, and you
will see that the green hills of Vermont or the
(04:19):
white Hills of New Hampshire haven't got a tree on
them anywhere. And if you go there today, you walk
in the woods, and you can go way deep in
the woods, and all of a sudden you'll come across
a stone wall. Well, those are the stone walls that
bounded the fields that were necessary to support the horse.
(04:39):
So one of the major impacts of the horse in
the late nineteenth century was the denudation of forests throughout
the world, or at least around the developed world. And
with all of the negative impacts that has of courses
obviously defecated and urinated all over the streets, and indeed
(05:00):
they also had the bad taste to die when they
were improperly treated or came to the end of their
just totally exhausted. So it was a living in the
city with horses cheeked by jowls meant that the infestation
of rats, flies, sparrows, fleas, and all kinds of noxious
(05:21):
vermin was ever present. You know. One of the problems
back in the day was was tetanus okay, which comes
to you know, bacteria that would inhabit the gut of
horses and then there would be horseshoe nails that would
(05:42):
come out and people would get scratched or cut by
something that was contaminated with tetanus bacteria. And the next thing,
you know, lock jaw as it was called in the day,
was a real problem, but it was just a you know,
an urban sanitation problem, and the only thing that they
had to clean up all those waste products was more
(06:02):
horses pulling more wagons. Now, of course, you know, you
hang bags behind the horse and all that kind of stuff,
and it all helps a little bit. But if we
think of it as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
equivalent to carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen, there's nothing
you can do about it. One early commentator remarked that
(06:25):
I don't know where he got these numbers, but something
to the effect that sixty or seventy percent of all
the dust that you inhale on urban streets is dried
horse manure. Oh, thank you very much. That sounds pretty fun. So,
you know, as I say, the automobile was seen as
(06:46):
a major public health benefit. Tetanus was going to go away.
You weren't going to be breathing dried and the horse manure.
The car gave off a virtually no noxious fumes whatsoever.
It was silent, It didn't stock art and startled and panic.
It was just seen as a In fact, it was
seen as a major health benefit for the simple reason
(07:08):
that you could take it and go out to the
countryside and breathe all that wonderful ozone out there and
enjoy the sunshine. And that's so it makes sense that
the horse was not looked at as a great thing.
And as I say, the parallel to the automobile I
find rather fascinating. And what we take from that is
(07:31):
if we are sufficiently dependent on a technology that it
becomes overwhelming, and there are one point four billion automobiles
operating in the world today. When that technology becomes overwhelming,
of course it has negative influences. What the heck did
you think was going to happen? So, yes, the automobile
(07:51):
has all kinds of negatives. But interestingly, in nineteen hundred
it was seen as a savior. It was seen as
reducing urban noise. No more iron tires, clip clop of
iron horseshoes on cobblestrong streets, no groaning of non ball
bearing axles on wagons, no cracking of whips, no screaming
(08:13):
of teamsters. All was going to be silent with this
new abidable servant that never started at an umbrella or
at a blowing sheet of newspaper. And the problem was
back in those days. Horses they're flight animals, and they
will startle and they will run away. Can you imagine
a horse dragging a carriage running away in full blown
(08:35):
panic through a highly crowded urban city during rush hour?
How many people died? Lots? So the horse was a major,
major problem and the automobile was a major, major savior.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monta Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Miles Collier under of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida.
He's a former race car driver and an expert on
all things transportation, all things automotive. And what a beautiful
story about change and about technological and industrial change. Who
(09:15):
would have thought in the beginning of the twentieth century
that our biggest problem was waste and problems that came
from the horse. But indeed it was true. And all
of that acreage you needed in order to supply the
horse with well just his deli sustenance, and incomes the
automobile to end lots of the disease that got spread
from all of that horse maneur and all of that
(09:37):
noise and all of that sound. And now today one
point four billion automobiles comes with its own set of problems.
Whatever the next advance is will come with it. That's
the one thing we've learned from all of this, the
story of how the automobile saved our cities from horses.
Here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Up next to
story from Miles C. Collier, the founder of the REVS
Institute in Naples, Florida, a former race car driver and
an expert on all things transportation, heck, all things automotive. Today,
Miles shares with us the story of why cars might
have saved the city from the four legged beasts known
(00:34):
as horses.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What people don't realize is we think of the Industrial Revolution,
and we think of the advent of steam, and it's
often described as the age of steam, as well as
possibly the age of electricity, because street trolley cars and
electric light bulbs and things were all invented in the
late nineteenth century. But in fact, if you look at
(00:59):
the data, that period was really the age of the horse.
The horse was omnipresent. The horse was critical for the
working out of modern industrialized society. Now why is that
Because if we want to think about steam and electricity
as being wholesale forms of energy, there were no retail
(01:23):
sources other than the horse. So a trainload of goods
could arrive at the station of a city and it
came over hundreds of miles and it was hundreds of
tons of stuff. But then you had the problem of
getting it from the depot to the doorstep, and that
required individualized or retail transportation to do it, and there
(01:47):
was no other retail transportation other than the horse. So
it's counterintuitive, But as steam and electricity became more and
more prevalent in the eighteen eighties, nineties, and nineteen hundreds
and nineteen tens, the population of horses living in the
(02:10):
urban fabric increased. Concomitately, totally counterintuitive, The highest population of
working horses in the United States was in nineteen ten.
There were twenty six million working horses. And I'm not
talking about my friend Flicka sticking his head over the
(02:30):
fence that you give two cubes of sugar to. I'm
talking about horses that lived in high rise stables in
the middle of the urban fabric and that were required
to keep society going. And the impact that horses had
on society was overwhelming, and because of their presence, viewed
(02:54):
in general by society as incredibly damaging, destructive, environment mentally destructive,
dangerous to life and limb bad for human morality, and
so on and so on. In other words, the horse
was as vilified in nineteen ten as the automobile is
today that I found absolutely fascinating. Now, let's consider one
(03:16):
of the most impactful aspects of the horse economy, and
that was if you have twenty six million working horses,
and boy did they work. They were viewed by the
public in those days as biological machines, okay, which is
just we shudder to think of that. But they were
not viewed as being sentient, They were not viewed as
(03:37):
having feelings. They were literally biological machines. And each and
every individual biological machine required five acres of fodder producing
agricultural land in order to be sustained for one year.
Let's do the math. Twenty six million times five is
(03:57):
one hundred and thirty million acres under cultivation to just
support the biological machine, the horse working in cities. What
was the manifestation of that? Look at photographs of New
England in the eighteen nineties and nineteen hundreds, and you
will see that the green hills of Vermont or the
(04:19):
white Hills of New Hampshire haven't got a tree on
them anywhere. And if you go there today, you walk
in the woods, and you can go way deep in
the woods, and all of a sudden you'll come across
a stone wall. Well, those are the stone walls that
bounded the fields that were necessary to support the horse.
(04:39):
So one of the major impacts of the horse in
the late nineteenth century was the denudation of forests throughout
the world, or at least around the developed world. And
with all of the negative impacts that has of courses
obviously defecated and urinated all over the streets, and indeed
(05:00):
they also had the bad taste to die when they
were improperly treated or came to the end of their
just totally exhausted. So it was a living in the
city with horses cheeked by jowls meant that the infestation
of rats, flies, sparrows, fleas, and all kinds of noxious
(05:21):
vermin was ever present. You know. One of the problems
back in the day was was tetanus okay, which comes
to you know, bacteria that would inhabit the gut of
horses and then there would be horseshoe nails that would
(05:42):
come out and people would get scratched or cut by
something that was contaminated with tetanus bacteria. And the next thing,
you know, lock jaw as it was called in the day,
was a real problem, but it was just a you know,
an urban sanitation problem, and the only thing that they
had to clean up all those waste products was more
(06:02):
horses pulling more wagons. Now, of course, you know, you
hang bags behind the horse and all that kind of stuff,
and it all helps a little bit. But if we
think of it as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
equivalent to carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen, there's nothing
you can do about it. One early commentator remarked that
(06:25):
I don't know where he got these numbers, but something
to the effect that sixty or seventy percent of all
the dust that you inhale on urban streets is dried
horse manure. Oh, thank you very much. That sounds pretty fun. So,
you know, as I say, the automobile was seen as
(06:46):
a major public health benefit. Tetanus was going to go away.
You weren't going to be breathing dried and the horse manure.
The car gave off a virtually no noxious fumes whatsoever.
It was silent, It didn't stock art and startled and panic.
It was just seen as a In fact, it was
seen as a major health benefit for the simple reason
(07:08):
that you could take it and go out to the
countryside and breathe all that wonderful ozone out there and
enjoy the sunshine. And that's so it makes sense that
the horse was not looked at as a great thing.
And as I say, the parallel to the automobile I
find rather fascinating. And what we take from that is
(07:31):
if we are sufficiently dependent on a technology that it
becomes overwhelming, and there are one point four billion automobiles
operating in the world today. When that technology becomes overwhelming,
of course it has negative influences. What the heck did
you think was going to happen? So, yes, the automobile
(07:51):
has all kinds of negatives. But interestingly, in nineteen hundred
it was seen as a savior. It was seen as
reducing urban noise. No more iron tires, clip clop of
iron horseshoes on cobblestrong streets, no groaning of non ball
bearing axles on wagons, no cracking of whips, no screaming
(08:13):
of teamsters. All was going to be silent with this
new abidable servant that never started at an umbrella or
at a blowing sheet of newspaper. And the problem was
back in those days. Horses they're flight animals, and they
will startle and they will run away. Can you imagine
a horse dragging a carriage running away in full blown
(08:35):
panic through a highly crowded urban city during rush hour?
How many people died? Lots? So the horse was a major,
major problem and the automobile was a major, major savior.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monta Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Miles Collier under of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida.
He's a former race car driver and an expert on
all things transportation, all things automotive. And what a beautiful
story about change and about technological and industrial change. Who
(09:15):
would have thought in the beginning of the twentieth century
that our biggest problem was waste and problems that came
from the horse. But indeed it was true. And all
of that acreage you needed in order to supply the
horse with well just his deli sustenance, and incomes the
automobile to end lots of the disease that got spread
from all of that horse maneur and all of that
(09:37):
noise and all of that sound. And now today one
point four billion automobiles comes with its own set of problems.
Whatever the next advance is will come with it. That's
the one thing we've learned from all of this, the
story of how the automobile saved our cities from horses.
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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