Throughout American history, there were few moments outside the home that were not shared between people and horses. One might say that we've been… stuck like glue! Horses provided us with transport, accompanied us into battle, and they were indispensable partners down on the farm, especially when agriculture accounted for the vast majority of economic output.

Even when they weren’t actually present, horses were rarely far from man's consciousness. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the streets of America's fast-growing cities were littered with piles of steaming horse manure as each urbanized animal produced up to 35 pounds a day. The average streetcar horse lived just 4 years and was often quite abused. Slipping on wet cobblestones could cause severe injury.

An injured or dead 1300 pound animal can cause quite a traffic jam. New York removed 15,000 dead horses from city streets in 1880 and Chicago carted away 9,202 as late as 1916.

Although not as serious a problem as manure and carcass removal, noise pollution was a constant annoyance. Benjamin Franklin complained of the "thundering of coaches, chariots, chaises, wagons, drays and the whole fraternity of noise" which assailed the ears of Philadelphians. Boston and New York both passed noise ordinances banning traffic from certain streets to buffer hospitals and legislative chambers. In 1866, the Atlantic Monthly described Broadway as clogged with "dead horses and vehicular entanglements," and in that year the mistreatment of the urban horse led to the establishment of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As late as the 1890s, one journalist noted that the sounds of traffic on busy New York streets made conversation nearly impossible.

Piles of pony poop and expired equines proved to be a fertile breeding ground for flies. The spread of infectious diseases were a much greater concern than odors and noise. By the turn of the century public health officials had largely accepted the bacterial theory of disease and had identified the fly as the main culprit. Street sweeping was now a major urban expense. It became increasingly obvious that the most effective way to eliminate the "typhoid fly" was to eliminate the horse.

NECESSITY: Mother of Invention

For all its supposed sophistication, life in the burgeoning city was a smelly, noisy breeding ground for life-threatening disease. I, myself, actually lived in a horse-filled Amish town called Bremen, Indiana for several years in the early 60's. Buggies full of rosie-cheeked Amish children were everywhere and, trust me, horse pollution can be a very real concern around town.