No one listened

[Rich P. Bingham]

Sound logic. I especially like the note on depreciation.

[perry kete]

Yes and when times are tough Dobbin can feed a family of 4 for a month... let's see your new fangled automobile do that.

[TRDxB2]

Tim, I apologize for my response - so I removed it.
And in the Future I will respect your views if you respect mine "The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either."

[TWrenn]

Once again my post got tossed aside by Frank's at the same time! This is like the 6th time it's happened. Wonder how many others have it happen to them? I give up.

Short of it was...old Dobbins gonna make a come-back. End of story.

[Rich P. Bingham]

. . .old Dobbins gonna make a come-back. End of story.

I'm ready !!

[Petrah Phyre]

Yes and when times are tough Dobbin can feed a family of 4 for a month... let's see your new fangled automobile do that.

Had this discussion with a girl in high-school. Motorcycle v. Horse. When I finally conceded that a horse was better, I let her know this was my reasoning. She did not appreciate my wit. Sorry Chris, but the logic is still there 40 years later. If I park my model T, do I still have to feed it?

[TXGOAT2]

It seems to me that Mr. Klein was beating a dead horse.

[TXGOAT2]

Horses emit methane, which upsets the polar bears. (Taxes must go up!)

[Norman Kling]

Petrah, yes you might have to feed your T if you forget to turn off the gas valve!
Norm

[Tadpole]

I hear the kick-back on a horse is considerably worse than on a T...

[TRDxB2]

I understand that Biden signed an Executive Order to create horse paths on our streets in order to create more high paying jobs

[John kuehn]

Yeah. They need those pick up buckets to pick up the b,:’. s*=-:’. wherever he goes when he makes a speech.

[TXGOAT2]

Oh, pooh! I mean, it's like, organic, and it's OK!

[JTT3]

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..

[Rich P. Bingham]

Not police, but as the author of this thread I regret the drift into political comment.

[Dilrod]

I listened to plenty of stories growing up from my grandfather, great uncles and elderly neighbors about farming with horses, many involving injuries and/or spooked runaways. They were happy to get rid of their hayburners, although most worked with them until the horses were too old, then they got a tractor.

[JohnM]

Then as in now, that is not a news or well informed opinion as it appears. If you've read it, it is easy to discern that it is an ad to sell harnesses.

[TXGOAT2]

Yep... another example of Big Harness out to get the littleman! Of course, a great many Americans were addicted to harness in those dark days, as well as being hooked on horses, thanks to just this sort of fakenews/propaganda.

[Been Here Before]

Well the press does try to warn us...in 1979 the press told of GM and later Ford developing a front wheel drive vehicle...what the Europen folks have (mini, saab, dkw). Now we are being told that the beloved Corvette is now going to be four wheel drive including batteries for electric power.

Good grief first the horse - and now the rear drive being replaced, with batteries to be included...

1898 "System Lohner–Porsche"

Lohner_Porsche.jpg (22.38 KiB) Viewed 4863 times

[otrcman]

Ron C's comments about replacing the horse with a tractor struck an old chord with me.

My Grandfather (1887-1963) farmed oranges all his life. I think he bought his first tractor in the late 1930's. But it seemed like it was his sons (also farmed the same property) always drove the tractors. In later years, one of my uncles said, "Yeah, Dad never was worth a damn driving a tractor, but he was amazing with a horse". In addition to letting the horses grow old, it might be that he was waiting for the boys to grow up enough to drive the tractor.

Another snippet from the past was my Mom saying that, "Your Grandfather didn't care much about the flowers that Grandma planted around the house. He just disked them under when he did the orchards". Looking back now, I suspect that it wasn't that he didn't like flowers; he just wasn't very accurate with the tractor.

Amazing how the little things you heard as a child keep coming back in your adult years with improved understanding.

[tdump]

sad news about the Corvette.Of course they quit making a decent looking corvette in 96 .
I am willing to bet if the right folks were to check it, the horse probably puts out as much emissions as the modern car.
Especially since they can't physically burp .

[TRDxB2]

HERD it on the INTERNET https://horses.extension.org/what-is-th ... utomobile/
The digestive process of horses produces far less methane than the digestive system of cattle and sheep. Cattle, sheep, and certain other grazing animals are known as ruminants because their gut contains a rumen. The rumen is a part of the ruminant’s digestive system that breaks down tough grasses found in natural pastures. In breaking down the tough grasses, the bacteria in the rumen release large amounts of methane gas. The ruminant animal then belches out the methane gas.
The horse is not a ruminant. The digestive system of a horse cannot break down the tough grasses as a cow or sheep can. The horse has a single stomach which can only deal with easily digestible carbohydrates in grasses. Horses are selective grazers and will not eat the tougher grasses because they cannot digest them. Horses simply produce less methane in their digestive system.
So the horse’s carbon footprint is considerably smaller than an automobile’s.
BUT is one horse equal to a 160horse power car? NO automobile "hp" is not equivalent to the number horses to do an amount of work. A common horse can produce 10-14hp

[otrcman]

Another horse & Grandpa insight:

My Aunts and Uncles used to commiserate over the fact that Grandpa never looked for traffic before he pulled out onto the county road. In retrospect, I'll bet he developed his habit from 50 years of riding or driving a horse. Horse did the looking and listening for him. And besides, the only thing that might be coming was another horse.

His children didn't have the horse experience to understand his thought process.

Dick

[John kuehn]

If I remember there were some adds used in the same era that had early automobiles in them portraying them going ahead of horses. And of course being done in such a way to show improvement in transportation and etc.
Seems some were from Ford and others and again being done in a tasteful way. They were trying to be politically correct for the time.

[JohnM]

Today we call it politically correct, it's really just good business. Why would you insult your most potential customer?

[Rich P. Bingham]

Allow me a rant. A horseman I respect once said, "All a horse wants is to eat, and be left alone. " The human being is not much different. In eating well, and "being left alone" (i.e., being allowed to gratify himself), he is most interested in achieving both goals with a minimum of effort.

It's great to watch the movies where John Wayne yanks his horse around by the reins, and buy in to the romance of stage coaches thundering down dusty roads behind eight galloping horses, but the truth is that there were no more accomplished horsemen who truly loved and understood the artistry of it all than there are today. It was inevitable that the obvious speed and efficiency of vehicles powered by internal combustion would multiply economic advantages far beyond the reach of old methods dependent upon muscle and bone.

It's laughable how in conversation, the first "realist" comments on those "thrilling days of yesteryear" by folks essentially unsure which end the oats go in, always seems to focus upon the scatological, the while ignoring (by choice) the pollution and degradation of the natural order which our "progress" has wrought.

[TXGOAT2]

Horse-drawn urban America was a very different place than today's urban America. Especially in Summer.

[tdump]

Come to think of it,getting behind a car with a clogged catalytic convertor is probably about the same as being behind a horse after a good meal.

[TRDxB2]

In NYC but not Peoria

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Used for Crowd control

[Bill Dizer]

If you want to experience the no car, horses and bicycles only lifestyle, go to Mackinac Island, Michigan in the summer. While they clean the poop up quickly during the day, and scrub the roads overnight, there is still essence of horse lingering along with the smell of fudge. Fun to visit!

[TXGOAT2]

Mackinac will be transitioning to electric horses by no later than 2027.

[TXGOAT2]

NYC used to dump many tons of manure into the East River every night. I have an old 1910 agriculture textbook that gives figures. I'll see if I can find it. Out in the country, manure was an asset. In larger towns and cities, it was a curse. Between manure, smoke, human offal, and packing houses and associated pens and lots, you could have smelled Chicago a hundred miles downwind in August, 1900.

[Rich P. Bingham]

Come to think of it,getting behind a car with a clogged catalytic convertor is probably about the same as being behind a horse after a good meal.

Um, no. It's not. Your meal, or the horse's ??