Horses In The 19th Century Essay

Words: 796
Pages: 4

The faithful horse, now kept in the 21th century mainly for sports and recreation was the foremost means of transportation up until the 20th century. Having the horse as the primary means of transportation created various problems. These problems included; dirty streets, air contaminant harmful to health, terrible odors, noise and street congestion. These problems were so appalling that in the twentieth century, major writers and scientists demanded that horses be banished from American cities. The horse was viewed as an economic liability, an insult to cleanliness and an unnecessary burden to human life. Of course these cries came after the dream of the horseless carriage appeared to be possible with the introduction of the steam engine and …show more content…
Householders were also mandated to keep their doorways clean. In the mid nineteenth century, New York introduced street sweeping machines and self-loading carts and most cities employed street cleaners. Street cleaning efforts by the city were mostly motivated by the fear of the wide spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid, small pox or yellow fever. These diseases were caused by the house fly which found solace in horse dung and dead horses in the streets. Aside from the fear of disease, street cleaning was viewed by the city council as a waste of resources. However, some cities, like New York devised a way to profit from street cleaning by selling the manure as fertilizer. As a result of this drive to profit (or at least recoup costs) by selling the manure, there was a general deterioration of sanitary conditions as other garbage collection, which were not providing as must profit to the city, were neglected. The manure then became contaminated with other city filth rendering it unfit to be used as manure. Thus, the entire street cleaning endeavor was not nearly as successful as it was required to