These figures do not include the mules which are more extensively used here than in any other country. Including, with the horses, mules, and asses on farms, those not on farms, it is probable that the United States has more work animals than even the Russian Empire, Siberia included, with a population exceeding that of the United States by many millions.
The horse-power, including mules, on American farms is at least six times that of Germany; twelve times that of Great Britain and Ireland; eight times that of France; thirty times that of Italy; and six times that of Austria and Hungary combined. This difference in horse-power on American farms gives us a great advantage over other countries—so great an advantage indeed that our competition affects land values in Europe, and is gradually forcing a readjustment of the industries of the world. It is estimated that we have invested in horse-flesh in this country $1,050,969,093. In 1901 we exported 82,250 horses, while in 1891 we exported only 3110, and the number of horses increased from 4,337,000 in 1850 to 16,965,000 in 1900. Since 1850 the number of farms has increased 296.1 per cent; acres of improved land 267.0 per cent; and of horses 291.2 per cent, which seems to show that despite the increased use of machinery the horse is still a necessity in agriculture.
What could be gained economically by the intelligent breaking, breeding, shoeing, feeding, harnessing, bitting, driving, and handling of horses in this country is not easily calculable. The difference in the amount of work one horse can do when he is properly stabled, fed, harnessed, and driven, multiplied by millions, gives one some idea of the economic utility of such knowledge. It is well known that good roads add enormously to the availability of agricultural land and has a notable effect upon the cheapening of farm products. The first men to agitate for good roads, and they who do most to see that good roads are provided, are the users of horses. One might indeed write a telling chapter of eulogy on the horse, if one gave him the credit due him, for bringing about the cheapening of products necessary to the comfort and pleasure of mankind.
This whole subject of the care of the horse takes on a new aspect when it is looked at with these figures in mind. Books on driving, riding, and the like should be classed, not merely with books of sport and pleasure, but with scientific and economic treatises.
We are a nation with over a billion dollars invested in equine machinery. It is an absurd misunderstanding of the subject to look upon the time, money, and intelligence devoted to the driving, bitting, and harnessing of horses as so much time, money, and intelligence devoted to a sport of the rich and fashionable. If we had a steel plant, or a coal company with $100,000,000 invested therein, no investigation would be too minute, no saving of labor here, no improvement there, and no supervision would seem out of place in adding to the economy and efficiency of such an aggregation of capital. The man who can bit, harness, and drive four horses, or two horses, comfortably to himself, and to his horses, is adding just so much to the understanding of a subject which is of practical bread-and-butter interest to every man, woman, and child in the United States. Every ounce more of work that a horse can be harnessed to do, every practical hint that the master of horses can be induced to apply, every yard of road that can be improved, take something off the cost of everything we eat, drink, or wear. To put a coach on the road for a few weeks in the spring, to turn out a well-mannered pair for a lady's phaeton, to temper the disposition of two horses so that they bowl along pleasantly in a tandem, may at the first blush seem to be merely the idle vagaries of the unemployed rich. As a matter of fact, the knowledge and patience required in these exercises percolates through all classes of horse owners, and produces a marked effect from the utilitarian standpoint. We of the large cities, with steam and electricity as our daily servants of locomotion, ignore the twenty odd million agricultural machines in this country that are helping to feed and clothe us, and get to look upon the horse as merely the fashionable physician's prescription for the liver, under saddle; or a fashionable appendage of wealth, when in harness.
PLATE I.—PROTOROHIPPUS
Earliest known species of horse, eleven inches high, with four complete toes, and remainder of fifth on fore feet, and three on hind feet]