Percheron brood mares at work. Weight 3,200 pounds

Percheron stallion and mare working side by side

338

342

Horse barn, showing paved court and teams ready for work---- 408

CHAPTER I

THE HORSE AND HIS MASTER

For many centuries the horse has been the sturdy and esteemed servant of man. There is no more interesting and important subject for our study than the origin, development and improvement of the various breeds of the domestic horse. He is the noblest of all creatures that we have subdued to our will. His acquisition has been one of the chief factors in the rise and supremacy of the great nations of ancient, medieval and modern times. We have no history that is not intermingled with his. In all the ages he has occupied an important position. This is especially true at the present time. The foundation of our civilization rests on agriculture and our agriculture rests on the horse.

Saving human time.-In America we have learned to substitute brute force for human energy to a greater extent than any other country. The Thirteenth Census shows the horse and mule population of the United States to be approximately one-fourth that of the human population. In other words, the United States possesses four inhabitants for each beast of burden-horse or mule; whereas France possesses ten inhabitants, Germany twelve, and England twenty-four inhabitants for each beast of burden. Those who settled and developed our country were early taught that human muscle was the most expensive material from which to procure energy, even though the person be a slave. Human muscle, however cheap, cannot successfully compete with improved implements operated by well-bred horses adapted to their work and directed by intelligent workmen.

As a nation we are extremely saving of time, but wasteful of everything else. We have destroyed our forests,

wasted our coal and soil fertility; but we have used human energy more economically than it has ever been used before. The older nations are saving of everything but human time. Our extensive use of the horse has greatly influenced our national character and history. Because we make our labor count for so much, we are able to make farming an attractive business rather than a peasant's drudgery.

Horse labor and man labor.-The horse, properly directed, is equal in productive energy to ten men, and it will cost about one-half as much to keep him as one man. Hence a horse intelligently handled may be made to cheapen labor twenty fold over the old hand method. Here lies the secret of success in America. The American farmer is not, as a rule, contented to direct the energies of but one horse at a time. He usually harnesses two, sometimes three or four and even more, to a

single implement or machine. Where the fields are large we frequently see two 16-inch plows mounted on wheels and drawn by four large horses plowing as much as six and even more acres in a single day, more than a hundred laborers could do in a day of the severest toil. A very striking illustration of the economy of horse over man power may be seen in the great wheat fields of California and the Northwest where 14 teams, 28 horses or even

more, are attached to a combined machine which cuts, thrashes, cleans and sacks one thousand or more bushels of wheat in a day. One man drives the horses and three others tend the machine and sew up the bags. It would require at least sixty men to accomplish this task in one day with cradle and flail.

Equally as great economy of human muscle is seen in our large cities, where men are displaced by horses in the transportation of heavy merchandise. Because of the