THE DECLINE OF THE HORSE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 305, 17 May 1913, Page 4

THE DECLINE OF THE HORSE.

The popularity of the motor car in all its forms means tlie decline of the horse, and if the motor continues its victorious career much longer the horse, except as a luxury and a curiosity, is doomed to extinction (writes a contemporary). And the reason is not far to seek. The horse will not do for us anything like what a motor can do at * lower cost. Whatever may be said for Hie horse on sentimental grounds, he is certainly, so far as power is concerned, an optical delusion. The American critic who made this cruel remark points out that the horse is nothing like so strong as he looks. "Practically all his pulling is done with one hind' leg. His front legs are pilot legs, mainly like the pilot wheels of a locomotive. They serve more to hold' lip the weight of the body than to pull the load." As a motor, Edison tells us, the horse is the poorest and weakest device for its size ever invented. "He eats ten pounds of food for every hour he works. He eats twelve thousand pounds of food a year. He eats a whole output of five acres. And yet his thermal efficiency is only two per cent." If a horse were made of steel, like a gas engine, as another writer puts it, he would not need to be larger than a waste-paper basket or a soap-box. Being a hay motor, and hay being an exceedingly wasteful fuel, he had to be made so large in proportion to his power that he is a most extravagant engine to keep going. In short, he is too expensive for the work he docs, and the money he earns, and if he had been made of metal he would have been "scrapped" long ago. To the lover of horses all this may sound painfuly unheroic and conical; but from the business point of view it is practically unanswerable. The horse is expensive, and in most countries he is growing dearer year by year. He is not prolific, and he is little use for working purposes till he is four years old. His food bill is out of all proportion to his value; in America it is calculated that the twenty-five million horses and mules in use consume in one year food to the value of two billion dollars, which is about the total cost of operating the whole of the 250,000 miles of railway in the United States. Mr. H. N. Casson, who lias devoted a great deal of attention to this subject, contends that men now work for horses, rather than horses for men. Every horse needs attention for at least 25 minutes every day; which amounts to about 20 days of men's work devoted to each horse every year. Yet tlie farm horse only averages from three to four hours' work a day through tlie year, and he tires out in six hours. Thus a tractor, which is as powerful as 23 horses, and as enduring as 100 horses, costs about as much as ton. Collectively, horses are a terrible burden on tlie community, and, in fact, on the whole civilised world. If we could put together the labors of grooms and stablemen and street cleaners, the harness-makers and buckle-mak-ers, the tanners and whip makers, the veterinary surgeons and blacksmiths, the haymakers and the makers of mowers, rakes, chaff-cutters and feed grinders, we would certainly get a most astonishing total. And all this is expended on a cumbersome and ineilicient sort of motor that has been long since outclassed by more effective mechanical devices. Consider the difference between horse ploughing and motor ploughing. In America it is said that ore man with a team of horses costing 500 dollars can plough 100 acres, at a cost of 230 dollars; hut, with a tractor costing 3000 dollars, one man can plough 1(K) acres at a cost of l.~>o dollars. This means a saving of a dollar an acre in ploughing only, which means nearly a million dollars a d>v saved during the ploughing season in the United States alou'e. ' The molor plough does work that represents a, furrow driven at the rale of .'il> miles an hour, while I he -iiurle plough moves rA. about 2 1 :, miles per hour. All this means that Hie horse is a most iiniiro- ' Citable servant, and the inference is irre»i»tible. "The laws of business are as inevitable as the laws of Nature. No

matter what our theories may be, and no matter what our wishes may lie, the horse is going out, and the engine is coming in, because the engine is the more fit to survive."