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Before trucks and cars there was horse-drawn vehicles. Traffic jams were common, wagons pulled by teams of horses took up a lot of room and weren't easily maneuvered, the horses probably weren't enjoying the work and environment, they could and did kick, bite and bolt, threatening bystanders. They also got sick and sometimes died.
One of the less attractive things about horse drawn transportation was the manure problem, on any street with traffic there would be a fresh carpet covering the roadway, add the urine and the city might not be a nice place to live in the summer.
Stables, many located in urban areas, always had huge piles to get rid of, sometimes accumulating for months. And if the urine-soaked manure was distasteful, as it dried out it to turned to a dust that blew around causing the respiratory diseases that were part of urban living at the time.
Cities tried to keep things clean but it was a daunting task. In 1880 Kansas City announced it would only clean the streets once manure was more than 3 inches thick.
Most streets were unpaved, making cleaning inefficient. The abutting householders made the decision to pave or not, and a smoothly paved street brought more traffic, the "elites" with their fast carriages (and towards the turn of the century, bicycles) who made life hazardous for the pedestrians, residents and children who, having few parks, shopped, socialized and played in the street.
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| New York,1893 |
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| Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path, Columbia University Press. 1994 |
A blockade at Broadway, 1883.
2 comments:
New York City's "rotting yards" -- where the city took its daily Public Works Dept accumulation of hoss poop -- featured multiple 30'-tall blocks of compacted dung, each a square city block or more in footprint. Must have been one of those Jobs You Probably Wouldn't Want to Do* -- imagine the fly population darkening the skies overhead on a warm August midday -- but it would've been excellent in terms of job security: I forget how many tons of shit comprised the average day's gleanings.
* Esp. before the steam shovel came along.
I read 800,000-1,200,000 lbs per day. Anyways- a lot!
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