And no having to feed the motorcycles hay all winter … lol …
My turn of the century automobile was made in 2000. I think we need a new expression.
My stepfather, born in 1910, told the story of a family trip he and his parents took in a brand new 1916 Chevrolet 490. It was so named for it’s selling price of $490. They drove about 200 miles, over two long days, on practically non-existent unmarked roads of rural western America. A week later, they came back home. In those days drivers didn’t brag about MPG. Shoot, most cars didn’t have speedometers, much less odometers. They bragged about the fact that they only had ONE flat tire on the whole trip.
He grew up on a farm. We called all of his stories “Life was hard on the farm” stories. On his 13th birthday, he drove a seven horse hitch pulling a header barge. The way I understand it, once the wheat was cut, it was loaded on the barge to be hauled to the stack where the threshing machine would later beat the grain from the wheat stalk. Threshing crews traveled from farm to farm doing that portion of the harvest work well into late summer.
Here’s a header barge and stack, found online: https://www.kshs.org/exhibits/wheat/harvestales/southwest/crum1.jpg
Better bacteria,then cancer I supposeCancer kills you 20 years after exposure to a carcinogen; cholera kills you in a week. More people have died of infectious diseases than all the wars ever fought. Conversely, cancer's really a disease of increased life expectancy: we now live long enough to die of cancer; our ancestors would have dropped dead of something else before cancer had a shot at 'em.
You can have your fecal bacteria–I’ll take my chances with the newfangled marvel that is the ICE.
People work in the sewers all the time without ill effects(much worse then horse manure,spend a day in a room with a horse or a idling ICE,see which will kill you quicker,nothing that marvelous about an ICE,(Time for something better) when horseless carriages became the thing to have,electrics were touted as much better,without the noise,stench and danger of the cranky internal combustion engines of the time.I guess cars are better,all those Horses around LA used to turn the air brown I suppose(you can keep your grease and oil-how many gallons of water will a drop of Horse crap contaminate? a drop of used motor oil(thats right the Gulf is back 100%) wont hurt anything .right?Some people get cancer relatively young,some forms spread quickly.I’m not condoning Hippology,but horses like anything else are alright in moderation(I’d have to say the real problem is the burgeoning population ) I just dont think Horses are evil.
“Spend a day in a room with a horse or an idling ICE, see which will kill you quicker…”
Well, if the ICE is vented properly, nothing will happen except maybe an eventual headache from the noise, though the horse might kick you or you might slip in ITS waste product and crack your head open…
While it’s true that oil can certainly pollute groundwater, even though manure is biodegradable, you’d really have to watch your step wandering around a city back in the horsey days. I’m sure they had problems with runoff polluting water supplies, flies and other insects causing health problems, etc.
I don’t think horses are evil either. Or cars. (though I’ve had a few that came close) And I totally agree that overpopulation is a major problem, maybe the most serious problem on our planet. People are living longer and IMHO often having more kids than they can practically house, feed, educate, and properly “parent” worldwide.
And another major issue these days is e-waste from everyone getting a new phone, computer, etc. every few years. The semiconductor and electronics industry in general make auto manufacturing look positively green by comparison.
LA basin population in 1900 was about 130,000. Put that number in 2015 cars and I know they’d be living in a much healthier environment.
Cars are also much safer than horses. In fact I would bet that back in the old West, far more cowboys were killed by their own horses than by gunfire, contrary to what is depicted in cowboy movies.
texasesYep, people were WAY healthier in 1850. Life expectancy about 40 years.
A better way to look at life expectancy would be your likelihood of reaching old age once you successfully survived child and infant mortality. Those who did mostly lived to a ripe old age.
Yes there were diseases that are easily curable today that were death sentences back then but a large percentage of the past childhood population made it to old age.
Lewis Carrol 66
Charles Darwin 73
Geronimo 79
Antonio Stradivari 93
Benjamin Franklin 84
Thomas Jefferson 83
George Washington 67
Queen Victoria 81
Vivaldi 63
J.S. Bach 65
Aaron Burr 80
Karl Marx 64
“Those who did mostly lived to a ripe old age.”
Nope. Life expectancy of a 20 year old in 1850: 40 more years. In 2011 a 20 year old could expect to live 57 more years (white male #s, others are similar). Of course infant mortality was a huge issue. Far from the only issue.
In my family, most people lived to a ripe old age–unless they were felled by infectious diseases in childhood or young adulthood.
As one example, my great-grandmother on my father’s side of the family died at the age of 99, somewhere around 1963–IIRC. During her childbearing years, she gave birth to nine children. Five of them didn’t live more than 1 or 2 years. The remaining four lived into their 80s, with the exception of my father’s mother, who died in her early 20s, during The Spanish Influenza epidemic that took place during WW I. My father’s last vision of his mother was seeing her taken away by mule-drawn ambulance, and she died shortly thereafter.
A 20 year old who lives 40 more years still = 60 years of life.
I’m just debating the popular notion that people got old and died at 40 in the old days.
Then as now, accidents and other violent deaths were the #1 killer of 40 year old males, Edward Teach for example.
My Dad’s generation and up through the baby-boomers…smoking had a detrimental effect on peoples lives and their mortality. From the 70’s through now teen smoking has dropped…but not enough if you ask me. So the generation which grew up with out cigarette smoke has a much better change of living much longer.
I don’t like horses or farm animals, never have, and they don’t like me so the feeling is mutual. But really folks, it wasn’t that many years ago that we were just developing effective sanitation and public health. In Minnesota it was the late 1800’s when we began talking about water supplies and sewage systems. Then the advent of vaccines and antibiotics and the great improvement in medical procedures.
We’ve come a long way in 100 years that have lengthened lives and made them more comfortable. When I look at all the goose droppings in parks I am very thankful we don’t have a few thousand horses too. Give me the ICE and cigarette smoke anytime over goose and horse droppings.
Tell you what fellows(the coal smoke in old London town not even in thus discussion)I will stick my bare arms in a barrel of Horse manure for 15 minutes,if you will stick your bare unprotected arms in a barrel of gas or diesel fuel for 15 minutes and as far as the discussion about the room with the horse or the ICE,unvented is the stipulation,I’m not saying Horses are better,but you can grow horse fuel in your yard,there was a lot more things going on in public health besides horse pattys(remember most poor people didnt own Horses) I would say most sane people in a crowded city would prefer to walk,rather then trying to have a Horse or a car. Dont you agree?
What does that have to do with anything? Are there rivers of oil flowing down the streets where you live?
I guess EVs aren’t good, no way I’d stick my arm in a tank of battery chemicals.
What does that have to do with anything? Are there rivers of oil flowing down the streets where you live?
Some towns/cities have had coal ash rivers.
And here in NH we’ve had a few hundred wells contaminated with gas and oil leakage.
Horses are better,but you can grow horse fuel in your yard...
Just make sure you have a big yard. My neighbors have a few horses on a few acres and they (the horses, not the neighbors) have turned the area into a dirt wasteland.
I have to think that the constant exposure to germs, disease, pollutants, etc. that people experienced a century ago did 2 things. It gave those who survived stronger immune systems and it weeded out those with weaker constitutions, so that those who survived into adulthood were stronger and healthier and lived longer. That and life was more physically strenuous and kept people in better condition.
My dad was born in 1930, 4th of 5 children. If one of the kids came home with chicken pox/measles/flu/whatever, grandma locked them all in the same room so they would all be sick simultaneously and get it over with. Now it seems we are so afraid of diseases that we run and hide from someone with the sniffles.
Wow. How could anyone who’d ever cracked a history book equate infectious disease with cancer? Just “the Black Death,” various Cholera outbreaks and whatever they call the mass Indian die-off from smallpox, et. al.–we’re talking entire different orders of magnitude. I think some would be unpleasantly surprised to see how quickly a modern city would become hell on earth without modern plumbing.
In Prague once I paid my dime to use the water closet. When I was done I walked around back to have a quick smoke and noticed the pipe coming out of the water closet draining directly on the ground.