(From the 1929 Belgian & Percheron Reviews, the Breeder’s Gazette for May and April of 1929, and general news sources.)

Much as I hate to admit it, the automobile business appeared to be more interesting than the horse business 75 years ago. It got a lot more attention by the press.

We will start our “automobile section” in Europe. While we had become the land of the automobile by 1929 that doesn’t mean we had been the first to build them. It is kind of hard to say who was, because there were mechanics, tinkerers and inventors in several countries all trying mightily to remove the horse from in front of the carriage. It was an obsession of sorts.

As early as 1863, while we were still fighting the Civil War, a Frenchman cobbled together a one cylinder engine powered by street lighting gas to run a clumsy vehicle that he drove for six miles. Now, if street lighting gas was a close relative to whale oil, I suppose one could say that the French inventor had replaced the horse with a whale. In any event, nothing further came of it–except that it was quite possibly the first horseless carriage.

It remained for others to actually start manufacturing and selling them in the 1890s. The first really successful automobile in our country was the Duryea, built by Charles and Frank Duryea in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1893. During that same year, Carl Benz and Otto Daimler, both German inventors, started producing passenger cars. The German company became famous for its Mercedes-Benz, the luxury car of the world in the early 20th century. The Daimler name still lives in today’s Daimler-Chrysler.

In our country the Duryea didn’t have the streets to itself for more than a minute or two. In 1896, their little cars were joined by those of Henry Ford; in 1899 came Packard; in 1902 came Rambler (later called Nash); in 1903, Oldsmobile and Cadillac; in 1904, Buick (which became a part of General Motors); in 1905 by Maxwell (later called Chrysler) and Studebaker. We will stop the roll call with that to salute Studebaker because Studebaker in South Bend, Indiana, was the only large horse drawn wagon and carriage works in the country to successfully make the transition from wagons to automobiles. They built some great wagons - and there are still a few of them around.

I had one of their little Studebaker Champion cars while courting Jeannine and it was giving me 26 to 27 miles to the gallon then, in the early ‘50s. It was a neat little car. She made me sell it shortly after we got married. I think one reason it got such outstanding mileage, aside from its relative smallness, was its aerodynamic styling. Drive it into a head wind and the wind couldn’t tell whether it was coming or going, so it couldn’t really get hold of the thing.

Anyhow, by the early 1900s this country’s love affair with the automobile was in full flower. We could hardly build hard surface roads fast enough. And opening up a gas station on the corner suddenly seemed like a good idea to thousands of people. As for the automobile manufacturing companies, they were rapidly becoming the new giants of industry and darlings of Wall Street. Almost needless to say, by 1905 or so, any stallion importer who was still bringing French and German Coach horses over, either had nerves of steel or a purblind faith in the Coach horse.

Here in Iowa, and most horse-producing states, we had a stallion licensing board as part of our state government–so there is a good handle on how many stallions were licensed and approved for public service from 1912 up to WW II, after which it was dissolved. The earliest year I have breed figures for is 1912 when there were 99 Coach stallions (French & German), licensed to stand for public service. By 1920, that figure had dropped to ten and by 1929, it was down to two. So much for French and German Coach horses. Henry Ford and his pals did them in. For trotting stallions it was also bad; from 689 in 1912, to 41 in 1920 and 18 in 1929.

With this deluge of new automobiles, you can bet your boots that both state and federal road building boomed. This, in turn, created an opportunity for the Greyhound Lines Bus Company to provide fast, economic travel both between nearby cities and towns, and clear across the nation. In the spring of 1929, they bought a fleet of the big, double decker buses designed to be used on their transcontinental routes. The buses even had sleeping accommodations on the upper lever. They imitated the trains by dressing their drivers like train conductors with jaunty caps, etc. Greyhound was challenging the trains. And you know who some of the heaviest investors in these newfangled bus companies were? They were the railroads. The original San Francisco to New York bus trip took five days. In terms of time, the bus had no advantage and the railroads still had an edge where sleeping accommodations and dining cars were concerned. But on short intra-state trips the buses soon took big chunks of business away from rail.

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Awards dinner was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with awards for the best actors, directors, writers, technicians and producers. You know why it was started? To “lend dignity” to the making of films. A bunch of their bigwigs had gotten together to figure out how to make Americans take their art and efforts more seriously - and the Academy Awards are what they came up with. Not a bad attempt. Judging from some recent movies we’ve seen, they still need to work on this dignity thing a little.

At a conference in Europe, we and our WW I allies finally agreed upon lightening up the yearly reparations paid by Germany. The U.S. delegation pushed this pretty hard. But it was not hard enough and not soon enough. The financial situation in Germany was so bad that it was a case of too little-too late. The conditions that produced Adolph Hitler had already done much of their work. If Hitler wasn’t already inevitable, he was certainly likely.

My last non-horse item from 1929 is the news flash, just in, that Harry Sinclair, the oil tycoon, finally went to jail. This was a case of justice delayed. It dated clear back to the Teapot Dome Oil Scandal during Harding’s administration, some six or seven years earlier. They didn’t convict him, they locked him up because he refused to answer their questions about his involvement. He simply stonewalled them. I think it was just a show-off type of thing. It was only for 90 days and I suspect it was a minimum security, sort of country club-type jailhouse. But it is always good for a story to put a big shot away - even for a little while. Puts me in mind of the Martha Stewart thing. What was she supposed to do when she got that phone call? Buy more of the stuff? Pop another casserole in the oven? Call the S.E.C. or maybe the Vice President? I suspect Harry Sinclair had a good deal more to hide than Martha Stewart.

For the farming end of things, let’s go to the top two breed publications first, to see what can be gleaned from them. Sometimes I find dry bones numbers tell me more about the times than either the rhetoric or the pictures. So what do the numbers tell us in this case?

They tell us that nationwide the Percherons still had a substantial edge over the Belgians. In the year just past (1928), they had recorded 3,276 head, transferred 4,200 head and signed on 378 new members. The Belgians had recorded 1,263 head, transferred 1,748 and signed on 173 new members.

They also tell us, by going back one more year, that Percheron registrations and transfers had declined by 746 and 491 head, respectively, from 1927 to 1928. Belgian registrations and transfers had increased by 201 and 229, respectively.

They further tell me that while the Belgians were operating within their income, the Percherons were not. The Percheron expenses (when you exclude promotion) were within their income, but they were investing heavily in publicity with almost 1,700 Percheron stories sent out to the nation’s newspapers from their Chicago office, plus sponsoring a farm radio show and ads in the Breeder’s Gazettes, etc. So while their fees covered their basic expenses well enough, it was the $18,000 additional spent on promotion that put them in the red.

So who was right and who was wrong? Wrong question, I’d say. I think the Percherons, along with the Horse Association of America, were carrying the fight for the draft horses mostly on their shoulders. It was a question of attitude, partly. The Belgian promotional efforts were considerable but far more frugal. As for the other three breeds, they simply couldn’t afford to do much. The only sizeable market left for drafters was on the farms - and winning the farmer’s favor had become a two horse race and remained so up to recent times.

The chief concerns expressed by Wayne Dinsmore, the Secretary of the Horse Association of America, was that they might lose that farm market by default simply because enough colts weren’t being raised to provide replacement stock on our farms and that so many of the stallions in service were getting old and unsure.

Amazing, that is what it was. Starting on page 10 of the April 1929 Breeder’s Gazette was an article entitled “British Ideas for American Pastures,” written by a fellow named Sidney Haskell. Here, in a nutshell is the gist of his article: “The land is divided into paddocks with each paddock pastured in rotation. Cattle are turned into a new paddock when grass is four to six inches high. At this time it is very high in protein - for 20 to 25% of the dry matter. These pastures are intensively fertilized, primarily with nitrogen, but always care is taken to be insured of sufficient phosphoric acid, potash and lime. Frequent harrowings are given to break up manure clods and prevent circles of foul grass, so apparent on most permanent pastures in the United States.”

And so on, a very spirited and thoughtful pitch for rotational grazing offered up 75 years ago? It didn’t exactly catch on right away, did it? But now it’s right in the forefront of sensible ideas for a sustainable future for farmers.

Big Hurry! As J.M. Dowell said in his April 1929 column, “If you were required to select the one busiest month of the year - it would be April. Timeliness is so important in farming.”

I don’t think Dowell was any great fan of the draft horse but he recognized the importance of multiple hitches in getting the work done in timely fashion. That is illustrated by this picture of eight Percherons pulling both a tandem disc and a spike tooth harrow in preparing a seed bed. And I’m sure the Percheron Association was more than willing to provide the photograph.	This stallion was grand champion of the Netherlands in 1925. Doesn’t look a bit different than the ones that were winning down in Belgium.

On page 12 was a big article asking “ARE DUTCH DRAFTS BELGIANS?” It was pretty well understood that the horses of Holland had their roots in Belgium. The Dutch had their own stud book. They also saw people like Fred Holbert spending serious money down in neighboring Belgium for young stallions for export to America. I think they wanted to be invited to the party - so they were doing their best to persuade us and the “Societe du Cheval de Trait Belge” (Belgian Association) in Brussels to admit the Dutch horses to their stud book and thereby gain access to the American stud book. That we were all just one big happy family–sort of. The Dutch got their agricultural attache in Washington to write the piece for the Gazette, the Gazette leaned on John Ashton (a former European horse correspondent for them) to offer a rebuttal. So everybody had their say - and absolutely nothing happened. That was not a big surprise. Brussels was not about to share the family jewels with their next door neighbor.

In the Gazette’s Livestock World column, mostly short sale reports, we find that “600 farmers flocked to the Wildwood Belgian Dispersal in Orion, Michigan. Six stallions averaged $343, twenty-two mares averaged $355. The top stallion sold to George Bench, Armada, Michigan, for $840 while the Ternes Coal & Lumber Company, Detroit, Michigan, paid $1,000 for Ruth de Camille, the top mare.”

Holberts quarter page ad in that issue stated that they had 5,500 farmers living in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota who owned breeding interests in over 300 Belgian and Percheron stallions in those states through the Holbert Community Colt Club Plan for the last four years. They were anticipating bringing over 150 young stallions from Europe in 1929 - plus doing a fairly active trade in American-bred horses. Trumans in Illinois were also bringing over sizable shipments.

The American farmer was economically stressed all through the ‘20s. So the Gazette had signed on J.M. Dowell, who called himself a Farm Management Expert and his advice column soon occupied the number one stall in the barn - the first big feature article in every issue. In one sense, he was very modern - this following paragraph says it all:

“Many people bemoan the fact that farmers are moving to town. This movement should be encouraged. When even one farmer moves to town, he is one less producer of agricultural products and one more consumer of them, which makes a difference of two. We need just that - more consumers.” His arithmetic may be suspect but you don’t have to guess where he was coming from. I suppose a very young Indiana farm boy named Earl Butz read every one of his columns, but I don’t think he fully understood them. The fact is that Dowell wrote a good column that generally made sense. Butz, when he became the Secretary of Agriculture carried his idea of fewer farmers to ridiculous extremes.

This 2/3 page ad appeared in the April 1929 BREEDER’S GAZETTE.

Jeannine and I just returned from the Gordyville Sale in downstate Illinois. So we drove about 750 miles in Iowa and Illinois. All great agricultural country. We saw absolutely nothing like this scene. In fact, much of it was as unfenced as New Mexico. I think that Red Top and woven wire dealer had moved on.

The old order was passing in many ways that, in retrospect, were obvious and inevitable. It was big news one day that spring when 5,765 hogs came to the St. Joseph, Missouri, stock yards by truck - rather than rail. It was a record number and it was mighty perishable as news goes. The very next day there were even more and this was just the beginning. If Greyhound buses can take you across the country on rubber instead of rail - a truck can do the same for your hogs, cattle and sheep. And generally with a good deal less shrink than by rail. Cheaper, too. Especially on short hauls.