75 Years Ago
Late Autumn/Early Winter 1928
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Winter 2002 - 2003

(From the Belgian Review and Percheron Review of that period, general news sources and the 1927 International Livestock Show Album.)

October at least got started off correctly. The New York Yankees blanked the Pittsburgh Pirates in four straight to take the 1927 World Series.

The Iraqis discovered oil on their patch of sand and what a difference that would make!

Pan-American Airways (long since defunct now) launched the first scheduled international commercial flight. It went from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba–time–one hour, ten minutes.

I don’t know if Fidel Castro was born yet or not. Let’s say he was a babe in his mother’s arms and as he saw this big old Pan American airplane in the sky, he pointed at it and said, clear as a bell, “Yankee, go home.” Those were his first words. Almost certainly not true, but a great story.

And the first talking film (as in movie) opened in New York City. It was Al Jolson in a show called “The Jazz Singer.” That, too, was like oil in Iraq; both events wound up changing so many equations. They say the movements were jerky and the sound was considerably less than good, but it was the beginning. It probably cost about $10,000 to produce instead of several million, like most all of them do now.

It had only been about a decade since the first moving picture was unleashed onto the American public. That was “The Birth of A Nation”–but it was a silent film. My folks used to recall attending that with a neighborhood couple, Carl and Nellie Anderson. Carl was a natural mechanic and effortlessly funny. He could make an engine run better simply by being in the same building with it. Nellie’s humor was of a different sort. Once she was visiting our house in the summer time and my mother complained of all the pesky flies. Nellie remained silent. Mom finally said, “Nellie, don’t you have flies at your house?” She carefully considered the question and then said, “Oh, maybe one.”

I suppose this newest wrinkle –this talkie business, struck fear into the hearts of all those people playing fiddles and clarinets and the like in pit orchestras. Someone is always becoming technologically obsolete. Sitting here beating on an old manual typewriter, I could offer myself as Exhibit A in that respect.

On November 10, 1927, General Motors declared the largest dividend in the nation’s history. The total pay out was $65,250,000 on over 17 million shares. Whoopee! Happy Days are here again. It was, obviously, the dawn of the millennium of good times, if not creation itself. Sure. Stay tuned.

Speaking of car companies, on December 1, 1927, Henry Ford’s new Model A went on parade in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. It was barely out of the box and they had 50,000 back orders for it. This miracle could go up to 70 miles per hour and had twice the horsepower of its predecessor, the Model T. The price tag was a few bucks higher, but Americans would have bought them anyhow. As Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover pointed out in his yearly fiscal report, things could hardly be better.

And Chiang Kai-Shek, the commander of the Chinese Nationalist Army, who had suppressed labor movements, sent the Russian advisors home and defeated the communists, got married. He married a Chinese girl that graduated from Wellesley. And thus did Chiang Kai-Shek become an Episcopalian. I guess.

And now to the draft horse business in the waning days of 1927. It was not as rosy as General Motors and Ford, but it was not in despair either.

The Percherons were the big dog in the kennel in those days and the 1928 Percheron Review (of 1927) was fairly upbeat. They had recorded 4,022 horses in fiscal 1927, an increase of 8%. Transfers numbered 4,691. Watson H. Butler of Columbus, Ohio, (the Laird of Woodside Farm where Laet occupied the box stall of honor) was the new president and presided over their 52nd annual meeting at the International in Chicago.

The population distribution of the breed was quite different from today. In registrations, the two “levelist and most tillable” of all our states, Iowa and Illinois, were clear leaders with 685 and 630 respectively. Followed by Kansas (388), Ohio (364), Nebraska (259), Minnesota (227), Indiana (185), North Dakota (183), Wisconsin (130) and South Dakota (119).

In transfers the order was somewhat different. Iowa, Illinois and Kansas all transferred fewer horses than they registered. But Ohio with 420 transfers (versus 364 registrations) moved up into third position. And Minnesota and Indiana with 360 and 330 transfers respectively moved into fifth and sixth place in numbers transferred. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin also transferred significantly more than they recorded. So the demographics was changing a little.

A number of important transactions took place in Chicago that year. The largest single shipment (see photo) was the sale of six mares to H. C. Muddox of Sacramento, California. In 1926 he had taken ten home from Chicago. Mr. Muddox expected to have twenty mares in foal in 1928, making him one of the largest breeders in the country.

Another significant sale was a pair of mares to the Department of Agriculture in the country of Colombia, South America. It was the first sale of Percherons to South America from this country–but certainly not the first Percherons to South America. Buyers from Argentina had been active purchasers in France in prior years. All in all, things were not glum in the Percheron camp. We will run a number of pictures of horses from that 1927 International.

The Belgian picture was also fairly solid. They reported 1,062 registrations and 1,519 transfers for fiscal 1927–compared to 1,039 registrations and 1,535 transfers in 1926. I have no state by state figures, but I believe the two great centers of Belgian strength were Iowa and Indiana. And they continued to be the epicenter for the breed for some time. Still are, to some extent, although Ohio has moved well ahead of Iowa numerically.

One indication of their popularity in Indiana is revealed by the number of colts enrolled in the Gold Medal Colt program in Indiana. In its very first year of operation (1926), 96 breeders nominated 140 colts, 92 of which were Belgians. In 1927, there were 173 breeders who nominated 235 colts, 143 of which were Belgians. And so it went from there. The Belgians completely dominated the Percherons in that Indiana program for as long as it existed.

I can’t tell you anything about the condition of the Clydesdale, Shire and Suffolk associations. But you can be sure of one thing–they were miles behind the leaders. So far as the typical American farmer was concerned, it had turned into a two horse race.

That is it from 1927–we will do the rest of it with photographs and we will bring you all the late breaking news from 1928 next year, God willing. And the harness holds.

FROM THE OCTOBER 1927 BREEDER’S GAZETTE

Here is Mr. H. C. Muddox of Sacramento, California, with the six registered Percheron mares he purchased at the 1927 International. He had also taken ten head out of the 1926 show. Mr. Muddox expected to have twenty registered mares to foal in 1928, making him one of the largest breeders in the United States. A similar photo in the Review showed these six and three others purchased at the show at an average of $828 apiece.