The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1888-05-02
G0THAM'S HORSES.
WHERE SHE RECRUITS 100000
STEEDS EVERY YEAR.
Scenes Around Old Bulls Head Mar
ket-The Demand for Street
Car Animals and How
They are Selected.

InGy arc SSleCLCu.
The Bulls Head of to-day is very
business-like place even for New York,
although it is triae more quiet than it
used to be. The horse market now covers
about three square blocks, and it as quiet
and orderly locality as one can find.
Nevertheless, without noise or hustle,
some SIS, 900, 900 worth of horse flesh is
bought and sold here every year. This
may not be so big business as is done
by some of the markets of Paris, where
horses are sold for o more humane pur-
pose than to be subjected to long line
of hard work and hard knocks, but it is,
all things considered, pretty big busi-
ness. It is the common impression that
steam and electricity are lessening the
usefulness of the horses. This is mis-
take. The traffic in horses Is now larger
than it ever has been, and is steadily in
creasing. There are now in New York
city, working in one capacity and an
other, for the not always nobler animal,
man, 800, 900 horses. This would give a
horse to every third person in
New York. The New York mar
ket yearly demands and obtains
100, 900 horses, and pretty nearly all OF
these are sold around the Bulls Head.
No more auctions are held. Formerly
all kinds of stock were taken at this
market. The best were sold to Individual
dealers, and the refuse were sent to the
public market at Seventy-fourth street,
on the East side, and sold in open auc-
ton. Now a strictly individual business
is done around the Bulls Head. Each
dealer has his own customers, and each
has agents in the stock regions in the
West and South who. are able to fill an
order for one or 1000 horses of any kind
upon the receipt of two-line telegraph
dispatch. The business is now reduced
10 a system. The greatest customers that
the Bulls Head dealers have are the sur
face car companies. Probably half OF
the horses that come to New York go di-
rect to the street car companies.
Few persons would believe that the
animals that drag the street cars are
picked horses. But, sorry looking though
they may be, they are carefully selected
for this very work. =,
It may be that the Broadway and
Seventh Avenue Railroad Company finds
that it needs horses. 1t Immediately
communicates with dealer at the BULBS
Head and the dealer communicates with
his agent somewhat as follows:
To Colt, Peoria, Ill.,:
. Cd a,n rlood throo- -fnurkhS-000l
BLANK.
The agent understands this the
reader may not. Blank simply wants
= carload Of three-fourth horses, and a
three-fourth horse is a horse that is
neither big nor little, the only kind OF
3 horse that is of any use in the
street-car business.
It is a rough mill that car horses
tread, and they don't last long. When
the car horse is bought he is usually
worth SITS or $3.50. On an average he
lasts five years, and at the end of that
period some Long Island or Westchestcr
county farmer can have him for any sum
ranging from S. to $50, and in his
prematurely old age he can drag ploW
or 'nhrroW anu peSoniS az Sfui"S pa
losopher. ,.
Car horses come from Iowa, Illinois
and Indiana principally. Breeding stock
is being reduced to a science in the
West, and the much. .derided county fair
has had not a little to do with this.
But there are other sorts of horses
bought and sold around the Bull's
Head. You couldn't have seen such
horses there twenty years ago. There
are big, strong, mild.eyed Percherons
aud equally big Clydesdales that accept
their surroundings with that easy,
good nature that sometimes char
acterizes big men. There are
cIean-limbed horses from West Fir-
ginia and the blue grass meadows OF
Kentucky, and handsome animals from
Maine. There are some very handsome
beasts in the long row of stalls, some of
them fit to draw Kings chariot, if in
deed, it were not true that almost any
kind of horse is not too good to drag
the Kings who are now posing nervously
before the world. In the next stalls to
the big Percherous in the Bulls Head
NAV be seen some small, mischievous
ponies from the Indian Territory. Very
short of limb are these animals, but they
are deep of flank and chest, and could
carry man 120 miles in day without q
great deal of distress. They are all the
rage now. Most of them will command
fancy prices. They are wanted low for
another purpose than that of carrying
festive bucks on hunt for scalps, and
this summer they will figure in the more
dangerous game of polo, and will be rid
den by q class of bucks different from the
dirtbcsmeared gentlemen who formerly
bestrode them, and fair ladies will applaud
their strength and quickness at New
port. The Percherons and Clydesdales,
big as they are, do not commands high
q price as q few of the ponies. They range
in price from $500 to $1,000 per team,
and they are boug ght mainly by the big
brewers. They come, in the main, from
Michigan, where stock breeders have
crossed the breeds of big horses with
wonderful success. These equine Anacks
are easily led. When they 60 to work
drawing brewery wagons, they are said
to succumb to surrounding influences, to
learn to drink beer out of bucket and
to aouire other bad habits. They never
become addicted to profanity, however.
They grow stout and lazy, but live to a
ripe old age. :.
Good horses come from West Virginia,
Kentucky and Indiana, and man with
from five to eight hundred dollars in his
pocket can get good carriage or riding
horse from any of these States sent direct
to the Bulls Head.
Honesty and business methods prevail
in this horse market now. There was a
time when m unsuspccting farmer would