Willmar tribune., 1902-03-05
MACHINERY HELPS ANIMALS.
PrOGress of Invention IL Doing Much
for the Relief Of the Brute
Creation.

Ihe ngltenlng OIL human LABOR ny
modern inventions is so old and famil-
lar story that it needs no retelling,
but there is more novelty in some
noteworthy gains made in relieving
horses and other beasts of burden
from some of their most severe and
painful tasks. Progress in that line
is extremely welcome to persons who
have kindly consideration for our
four-footed servants.
The passing of the street car horse
has been noted and commented upon,
it is true, almost as much as an incl
dent in the development of better con-
ditions for the lower animals as it has
been discussed from the economic
point of view: The lessening of suf-
fering was too manifest to escape the
most callous, says the Cleveland Lead
er, when cars crowded with passen-
gers eager to get home were whirled
up hills and around slippery corners,
on wet tracks, by the invisible power
of electricity instead of by straining
horses, overtaxing their strength un-
der the lash of drivers who simply had
to make time, at no matter what cost
of hardship for the animals they
guided and urged on.
Now experiments with motor trucks
in New York and other great cities in
dicate that the automobile may as
sumo it's most kindly form in doing
away with the use of horses for draw
ing heavy freight vehicles. If that
shall prove to be SO there will be far
fewer painfully burdened horses in
the world, and much of the hardest
work now done by animals will be per-
formed by machinery. When roads
become good enough, and motor We
hfcles attain sufficient stage of devel-
opment, it may happen that farmers
will send most of their heavy prod
ucts to market in motor vehicles.
That would mean much additional re-
lief for horses.
A pleasant and interesting sugges-
tion of changes in this direction of
the substitution of machinery for an
imal power, where the strain upon
horses has been extreme, is to be found
in the use of steam engine in a
great excavation in this city. There
horses draw empty wagons into the
deep and wide hole over which the
great department store is to rise, but
they are not forced to struggle up a
long, steep slope, with the loads OF
dirt which are being taken out. When
a wagon is filled stout cable is fast.
ened to it, and a stationary engine on
the edge of the excavation winds uI
the rope and hauls out the load. The
horses have merely to walk out in
front of the wagon. On level grond
they do the pulling once more. It is
hardly necessary to comment on the
great saving of animal labor which is
effected by such device, in digging fo1
the foundations of a single big block
So the progress of invention and sci
ence will surely make life easier and
pleasanter for the lower animals as
we'll as for man. That is one of the
natural and certain phases of thu
worlds gains in knowledge, civiliza
tion, and in kindliness of feeling to-
ward our humble neighbors, the crea
lures that serve, amuse, and please
US. but are unable to speak their wish
es or plead their cause in words.
Only in war there is no hint of prog
ress in the same direction. It still in
wolves wholesale misery and agoniz
ing death for multitudes of horses ant
other domestic animals. And that i.
one more proof that Gen. Sherman
knew what he was talking about whe1
he said that "war is hell"