Sam Moore

Today we hear a lot about the pollution caused by the vast numbers of motor vehicles that clog city streets and there have even been proposals to ban all automobile traffic from some of the larger city centers.

One hundred and fifty years ago however, decades before Karl Benz and his wonderful horseless carriage, cities all over the western world faced horrendous pollution problems from the transportation system then in common use, the urban horse (and mule). In fact, it has been written that, because of the noise, accidents, and filth caused by horse drawn chariots that Julius Caesar banned these vehicles from the vias and piazzas of ancient Rome between dawn and dusk. During the late 1800s, there were serious proposals to ban horses from some of the world's largest cities.

Until the early years of the nineteenth century, there were few horses in American cities – only the wealthy owned them. Everybody else walked wherever they wanted to go and most freight was hauled by oxen, while cattle were used for heavy draft work on farms as well. During the industrial revolution of the 1800s however, America's overall standard of living doubled and then doubled again. The population of the cities exploded due to the influx of rural folks and immigrants looking for jobs.

In the 1820s, regular stagecoach lines between cities were established, as well as large omnibuses for travel within the cities, both of which required large numbers of horses. Then, the omnibus was replaced by street railways with the cars pulled by horses and mules; one account says that each New Yorker rode the horse cars 297 times per year, so there must have been lots of horse cars and lots of horses. In addition, with more discretionary income, more and more people were buying carriages and buggies and horses to pull them. Heavier draft horses were developed and became popular for freight hauling, as well as farm work.

It all added up to a tremendous number of horses and mules crammed into the cities along with all the people. Each animal probably ate close to a ton and a half of oats and two and a half tons of hay per year, requiring several millions of acres of farm land to grow. And, of course, a lot of that food passed through the horse – between 15 and 30 pounds of manure and a quart of urine per horse per day. At the 1880 census, New York City had between 150,000 and 175,000 horses, who left behind 3 to 4 million pounds of manure and about 40,000 gallons of urine on the streets and in livery stables.

When it rained, every street was like a swamp of muck, sucking at pedestrian's shoes and the hems of the ladies' dresses. When dry, the manure was pounded into dust by passing traffic and blown into peoples faces, onto their clothes and into open windows. Entrepreneurs armed with brooms and shovels stood on street corners and, for a fee, cleared a path through the mess for people wanting to cross.

The manure piled up in vacant lots and any other vacant space, stank to high heaven, and bred billions of house flies, which carried all sorts of diseases. In 1900, officials in Rochester, N.Y., estimated that the horses in that city yearly produced enough manure to make a heap 175 feet high and covering an acre of ground, while breeding sixteen billion flies.

Breathing manure dust caused respiratory problems. Horses died, or were injured and shot in the streets and in many cases were left to rot or pushed into nearby streams or canals. Children played in the streets among all the filth – it's no wonder life expectancy in those days was so much less than today.

Horses often became spooked and ran away, killing and maiming drivers and passengers, bystanders, and themselves. They often trampled, kicked or bit people, and then there was always driver error where vehicles upset or ran into each other.

The problem became so bad that representatives from London, Paris and Moscow came to the first Urban Planning Conference in New York City in 1898 to discuss, among other things, the urban manure problem. Originally scheduled for ten days, the conference broke up after only three when delegates concluded there was no answer to the horse manure problem. The Times of London predicted that by 1950 every street in the city would be covered with nine feet of manure. A New Yorker thought that manure would be as high as the third story windows of Manhattan by 1930. Without the horse, however, cities would cease to function and people would starve – there seemed to be no solution.

But, there was a solution, and it turned out to be the very thing that's being claimed as causing much of our present-day pollution: the internal combustion engine. By 1912, for the first time, there were more automobiles in New York City than horses. Motor trucks took over heavy hauling duties from horses during the 1920s. Horses gradually disappeared from the streets, and along with them the stables, manure piles, muck, dust and flies. The truck and the car were believed at the time to have saved the environment, and they did save us from drowning in manure. Now, a lot of people think we need something to save us from the internal combustion engine.

Sam Moore

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk in the media about the “new technology” hybrid cars that use various combinations of gasoline engines, electric motors, generators and batteries to drive the vehicle. One has only to look at the home delivery industry of seventy or eighty years ago to find examples of gas-electric vehicles, although back then they weren’t quite so sophisticated as today’s Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt.
From the start of urban door-to-door delivery of baked goods and dairy products, until well into the 1930s, a horse-drawn wagon was the vehicle of choice. The horse usually knew the route, and would stop and start with very little control from the breadman or milkman, who was busy filling his basket and running up and down walks to leave his wares on the porches of his customers. However, there was a downside to the horse and wagon system. It was slow getting back and forth from the dairy or bakery to the start and finish of the delivery-man’s route. Stabling and feeding the horses was expensive, and there was a sanitation problem, as attested to by the following excerpt from a customer’s letter to his dairy as published in a past edition of Wheels of Time, the magazine of the American Truck Historical Society.
“As I advised your driver, your milk-wagon horses have so synchronized their intestinal affairs with their scheduled arrival in front of my home, that each and every morning of the year they deposit in profuse abandon, souvenirs which might be of great value to a farmer, but which are only something to worry about for a man who gets his food from a sack.
“To make matters worse, we have a pup who never fails to show his gratitude to us by depositing on our front porch warm samples of your horses’ best efforts of the day. Sometimes they sweep well, sometimes they don’t.
“It’s up to you, Gentlemen. Unless I have relief commensurate with the relief your horses have been enjoying, my monthly checks will no longer clear through your bank.”
To solve these problems, several motorized delivery trucks were developed. Divco and Pak-Age-Car were among firms that built gas engine driven delivery trucks with conventional clutches and transmissions. Many drivers objected to the need to go through the gears between each stop, and clutches and drive trains often failed under the continuous stops and starts. Other companies, such as Ward and Walker, offered delivery trucks driven by electric motors that were powered by banks of lead-acid batteries. These vehicles were easy to drive, and started and stopped smoothly, but the batteries were heavy and took up a lot of space, required a lot of maintenance, and took a long time to recharge. In addition, range of travel was limited.
In 1928, two wealthy Chicago brothers, Ward and Niblack Thorne, decided to build a better mousetrap ... er, delivery truck. They formed the Thorne Motor Corporation and built a new factory in Chicago. Built to handle the many starts and stops on a delivery route, the new Thorne Gas-Electric would have the engine directly coupled to a generator, that in turn drove an electric motor mounted on the rear axle. Although the brothers designed the vehicle, they used many off the shelf components, such as Continental engines, Lockheed brakes, and Clark wheels and axles. The generator, electric motor and electrical controls were built to Thorne specifications by the Hertner Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
Control was easy and fast for the driver, who stood up while driving. As the truck pulled up to a stop, the driver closed the hand throttle, which idled the engine and opened the electrical circuit to the motor. He then applied the foot brake which automatically locked down with a ratchet. After making his delivery, the driver kicked off the brake, opened the throttle, and the truck was smoothly and instantly under way.
Initially, the dairy industry was quite taken by the efficiency and performance of the Thorne Gas-Electric delivery truck, and many were sold, with some dairies having large fleets of the handy little vehicles. However, the effects of the Great Depression were soon felt by the Thorne brothers, and the company went into receivership in 1932.
The Hertner Electric Company was their largest creditor, so the Thornes shipped all their remaining machinery and parts to them. Hertner formed Gas-Electric Motors, Inc., and built Thorne Gas-Electrics in Cleveland. Hertner made some improvements in the Gas-Electric, one of which was the addition of dynamic braking, a feature that’s found on most diesel-electric railroad locomotives today. Hertner also built a few Gas-Electric conventional straight trucks called the S-1 and S-2 Models. In photos, the S Models appear to be of about one-ton capacity, and the S-2 is an especially good looking truck, although very few were ever sold. Hertner also switched to Buda engines on some models, and in 1935, started to use a Chrysler 6-cylinder that gave the Thorne Gas-Electric performance to match most passenger cars. The last delivery truck built by Hertner was the C-1 Model which was smaller and lighter, with a 1500 pound capacity and a 4-cylinder Hercules engine.
In 1937, Hertner sold the truck line to the Walker Vehicle Co. of Chicago, a division of Yale & Towne. Walker, who had been building battery powered electric trucks since the early 1900s, now built a gas-electric delivery van using the Thorne design that they called the Walker Dynamotive. The Dynamotive used either a 6-cylinder Chrysler, or a 4-cylinder Continental Red Seal engine, while most of the electrical components were Walker made.
The Walker Dynamotive sold well, and was continued until production was halted in 1942 by World War II. After the war, Yale-Towne concentrated on their lift truck business and the Thorne Gas-Electric design was soon forgotten.
Just another example of how so-called “new technology” isn’t really all that new. 

A milkman delivering milk from a Moore's (no relation) Dairy wagon circa 1925; location unknown. (Image from half a stereo optic slide. Courtesy U.S. Library of Congress)