A Living Commodity Exploited Horse-Drawn Carriages Remain Contemptible
Human Dominion Versus those Sentient. An Essay on Social Conscious.
Paul A Barthel
In a generation that fails to necessitate horse carriage transport, cities yet remain steadfast romanticizing of the staged commodity as nostalgic, however, mawkish via the mercy of brutes. Handsomely decorated coaches, open-air or covered, many adorned with bronze fittings, leather upholstery, and accommodations upwards of four or more, not including the carriage driver. This does not comprise the wheels, side-stepping boards nor the undercarriage consisting of running gear, axles, and chassis. Let us not forget the horse’s leather dress or the appropriate lap blankets and hot chocolate for those brisk winter evenings and impervious tourists. All said and done a carriage can weigh upwards of 1800 pounds, not including those additional bodies oblivious of the horses' torment.
Long before wokeism and cancel culture became a thing in modern society, human benevolence, and compassion for sentient beings were seeded only by a courageous few. Those compelled to risk certain outcast and violence for those silent and indefensible creatures. During the latter part of the 19th century, Henry Bergh, despite a ferocity of opposition, litigation, and brutality on his being, took it upon himself to protect those very same domesticated mammals. Having witnessed firsthand the barbarity on New York City streets where horses were whipped, beaten, and starved, while many were left for dead in full public view once their resourcefulness had been depleted. Summoning a city worker to remove the carcass via wagon and yet, another horse, could take days or weeks as the bloated remains were left to rot in clear public view, the stench, overwhelming. Clearly, while man is the catalyst for their chosen domestication, he has become derelict in his fidelity to those sentient creatures left in his wake. A commodity that has been created and when depleted left to molder with nary little regard.
Celebrating admirable wins, deserving activists have advocated for the abolition of the ruthless custom, while cities like Chicago, Melbourne, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas thus have reluctantly capitulated in their defiance. While commendable, we should be reminded that it has been almost 200 years since Henry Bergh risked his life in defense of those noblest of creatures on the streets of New York City. The very same city that to this day repudiates recognizing a bygone era. An era once made of soil replaced with heat radiating asphalt, noxious exhaust fumes, frightening urbanization, confinement, and human ignorance. Negligent motor vehicles competing for road space mere inches from the subjugated animals while hit-and-runs remain commonplace. Metal horseshoes nailed into their hooves while offering marginal reprieve, the horses are left at their own mercy relentlessly pounding thousands of times a day, time and again, on cement or tarmac road surface. Exposure to respiratory ailments and debilitating leg problems remain commonplace, if not death, either on the street or hidden away in some distant stable. Nothing new here as history over the course of decades reminds us of the dangers to both humans and nonhumans alike.
In New Orleans during the summer of 2018, a buggy carrying 10 people flipped over trapping and injuring one woman underneath the carriage.
Shady Hills Florida, 2021. A carriage horse was killed on the scene and two passengers were seriously injured after the carriage was struck by a vehicle.
Injury and death while not only prone to carriage horses, in 2016, 79-year-old, Gail Johnson was killed on Mackinac Island after losing control of her bicycle and subsequently trampled to death under the carriage.
In Charleston South Carolina, a city plagued with horse-driven carriage mistreatment, in 2020, a horse was forced to be euthanized after suffering injuries having been spooked and broken free.
In one of the most bizarre and callous of accidents, a horse named Cash drowned to death still attached to the carriage after being spooked and running into the Missouri River, pulled down into the water by the weight of the 1400-pound carriage. This, in 2016.
Contrary to evidence presented, the almighty dollar, the pageantry, and the nostalgic tendencies, any humanistic benevolence has collectively failed in taking precedence over this ruthless grievance. A history littered with the formation and continued exploitation of living commodities that many refuse to concede. “Living commodity”, is a term often coined when describing the ill-treatment of a sentient creature, ultimately contributing to speciesism, and or the assumed superiority of man versus those mistakenly silent. Certainly, if one cannot speak, how is it that we can assume its own suffering?
In a city that has become the poster child for its derelict inaction and malfeasance, America’s representative city, horses are routinely subjected to the whim of the abuser and relentless cityscape deemed unsuitable for those animals. A regimen of being struck by vehicles, obsessive heat, exhaustion, and malnourishment. Inhumane practices allowed where horses routinely collapse on those same city streets where Henry Bergh once stood almost 200 years earlier. Despite what New York City Hall and the Transport Workers Union Local 100 claim are compassionate and ‘welfare-regulated” efforts on behalf of the horses. Late to the party, however, welcomed, New York Council Member, Robert Holden, in an effort to ban horse-drawn carriages, has introduced legislation that would replace the horse-drawn carriage industry with a horseless electric carriage program. (Int. 573-2022). While commendable if passed, would allow yet another year for those horses and their miserable existence. Holden went on to say, “This is 2022, not 1822. To have a horse in this kind of weather pull thousands of pounds with blinders on,” Holden said, gesturing at the sky. “For what? For some tourists’ enjoyment, that we certainly have the technology now to make it better – to not impact a poor horse.”
Meanwhile, this year during the insufferable August heat in midtown Manhattan, yet another horse collapsed onto the pavement. The YouTube crowd capturing the driver shouting, “Get up! Get up! Get up! C'mon, get up." 2022 or 1822, similarly, the driver then used his reins to flog and tug the horse into submission as it remained unflinching while lying on the harsh city pavement. Respectively, the 14-year-old male horse, named Ryder, was then “hosed down” by New York City officers attempting to cool the horse as the bystanders made use of their cellphone cameras to capture the merciless event. Later reminded by Transport Workers Union Local 100 that it was not heat exhaustion as expected, rather, “protozoal myeloencephalitis,” a neurologic disease that can develop from eating infected rodent droppings. The irony remarkably overwhelming.
Once again left to contemplation and inaction, in 2022, will it be Ryder the horse who finally summons the human benevolence required in effort to ban such dated and ruthless institutions? Reminded in 2020, it was then thought that the horse, Aisha, who was then allowed to repeatedly collapse in Central Park would also cause such a firestorm effort. It was not to be. Perhaps it should have been the horse, Spartacus or Blondie, Stella, or Henry. Each horse an example and on the list of hundreds having suffered by way of negligence and exploitation. New York City, while not alone, Philadelphia, Charleston, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans still participate in this controlled abuse.
With reform being the expediency of a snail and almost 200 years after Henry Bergh stood on those very same New York City streets protesting many of the same abusive issues withstanding today, the human effort is not short of contempt. By way of cockfighting, vivisection, Yulin Festival, or the depraved use of veal crates, the glaring abuse and failed efficacy of horse carriage rides remains a strikingly dated, and barbarous practice only exasperated by the human domestication of such animals allowed to suffer at whim. Whether subscribing to the divine principles of scripture and human dominion, or the practice of disciplined science, there is no denying the ethical vindication warranted over those who are sentient and deserving.