9UNP0441SD_Jerry_Apps

- Paul Rogovitch: Good afternoon and welcome again to History Sandwiched In. Today, we're especially fortunate. I'm privileged to introduce our speaker. Of course, he needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway. It's Jerry Apps, who's written about 45 books. He's been a professor at the university here in agriculture, and everything related to agriculture. I do want to mention that just incidentally, he'll be signing his latest books. He's going to be talking today about horse-drawn days. Horses on the farm, and his own experiences, plus a lot more. And his other book, which has just come out, excuse me here, will be "Barns of Wisconsin," just hot off the press. 

And he'd be happy to sign your book if you'd like. So please, without further delay, let me introduce Jerry Apps. 
(inaudible)

- Jerry Apps: We will start over again. Thank you all for coming. I appreciate it very much. You could do a lot of other things this afternoon, but here you are, learning about horses and horse drawn farm machinery. How many of you grew up driving horses? Quite a few. 

As did I. Before I start talking about the history of horses and horse drawn machinery, a brief commercial, as they say. If you are interested in some of my other books and some of the other things that I do, stop up and pick up one of my business cards. I have a web site, jerryapps.com And there, you can read about my books. You can see links to barn preservation, all kinds of things. And in case you are interested, you can subscribe to my blog, which I write each week, something about -- How many of you know what a blog is? Oh, quite a few of you. I asked that question a couple years ago, when I first started writing a blog, and I think one hand went up. Nobody had a clue what a blog was. Anyway, I write a few paragraphs about rural history, the environment, nature. 

And I have a list of where I'm speaking, for those of you who want to keep track of another topic, perhaps, you can look at my blog. A little bit of the background on the horse drawn days. One of the things that surprised me, and those of you who know my work, I've written about barns, and I've written about mills, and history of the Ringling Brothers Circus, one-room schools, history of breweries, what small towns in Wisconsin are like, what farm life was like, and so on. But I did not see anywhere in the literature of Wisconsin in the Midwest, anybody writing about draft horses and their history, nor have I seen anybody connecting the draft horse history with the history of farm machinery. Now, there are a fair number of books out, mostly for antique collectors, I suspect, and very valuable books on various kinds of farm machinery. And I drew on those in writing this book. But I didn't see anybody trying to put together the history of horses along with the history of the horse-drawn machinery. One of the interesting things that happened was my learning. And it's the Historical Society Press that published this book. My learning that the Wisconsin Historical Society down at the end of State Street, as most of you know, has in its archives, a collection, the McCormick Papers. 

Cyrus McCormick, whom I'm going to talk about a little later, was the inventor of the reaper. And Cyrus McCormick became one of the largest and most influential industrialists in the country, indeed in the world. As he combined his company with other companies, eventually forming International Harvester, located in Chicago. And all of those papers, the McCormick Papers, are here in Madison, in the archives of the Historical Society. And they include, not only what you might expect a business history to include, the financial records, letters and all that sort of thing. But Cyrus McCormick also collected and saved all of the advertising material, not only from his own company, but from his competitors. So what a wonderful wealth of information I had to draw on. And we have, in this book, many of the illustrations based on those early advertising materials. So, let's talk a little bit first about the history of draft horses themselves. First, what's a draft horse? 

Somebody asked that the other night when I was talking about it. Well, we have, as you probably know, riding horses, carriage horses, draft horses, race horses, ponies. There's a whole bunch of different categories of horses. Draft horses were those who pulled the heavy loads. That's the best way of saying it. And they were big. They weighed up to a ton, 2,000 pounds a piece. Where a carriage horse or a riding horse might weigh 1,000 or 1,200 pounds. A draft horse was a huge animal. Here's the part that I didn't realize, and that many people that I talk to didn't realize, that we had almost no draft horses in the United States prior to 1830. 

At that time, most of the heavy work was done by oxen. Any of you have any experience with oxen? Yeah, I haven't either. You've got to be a little older than all of us to have worked much with oxen. But for many years, from pioneer days on, oxen pulled the plows, pulled the big wagons, did the heavy work on the farm. And there are many stories about oxen. I got into that and was so much interested in it, that my editor at the Historical Society Press finally said to me one day, "Enough with the oxen. You're writing about horses." 

(laughter)

 So I still have a fair amount on oxen, because the stories are really interesting. 

One of the favorite stories. If you are planning to go to church on Sunday, and you are driving oxen, you need to leave home on Friday. 

(laughter)

 Because one of the characteristics of oxen, they are slow. Lots of strength, but terribly slow. So what was happening in the 1830s, was a transition that was going on in agriculture, and throughout the country. And that transition was led by blacksmiths primarily. And most of them were in the east, because that's the part of the country that was already pretty much settled, and New England, in particular. And these blacksmiths were coming up with all kinds of machinery at the same time that we were beginning to import into this country, draft horses from Europe. The new machinery was not at all adapted to oxen. 

So the coming of horses in 1830 and the blacksmiths developing this new farm machinery, all that was coming together to provide for a very interesting time in the history of agriculture in this country. The draft horses, primarily two breeds at first, were Percherons and Belgians. These were the two breeds that we saw, especially on the farms. Thanks. Is the talk already that dry? That water is necessary? 

(laughter)

 I know how that goes. The Percherons were from France. And for a bunch of reasons, they became most popular with farmers. 

Belgians were next. And the Belgians, I usually ask somebody to tell me where the Belgians were from. And you know, they're from Belgium. And then, some Clydesdales. Now, farmers did not use Clydesdales very much. They're huge animals. And the beer, the breweries prided themselves with their Clydesdales. Anheuser-Busch still has a Clydesdale team. Beautiful horses, but not so well adapted to farm use, because they were too big, and some would say maybe a little clumsy in tight places. And if there's some Clydesdale people here, I'm sorry to have to report that. 

But the Percherons far and away were the most popular for a bunch of reasons. Now, a little bit of an aside. As I mentioned earlier, I wrote the history of the Ringling Brothers Circus. And all of the work horses, not the show horses, but the work horses that the Ringling Brothers used were Percherons. And they had as many as, at one time, let's see, 1910-1911, 500 horses doing their work. All Percherons and all some shade of gray. But that's a little aside. Now, why Percherons for the Ringling Brothers? Because they were not frightened easily. They could withstand crowds. 

And they were small enough that you could pack them into train cars to transport them from one town to the next. Shires and Suffolks were two other breeds of horses that were imported. And we didn't see very many of those. Those were from England. But let me read just a little bit from the book to give you a flavor of what it was like during those early days, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, really, up to 100 years when horses did everything that cars, and trucks, and airplanes, and so on, do today. From pioneer days in America until World War II, horses pulled the plows, hauled the heavy wagons, and transported people from here to there. They pulled the buggies for grocery shopping and courting, for going to church, and stopping at the saloon. They did the work that automobiles, trucks and tractors do today. And they did it quietly, with no dependence on foreign oil to keep them going, and no computer chips to monitor their behavior. No exhaust fumes polluted the air, either. 

If you can disregard the smell of a little horse manure left in their wake. No screeching of tires and roaring of engines. Although, an occasional harsh word spilled from a driver bumped by another less careful one. To the best of my knowledge, no horseman was ever pulled over for drunken driving. When the driver became incapacitated, the horse took over, bringing the over-imbiber home, often without his knowledge. For many years, it was a world of horses. People in town and country alike owned them and depended on them. Behind most houses in towns and villages was a little horse barn. And every town, large and small, had a livery stable where one could rent a horse and buggy. Horses pulled fire engines, hauled milk delivery wagons, and carried mail carriers along their routes. 

Breweries had their horses to haul the massive barrels of beer to taverns. A dray service, today's trucking business, was available in most towns. Its teams and wagons available to haul merchandise from the railroad station to the various merchants, and to transport train travelers to the town's hotels and boarding houses. As late as 1919, after the first automobiles had made their appearance, publications such as the Old Farmer's Almanac, continued to encourage the use of horses for transportation, recognizing both the benefits and the challenges. And here's what the Old Farmer's Almanac said in 1919. "There are still happily many folks who would take more solid comfort to riding behind a good horse than they do when rushing through the country in an automobile. They relish the sociability that is impossible when the road ahead must be watched closely and constantly. And they like the slow pace that affords a chance to see the surroundings. But there's not much opportunity for such to take pleasure in riding over the slippery motor crowded main roads. They must, per force, keep to the side roads less frequently traveled." 

The century 1850 through 1950 was a time for horses. When these noble creatures performed nearly all the tasks that motorized vehicles do today. The era of the horse was a slower time in America. A time for thinking, for fully experiencing one's surroundings, and for close connections between people and animals. It was indeed an interesting time. As a kid growing up on a farm in Waushara County in central Wisconsin, we had horses all through World War II, and all of the years previously, obviously, and did not get a tractor until 1945, until right after the war. No tractor was available. Very few tractors were available during the war. So we drove Frank and Charlie. And our horses, of course, farm horses had names, just like the farm dog. 

We had Frank, and Charlie, and Dick. Now, Dick was kind of an outsider among our livestock on our farm, because Dick was a mustang. Now, here's a little exception that I was telling you about the draft horses coming from Europe. Because many farmers were able to purchase, as my dad was able to purchase, a wild horse. The mustangs were indeed wild horses gathered up in the West and loaded onto boxcars, shipped to the middle west, to the farmers, who bought them for quite a sum less than what one would pay for a draft horse. Most of these mustangs had never even had a halter on them, to say anything about them being able to work. And so, it was always a surprise when you had a mustang around, as Dick was on our farm. A couple of stories. He was smaller. Mustangs were 1,200-1,400, if they were that. 

Dick was as black as the darkest night. Our other horses were brown with lighter manes. But Dick was a black horse, and had his own personality. One of the things-- All horses have personalities, by the way. Those of you who know horses know that. All animals do. I would cultivate with a one-horse cultivator. And Dick was a wonderful horse for doing that, because in those days, we grew a lot of potatoes in central Wisconsin. We had 20 acres of potatoes. And my task was to walk behind this one-horse cultivator with Dick out front, going away from the barn, you could hardly make the horse walk. 

He plodded along like the laziest critter that ever came down the street. You'd turn around at the end, and you'd have all you could do to hold onto him, because he thought he was headed home. And that's not unusual, of course. One other story that has its dangerous elements to it. But it helps us understand how wild horses had personalities that were considerably different from the draft horses that we imported from Europe. One of the things that we did on the farm, and many farmers did, was to butcher our own hogs. And one way to get the butchered hog from the hog pen to where the hog was scalded and prepared for cutting up, we would load the butchered hog on a stone boat. Is there anybody here that does not know what a stone boat is? Hold up your hand. There are a few. 

Well, let me first tell you about the size of the motor that goes on a stone boat. There was no motor on a stone boat. Stone boats were used to pick stones with a team. They were just a bunch of planks that were fastened together and they skidded across the ground. And so, it was easy to roll a dead pig onto the stone boat. Well, we hitched Dick to the stone boat with the dead pig. Now, my dad prided himself with our barnyard fence. It was a board fence. It was painted white. It stood out when you drove by, people would say, Herman Apps has a wonderful barnyard fence. 

People said things like that in an earlier time. They also commented on the wood pile and how large it was, and how well the straw stack was put together. But those are all little side issues. So, Dick is now hitched to the stone boat with a dead pig on it. And we're driving the horse, my dad was driving the horse through the barnyard over to where the scalding barrel was. And Dick got a whiff of blood and decided that that was not to his liking. And he took off a-jumping and a-running, and he cleared the barnyard fence without any difficulty at all. But the stone boat did not clear the barnyard fence. It smashed the fence all to, well, it was smashed badly. And the dead pig was there in the dust and dirt. 

My dad said, "I guess we won't use Dick for this purpose anymore." 

(laughter)

 Well, there are all kinds of stories like that. But let me tell you about how horses and horse-drawn machinery changed agriculture. Because as a rural historian, I'm intrigued by the changes that have taken place, and continue to take place in agriculture. Let's go back to, oh, let's say, the 1840s and 1850s, when when Wisconsin was just being settled. And as most of you are well aware, we were a wheat growing state for a long time. The first settlers here, many of them from upstate New York and New England, when they arrived in Wisconsin, they immediately began growing wheat, thousands of acres of wheat. We were, by Civil War time, 1860-61, we were the number two wheat growing state in the nation. From a line, roughly Green Bay across to, oh, north of La Crosse, and south, that was all wheat. 

Well, how was-- How did we handle wheat? How did we take care of it? First off, it was almost entirely handwork. Wheat was, the seeds were sown with a fashion called broadcasting, by hand, walking across the field. Can you imagine having a 20-acre field, doing that by hand? When it was time to harvest the wheat, it was harvested with a cradle. A cradle, a scythe with some fingers on it. And you'd swing the scythe, cut the grain, and it leaves it in a little row. People have to come along behind, women and children, and bind the wheat into bundles. Then, the wheat was hauled by ox cart in the early days to the barn. 

Now, the early barns in Wisconsin were not dairy barns, nor were they horse barns. They were what was called a three-bay threshing barns. A little bit of our history that's sometimes overlooked, because that wheat which was harvested, was hauled to the farmstead. And these little barns, and I found a few of them still standing, and I talk about them in my barns book. They had the three bays. Now, a barn, the language of a barn, the language of all buildings, architecture has its own language. Barns are divided into bays, and that's the storage space between the beams, so to speak. In a three-bay threshing barn, there was a storage space on the left side, a storage space on the right side. And in the middle, was the threshing floor. And people still talk about barns in that fashion. 

My dad always talked about the threshing floor, although we never did any threshing on the threshing floor in our barn. So, the wheat was stored in the bay to the left and the bay to the right. When it was time to thresh the grain, oxen walked on the grain to remove the kernels from the chaff. Or, and maybe both, a flail was used, a hickory stick, a piece of leather, and you'd beat the bejeebers out of the grain to separate the seeds from the straw. So that was what was going on prior to this gentleman called Cyrus McCormick, a Virginia blacksmith, as was his father. And Cyrus McCormick, all of these blacksmiths in their own way, were geniuses. Because Cyrus McCormick figured out a way of cutting grain that had nothing whatever to do with a cradle or a scythe. And in fact, the machine that he came up with called a reaper, had a sickle bar, with so many little scissors that cut off the grain. It looked nothing like, nor did it work anything like the old cradle. It was a magnificent piece of creativity for someone like Cyrus McCormick, a blacksmith, to come up with something that was not an adaptation of what was before. 

And that reaper revolutionized the growing of wheat, without question. And in 1847, Cyrus McCormick saw what was happening in the Midwest in wheat growing, and he moved his little factory that he was developing in Virginia to Chicago, and became, as I think I mentioned earlier, one of the largest industrialists in the world, manufacturing reapers and other farm equipment. Another blacksmith of note was John Deere. There was such a person, indeed. John Deere. He came from New York to Illinois. And he's best known for a plow that scoured, meaning that the clay soils didn't stick to the side of the plow when it went across the prairie lands of the middle west. Okay, now let's take Cyrus McCormick's invention and take it a bit further. Now, we've got, with Cyrus McCormick, a way to cut the grain. At the same time, there were other blacksmiths, other inventors coming up with a way of sowing the grain seeds. 

And these inventions, machines, were called drills. Grain drills. One of those early inventors was right here in Wisconsin, Mayville. Van Brunt brothers, they came up with a device that would sow grain, now with horses pulling it, because with horses here, these blacksmiths, these inventors, are coming up with all kinds of ideas on how they could use the horse to replace human energy, because so much of it had been handwork. So, the Van Brunts and a lot of other people were coming up with drills. And another group of people were inventing a threshing machine, so we didn't have to have the oxen walking across the grain. I was giving a talk the other night at Barnes and Noble, and a woman came up to me and she said, I can't get over these oxen walking on the grain. Who would eat grain, who would eat bread where oxen walked on the grain? And she went on and on and on. 

(laughter)

 She was sort of stuck on the oxen walking on the grain part, and missed everything else I had to say. We have a bunch of inventors coming up with a threshing machine. But one who really advanced it all was another easterner who came to Wisconsin, J.I. Case. He settled eventually in Racine. How many of you know what the J.I. in J.I. Case stand for? Anybody know that? These are things you should know! 

(laughter)

 Jerome Increase Case. Yeah, I named one of the characters in one of my novels Increase. 

And people come up to me and say, Where did you get a stupid name like that? Nobody named their kids Increase. Well, J.I. Case's mother did. Increase Lapham was another person in Wisconsin that many of us know about, and one of my heroes. Okay, so now we've got the reaper cutting the grain. We've got the grain drill sowing the grain seeds. Reaper cutting the grain. Threshing machines threshing the grain. So we're doing pretty well with grain harvesting. But lo and behold, by 1865, after the Civil War, and 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, up to 1870, wheat growing began to diminish for a couple three reasons. 

Disease, insects, sowing the same crop on the same field over and over again. And so, the grain crop diminished tremendously. And now, we're seeing a shift from grain farming, from wheat growing, to dairy farming. It started in about the 1870s. And we now have a requirement for a new set of farm machinery, because dairy cattle require what we call forage, the grass, hay, silage, that sort of thing. And so we saw the invention of a mower that would cut hay. We saw hay loaders, we saw hay forks that lifted the hay up into the barns and a whole new set of farm machinery, related to now the dairy industry. A couple of other things about Cyrus McCormick that I find very interesting. Cyrus McCormick's reaper sold for, oh, $125. You could buy a cradle for $2.50. 

Why in the world would you buy a reaper for $125 when you can buy a cradle for two dollars and a half? Besides that, it gives the family something to do when we go out and cut grain. I mean, we need to have everybody having something to do. So that, the sales were slow of the reaper for some while. Cyrus McCormick, and I need to check this a bit further, but I believe, and others have agreed with me, that Cyrus McCormick was the first person to sell his product so much down and so much a month. Time payment plan. That was an entirely new idea in the 1830s. So much down and so much a month. And he sold a lot of reapers that way. And he discovered that when you sell something so much down and so much a month, that there's now and again somebody that doesn't remember to pay. 

And one of his problems was, he had people working out trying to collect. It was a terrible time. Civil War came along in 1861 and all of the young men are off to fight and now in '61 we had a lot of wheat. And what to do? Cyrus McCormick salespeople came in and said, "We have the answer for you." Buy a reaper and you can harvest your grain and you don't have to worry that your sons and husbands are off fighting. You can handle the cutting of the wheat. So that's an interesting little aside. Well, I want to share a couple more things about horses and how they were members of the family, but I want to first tell you, I was a county Extension agent at one time, worked in Green Lake County and in Brown County. And county agents were largely responsible for the county fairs. 

Still do a lot of work with the county fair. And one of the things that we encouraged always in the day when I was a county agent was for the implement dealers to bring out their new products and line them up so the people coming to the fair would have an opportunity to see what's new in agricultural equipment. And today the language would be to "kick tires," that's what farmers would do with these fancy tractors. Well, in the early days there was still horse drawn stuff, but I remember when I was in Brown County at the county fair, a John Deere dealer had a huge display. And this sales guy was more than a little flamboyant, and he said, "Well, folks, I want you to know." And he's got a bunch of people gathered around. "We stand behind all of our equipment." And some old farmer said, "What about that piece of equipment right there?" It was a manure spreader. 

(laughter)

 And the John Deere guy said, "Well, that's only piece of equipment we don't stand behind." 

(laughter)

 A lot of stories like that. A little bit about Frank and Charlie, our horses, to give you a little flavor for how horses were indeed members of the family. The farm dog and the horses were as much a member of the family as were the kids. Frank and Charlie were Percheron draft horses, brown with tan manes and tails, each weighing about 1800 pounds. They were already members of my family, along with Fannie, our big brown and tan long-nosed collie, by the time I was born. When I was old enough to be curious, I asked Pa how the horses got their names. "Well, we named them after our neighbors, Frank Kolka and Charlie George," Pa said. People living in a farm community knew the names of each other's horses just as well as they knew the names of the neighbors' kids. 

They knew the horses' personalities, too. For instance, our neighbor, Wilbur Whit, owned a horse named Jerry. A big, lazy, good-for-nothing animal that would kick or bite you every chance he got. Ma would never call me Jerry, it was always Gerald, because she didn't want anyone to compare me to the neighbor's ruthless horse. That's how it was when I was a kid. When I was working on this book, I came across a story about a Norwegian bachelor farmer who, he was in his late 80s, still farming, and still farming with horses. And when asked what he thought of farming with horses, his reply was, "When you farm with horses, you are never alone." That's one of the more poignant statements I've heard as I interviewed people. "When you farm with horses, you are never alone." I interviewed another fellow, he was in his late 80s. 

He had a beautiful pair of black Belgians. And when I drove into his yard, there they were, a matched team of Belgians, looking over the barnyard fence. And I said to him, I said, "What do you do with those horses these days?" "I mostly look at 'em." That says so much. "I mostly just look at them." Because he grew up, spent his life's time driving horses. If you don't know how to harness a horse, complete instructions are here, in case you ever want to do that. My son Steve sits over here, he's my photographer for many of my books, and he has the sequence of how to harness a horse. We did this at Laverne Forest's Eplegaarden a couple, three years ago, and his horses had spent a lazy winter and had put on a little weight. 

And so we had a little trouble getting the harnesses to fit that April day, but it was a fun time. I want to close, and give you a chance for some questions, by reading a few statements that help us today, remind us today of our history with horses. And I call this little section "Horses in Our Language." 

(reading)

 You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Get off your high horse. Quit horsing around. Don't put the cart before the horse. Don't switch horses in midstream. He supported a dark horse candidate. 

Hold your horses. Anybody ever say that? Hold your horses. Do you know where that comes from? I'll tell you. When I wrote the history of the Ringling Brothers, and you will recall that the early circuses prided themselves on their wonderful circus parades. There would be elephants and wagons and clowns and everything, all stretched out down main street, inviting people to come and see the circus. And people would come from miles around with their horses, buggies and on horseback. But a little known fact was that horses, once they smell, just smell an elephant, it drives them berserk. So in front of the elephants was a rider from the circus and as he came along the way, his words were, "Hold your horses! 

The elephants are coming. Hold your horses, the elephants are coming." Most all of our language that we think is quaint and unusual has some very practical historical root. She heard it straight from the horse's mouth. He was beating a dead horse. I don't have this one in here, but I've heard it often. When the horse dies, it's time to climb off. 

(laughter)

 Ever heard that before? Yeah, that sort of makes practical sense. 

She eats like a horse. She works like a horse. She backed the wrong horse. That's a horse of a different color. It was a one-horse town. I come from a one-horse town. I come from Wild Rose, Wisconsin. I will never give a talk without at least mentioning it once. How many know where Wild Rose, Wisconsin is? You're all commended and will get gold stars when you leave. 

Last I checked, the population is 789, so it probably would be called a one-horse town. He has horse sense. She knows how to horse trade. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Thank you all very much for coming. Appreciate it. 

(applause)