The Bicycle Craze Is Killing the Horse Trade
A traveling horseshoe salesman reports that the wheel has gutted demand for horses, harnesses and carriages — and that Western horses are now worth 'less than nothing.'
James Vance, of the Phoenix Horse Shoe Company, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., who is at the Occidental and has recently visited all of the Western states, said yesterday: "The bicycle craze has cut into the horseshoe business to an astonishing degree and the effects are felt by dealers in horses, harness, carriages and vehicles of every kind. Many liverymen have found it necessary to establish a bicycle branch to the business. In Denver alone there are 10,000 bicycles in use. The horseshoe factories at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Joliet, Ill., operated by our company turn out 1,600 kegs of shoes daily. The use of them on the coast is very large as compared to other parts of the country, and it would pay to manufacture them here if the fuel could be obtained cheaply enough. The cattlemen of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska are all decidedly prosperous owing to the shortage of stock and correspondingly good prices, but in horses there is no market and they are worth positively less than nothing."
“In horses there is no market and they are worth positively less than nothing.”
The 1890s bicycle boom was the first great personal-transport disruption, and it hit Seattle's livery stables and harness shops the way ride-hailing later hit taxi fleets. Vance's lament that horses are 'worth less than nothing' is an early case of a new technology stranding an entire supply chain.
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