1907.] THE HORSE. 229 



that will pay as much clean profit as breeding horses. I am 

 afraid that this afternoon I will insist to you that the sheep is 

 better than the horse, but if I get mixed up, do not blame me 

 for I really take so much interest in each that when I am talk- 

 ing about one I am apt to forget about the other. I know a 

 great many people feel that perhaps the time for breeding good 

 horses is past, but we all remember the time, years ago, when 

 an ingenious Yankee attached a pole and an electric wire to 

 a street car, and we thought then that the market for horses 

 was gone; that there was going to be no demand, and then 

 there were the great plains of the west, those boundless pas- 

 tures, where they could breed horses so much cheaper than we 

 could that people seemed to give up the idea of breeding 

 horses on these eastern farms. Now what is the result? The 

 statistics in every large city of the United States show that 

 there are more horses in use today per thousand of inhabitants 

 than were in use when the street cars were drawn by animal 

 power. The demand has increased instead of diminishing. 

 Then there was the bicycle, and later on the automobile came 

 into fashion, and the air-ship is the only thing that will ever 

 compete at all, because that is the only means of locomotion 

 that can go into the air where horses cannot go. But, my 

 friends, any machine made by man will only strengthen our 

 love for the horse. 



Now I had no idea when I stepped off from the train in 

 New Haven this morning that I was to address you on the 

 subject of horses, or I would have looked up the conditions 

 in your state a little more carefully. I have not looked them 

 up because I think I know them pretty well. This is my fifth 

 trip here, and I have spent a good deal of time in Connecticut 

 when I have been here. . I think that the conditions here are 

 just about the same as they are in my own state of New 

 York. Now the statistics that are kept show that in New 

 York state there is a demand, in the farming districts, and in 

 the towns for 130,000 horses each year. More than a hundred 

 thousand horses die on the farms of the state, and thirty 

 thousand in the towns and cities of the state. That means 

 that there must be 130,000 horses supplied every year to fill 

 or to meet that demand. Of course, Connecticut is not as 

 large a state as New York, but I suppose, as is natural, a good 

 many of you think it is a little better one. However, I think 



