336 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



and saddlers. Even among "business horses" a higher price must often 

 be paid than buyers desire, and it is said that this has even led some 

 large establishments to send agents into the country to take advantage 

 of the natural differences between farm and market prices. To a casual 

 observer thisi is, perhaps, the most striking feature that presents itself. A 

 change from a condition of over-production and panic prices to one of 

 scarcity and strong prices has come about within the course of less than 

 five years. 



Third — Going more into the details of the market, we find a pretty 

 well-defined system of classification. Buyers are on the market to get 

 horses of a certain type, and thus have created "classes." It is true that 

 there are still thousands of horses every year that are shipped in simply 

 to be gotten rid of — to sell for whatever they will bring; yet they are, as 

 a rule, sold at a loss, and the only horses that sell at satisfactory prices 

 are those that conform to the requirements that buyers demand. 



The reasons for these conditions are rather definitely understood, 

 but a brief review of them here may not be out of place. 



CAUSES OF THE DEPRESSION OF THE LAST DECADE. 



Going back of the firmness of the present market, the causes of the 

 low prices and over-production that preceded it present themselves. 



PASSING OF THE STREET-CAR HORSE. 



The recent depression of the horse business began about 1890. Up to 

 that time immense numbers of animals were in demand for street-car use. 

 A fairly good animal was used, but there was no certain fixity of type. 

 This trade absorbed very many horses that had always constituted the 

 overwhelming majority on the market — the small chunks and the gen- 

 eral-purpose animals; and with the introduction of the cable car and 

 almost immediately after, the sweeping substitution of electric cars for 

 horse cars in nearly all the large cities, these immense numbers of horses 

 were thrown on the market without a demand for them, and the public 

 was suddenly confronted with a condition of extreme over-production. 

 This, however, would only indirectly affect the higher grades. Extra indi- 

 vidual horses maintained a fairly good scale of prices, and never at any 

 time were they such drug on the market as the commoner sorts. 



The severest test to the market horse was yet to come. Strongly 

 organized conditions might have tided over the effects of over-supply that 

 the falling off of the demand for the street-car horse brought about, but 

 the punishment was to be made all the more complete by the financial 

 panic of 1893. 



THE FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1893. 



The great panic that began in this year, but whose influence was felt 

 most severely in the horse-producing sections two years later, was really 

 the most effective cause for the breakdown in the horse market. The 

 cheaper grades fell still lower and the higher classes began a descent in 

 prices that forced men out of the business and had a most disastrous 

 effect in creating a general distrust of the horse, not only on the part of 



