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Oxen continue timeline differences1/25/2024 Equine power thrived on the flat, hard surface of the towpath pulling heavy weight along a narrow, relatively friction-less surface of water. Horses and mules pulled boats on the Erie Canal, which linked Albany on the Hudson River with Buffalo on Lake Erie after 1825. In transportation, animals also made key technological developments possible. By 1900, huge combines pulled by 38-horse hitches were harvesting wheat in the Palouse region of western Washington. A host of other mechanized devices soon followed to help with planting, cultivating, spraying, grinding and compressing. The invention of the horse-drawn reaper in the 1830s, however, dramatically increased how much farmers could grow and helped pay the extra cost of using horses. Labor shortages, especially for harvesting, limited agricultural production. But planting, cultivating and harvesting were still done by hand. Oxen commonly did arduous tasks that required power rather than speed. Up to the early 19 th century, animal power had played a small role in agriculture, used mostly for clearing and plowing. In agriculture, mechanization increased the use of animal power. The greatest uses of animal power were in agriculture and transportation. The majority of work animals lived and worked in cities and their surrounding hinterlands. By 1900, there was one horse or mule for every three humans in the United States. This outpaced the growth in human population, which merely tripled during those same decades. The draft animal population–the vast majority of which were horses and mules-grew six-fold between 18, from four to twenty-four million. In many instances, only the advent of electricity and internal combustion engines could displace horses from their critical role.Ĭonsequently, the use of animal power increased substantially, rather than declining, during the period from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Work animals continued to provide functions, flexibility and efficiency that steam engines lacked for many decades or would never replace. Steam technology had great power and potential, but it was primarily effective in stationary engines, or in railroad locomotives operating over long distances. In practice, animals like horses, mules and oxen were necessary complements to the newer kinds of power. The lasting significance of animal power may surprise anyone who believes that industrialization was a linear process of machines replacing muscle, or that the steam engine displaced all other forms of power. Until the 1870s, animals delivered the majority of power utilized by Americans in 1900, animals still accounted for a third of all power consumed. The hallmarks of early nineteenth century industrialization-the transportation revolution in infrastructure, commercial expansion, rising agricultural production and productivity, and urban growth-all depended on the growth and intensification in the use of animal power. After human muscle power, domesticated animals provided the most accessible, economical and efficient source of power available to Americans in the nineteenth century.
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