Working with Animal;s a Census and a Poll

[wkambic]

Related to this question, and to an earlier discussion on the list somewhere about how WWII opened up college, through the GI bill, to entire classes of people who had not previously attended, I'll ask this specifically regarding World War Two, but also trail it out as late as the Korean War.

For those of you who experienced the eras, or who are closely familiar with those who did, what were the work/career expectations of those folks prior to WWII, and did WWII change them in any fashion?

I'm gonna guess that prior to WWII, for the urban worker (there were no suburbs in those days to speak of), it would have been to get on with an industrial manufacturer. That seems to have been the goals of my paternal, male relatives (who were all very blue collar). Since my mother's side was wealthier, there were a number who began college and anticipated white collar employment (the War interrupted most of them but they went back afterwards). Women on my father's side were housewives. On my mother's side a number were also, but there were many who got college degrees and became school teachers.

I also went to high school for two years in Detroit. I was in the college prep program, but that was only about 25% of the total (in 1962-64). For the non-college guys the dream job was to get on with one of the Big Three. Auto workers were clearly the Brahmins of American Labor with high wages and large amounts of time off. If you had a relative in the UAW you were "in"; if you didn't you weren't necessarily "out" but it was tougher.

There was also a lot of supplier manufacturing in the area, as well as other blue collar work (construction being another major goal as it paid well and had lots of time off).

I would bet that the view of the pre-WWII blue collar youngster and the '60s era blue collar youngster would not differ all that much.

[Pat Holscher]

I started an old thread on this topic a great deal of time ago, and I'm bumping it up and adding a poll to it here. The topic explores "Working With Animals". The poll and the thread that will be folded in likely explain it, but what I'm curious about is how far back we go, in this group (or amongst anyone who cares to join in) before some family member of ours worked with animals daily. Of course, for some of us, we're that person.

[roy elderkin]

Pat apart from myself I think I can go back three generations

[selewis]

Paternal GGF. He drove stage.

Both my parents rode, especially my mother, but they didn't work with them.

If raising horses counts, then, I have an aunt who bred Morgans. Her devotion and diligence produced animals that greatly influence the breed and are still highlighted in pedigrees today, 50 years later.

And a horse doctor cousin.

[Couvi]

Both of my grandfathers, my uncles and my father worked mules until the early 1960's when tractors
replaced them completely. My paternal grandfather worked oxen in his youth.

[Pat Holscher]

I posted this question on the WWI and WWII lists also, and received these replies:

My family on the other side of the border uses riding horses on a daily basis. They also have a team of wagon mules that are used occasionally.

My father (95) used horse teams for wagons and even some plowing in hard to get to places when he was a teen.

When I was a kid in the early 1950s there was a fella who had a freight wagon with a team of horses and he was the local junk-man. That was inside Houston city limits.

My mother's family had a horse and wagon they used for business in NYC in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Her older brother used it, she rode. My paternal grandfather was an Imperial Russian Army dragoon, 1895-1903.

Henry

As an addendum, I can remember the occasional horse and wagon in the streets of NYC in the late 1940s. I'm pretty sure they were gone by the early 50s- there may have been a city ordinance banning them. Now the only horses you will see are mounted police, horse drawn carriages for the tourist trade, or riders going from stables to the park.

Henry

Both of my grandparents in their early lives, lived on farms. Thier early lives were before the automobile and trucks.

For my wife, her father lived on a farm and harvested and sold wood for wood pulping. He used horses to drag the logs from the woods to the road where they could be loaded on trucks to be hauled to a railroad siding for loading on railroad cars. My wife's mother milked cows, helped raise other
animals: pigs, cattle, etc

MIke Leiws

In Mexico they recently widened the two-land road (which was no different than a rural US asphalt road) to a US-standard four-lane that runs from the state highway to Morelas. On both sides of the road is a one-lane wagon trail and you see occasional burro, mule, and horse-drawn wagons and carts with the road full of new pickups and SUVs.

Here in Cypress, TX outside of Houston a great many people have horses, but they're mostly for recreational riding. Its not uncommon for riders to be seen on the strrets. There are some wagon horses though. A few times I've seen horses tied up in front of Target, Office Max, or Best Buy.

I think there were at least 14 trail rides with thousands of riders and wagons that came into Houston for the Rodeo, which started last week. This is an important season for Houston.

My niece is a police officer in Tempe, AZ and used to work the horse mounted unit there.

Mike wrote:
"My wife's mother milked cows, helped raise other
animals: pigs, cattle, etc"

Our kids and grand kids know how to milk cows and goats among other farm chores. I think its important for kids to have done this sort of thing. It keeps things in perspective and gives them a broader sense of the world. Of course watching WC castrate bulls puts a whole different perspective on things.

My father (born, 1916) had to occasionally kill a chicken for Sunday dinner. My mother (born 1920) had to feed chickens. My wife (born 1950) was raised on a farm. Me? I have cats and dogs and turtles and tortoises, but I have only ridden a horse once in my life.

Marc

Does working on a dairy farm during the summer as a teen count?

I got paid for it.

Tommy

And here is a one I well remember from the 1940s and '50s, but has been outlawed in NYC for a couple of decades- the hurdygurdy man, with monkey.
There was one guy still doing it into the '90s, but I don't know if he is still active or the other East Coaster mentioned in this website:
<http://www.hurdygurdymonkeyandme.com/>
This was an urban tradition in its time, and one I'm sorry we are losing.Apparently someone, once, somewhere, got bitten by the monkey, so naturally we had to ban it. Or maybe someone read that monkeys actually carry diseases- as if the woman coughing next to me on the bus today wasn't a problem. If you're not familiar with the idea, the man played the organ, and the monkey collected the tips in his hat.

Henry

When I was a child in the early 1920's I stayed for a while with my grandmother in Brooklyn, N.Y. I have a very vivid memory of the milkmen with their horse-pulled wagons. Also a scissors grinder would make his rounds with a horse wagon and call out "Scissors!" In the late twenties I lived on Long Island and for a few years we still had horse-drawn milk wagons. (I remember distinctly the horse droppings in the streets.) In 1939 I worked on a dairy farm in upper New York State and all the work was carried out with horse-drawn teams. I never learned the knack of harnessing the teams but I did drive them to the fields where we sowed, plowed, pitched hay and did other chores. A few other farms also were still using horses. This farm was one of the last to switch to a tractor.
My great grandfather was a prominent blacksmith in Brooklyn in the late 1890's and early 1900's. He built the wooden wagons for Hellman's Mayonnaise Company (which also made house deliveries), and later for Fisher Body Corporation when they were beginning to switch over to making automobile bodies. He was offered stock in Fisher Body Corporation in lieu of cash payment but being a good sensible German turned down the offer, because "there's no future in automobiles."
I suppose your research is limited to the United States, but while I was stationed in Italy during the war, the roads and even the city streets of Naples were filled with donkey carts bringing farm produce to market. I hope this helps.

Walter Gourlay

[Pat Holscher]

Bump.

Sort of related to a couple of recent topics.

[Steve]

Patrol horses on the Mexican border. When I retired in 2001 my successor got rid of the last 3 them. Now there are over 40 on the Arizona border (I think that number is way low now-I should call). I kept eventing with my own horses until about 2005. Now do search and rescue mounted and foot here in Coconino county. Hard to envision not having a few around eating me out of house and home.

I still work part time out of the US for State and Defense (Mauritania, NIgeria, Montenegro and Kenya so far this year) and if there is any legacy of mounted units I try to ask about them.

[browerpatch]

My family dabbled in the cattle business in the 1960's. My father was a doctor, so I think this was more of a hobby that got out of hand. Beyond that, I come from a long line of doctors and lawyers.

My wife grew up on a dairy farm, and had her own farm and herd for a while. That's about it for us.

[Pat Holscher]

My father was a doctor, so I think this was more of a hobby that got out of hand. Beyond that, I come from a long line of doctors and lawyers.

You know, those occupations really help illustrate part of what this thread addresses, that being the former extent to which people worked with animals, and the extent to which that opportunity no longer does.

No doubt in urban areas horses haven't been a factor for doctors and lawyers for a very long time, probably well back into the 19th Century. But in more rural areas, the opposite is true.

Doctors were so associated with carriage use, that a certain type of buggy (I believe Phillip can speak more on this) was named after them. Before motorized house calls there were buggy house calls. At least around here a lot of doctors offices still recall this with a painting of a doctor's buggy in front of a house in bad weather or at night, recalling the house call to deliver a baby. Something that was probably pretty common, but probably not as common as the house call related to the measles/mumps/flu, etc.

Being a lawyer also meant a lot of riding, in some areas, at one time. The National Archives has a neat selection of Bain News Service photographs of lawyers in New York City, with some really dressed to the nines. I frankly wonder, however, if they were so dapper in their dress as they were seeking to distinguish themselves form the more lowly town and country lawyers who likely wouldn't have dressed that way as their travels would preclude it, as travel they did.

Even now we have many courts called "Circuit" Courts with little regard to the meaning of that term. The reason, however, that they were called that is that it was once extremely common to have one judge in a district of circuit courts, and the judge traveled from courthouse to courthouse on a set schedule. When he arrived in a location, all the stored up cases were heard over a set period of time. The judges, therefore, traveled (including, I'd note Federal Judges). In that era, some lawyers likewise did the same, as they traveled the circuit, in whole or in part, in order to present their cases in those districts. Others, of course, were more local. Still, I've been surprised in reading accounts from Wyoming how wide ranging some lawyers were at the time, in spite of the difficulty of travel.

Given the difficulty, almost everyone engaged in the legal profession was using some horse transportation. One local state District Court judge has a great statue of a circuit riding late 19th Century judge doing that by mule. Probably buggies were more routine for most, and trains no doubt were what people generally relied on, but horses were in the picture. Earlier, such as in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, riding would have been an occupational requirement. McCullough has a great description of that in his biography of John Adams.

All gone now, of course.

[Steve Haupt]

Greetings,
So for family the last to work with livestock were my Greta Aunt and Uncle. They farmed in S. Illlonois in the mid 1930's until a union boss from Chicago came down and told my of work in the Florida Keys building the Overseas Highway as crane operator. My Aunt described driving a Percheron cultivating corn and telling the horse not to step on the plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Highway
Fast forward to today.
I gave a lesson to a 12 twelve year old driving a pair of Clydesdales.
Yesterday it was driving a Six-up in exhibition at the California State Fair.
So what is old is new again.
Cheers,
Steve Haupt

[Pat Holscher]

Rural mail carriers, 1940:

Thought of this due the news story on the end of Saturday mail delivery.

[Pat Holscher]

Rural mail carriers, 1940:

24573679802_e2066a44e2_o.jpg (136.23 KiB) Viewed 3694 times

Mail carrier, Los Angeles, circa 1915.

[selewis]

Interesting, in that I didn't know half chaps had been around that long. Thanks.