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By Root 1244 0

friendly, children-loving animal, had hidden his gifts under the plainest, most humble exterior. And Harry, keeping his eye on every hot-blooded renegade thoroughbred that came into the barn, shining like a copper penny, was guilty of not recognizing when the key to his aspirations, a natural born jumper, had landed right in front of him. Delivered right to his doorstep in a beat-up old cattle truck one cold February night. Dropped off like a newborn in a picnic basket abandoned on a church’s front step. Handed to him for only eighty dollars and a moment’s worth of compassion. As Harry himself later repeated, many times over, “I was foolish enough to sell the horse, but the horse, he knew better.” He knew well enough to jump paddock fences to find his way home.

11

A Grim Business

St. James, Long Island, Summer and Fall 1957

The business of horse-trading is an ancient art, and prior to the early twentieth century, there may have been no more colorful calling in American life. Called “David Harums” after a turn-of-the-century fictional character whose dictum was “Do unto the other feller the way he’d like to do unto you, and do it fust,” horse traders were proud of their ability to drive a hard bargain. As the popular newspaper columnist John Gould said, in a 1947 article entitled “Hoss Trading,” “Horse swapping is an ancient rite of the race, it is a game of swapping wits especially dear to our pioneer stock.… A horse trade is a delicate and artful procedure, its cardinal principles deeply embedded in human nature.”

A horse trader was skilled in the art of euphemism: a barn-sour horse, one who refused to leave the stable, was described as “quiet at the hitch,” a lazy horse was “gentle,” and a poorly trained horse was “spirited.” Practices such as feeding old horses pepper to make them appear more lively, dying their coats, or stuffing their noses with rags to hide a wheeze were all tricks of the trade. Traditionally, horses were sold as “sound,” meaning healthy and not lame; “strong-winded,” which meant “able to work”; or “at halter,” meaning in an as-is condition.

In the era of horsepower, the breeding, sale, and trade of horses was a big business. In 1897, the Chicago stockyards held the largest horse market in the world. At its peak, it auctioned as many as 60 horses per hour, for over 100,000 sold per year. The horse trade dwindled during the first two decades of the twentieth century, but the market for workhorses picked up during the Great Depression. Many Depression-era farmers had been bankrupted buying farm equipment on credit and often lacked the cash to pay for gasoline. Bred on the farm and fed homegrown grain, the lowly workhorse was touted as a form of sustainable energy. Then came the war years, when gasoline was rationed, so plow horses retained their popularity. The Percheron Horse Association of America, one of the premier draft horse organizations in the United States, reported an uptick in registrations during the 1930s and 1940s, followed by a swift decline in the early 1950s.

By the late fifties, the “David Harums,” seemingly once a permanent fixture of the American landscape, had begun fading from view. A 1962 Palm Beach Post article about professional horsemen called their work “a grim business.” Their number having by this point dwindled to only about two thousand, they made money by searching for cheap horses, training them, and trying to sell them to amateur riders who were willing to invest money in show prospects. The horse trade had straightened out since the days when horse traders filed horses’ teeth to disguise their age—but not much. A nag parlayed to a trader would get a crash course in how to be a riding horse; if the poor creature failed to learn fast, he might soon meet a miserable fate.

Men who were trying to make a living at horses became masters of the quick turnaround. Professional horse traders tried to eke out a living swapping horses before the beasts ate up all their modest profits in hay and grain. Horse trainers were always on the lookout for a talented horse,