Stinking Horsemen!

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when the
political power of bicyclists was feared by the horse-lobby!

The Liberty Bill of 1887 gave bicyclists the right to ride in Central
Park, since it was apparent from an objective point of view that they
were far less dangerous than horses:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/stone_cp.cfm

(Page 6 of the Sporting Life edition below has the statistics for one
year, showing 243 Central Park accidents, with 5 bicycle collisions.)

The horsemen wanted to build a horses-only road in the park, claiming
that the bicyclists were dangerous. As a rough analogy, think of a car
coalition demanding an auto-only street through a park.

The bicycle columnist was too gentlemany to even mention the money
spent cleaning up what the horses left behind themselves in the
park--citywide, cleanup costs amounted to millions every year.

***

THE HORSEMAN WILL NEVER LEARN THE LESSON [1892]

Ever since the wheelmen won their great victory in this State [New
York] by the passage of the Liberty Bill in the Legislature [1887],
which gave them equal legal rights with all other vehicles upon the
public and park roads of the State, the heart of the horseman has been
exceeding sore.

It has galled him to see that he was not the sole owner of every road
he might be pleased to drive upon, nnd he has endeavored in every way
to devise some plan whereby he might secure equine exclusiveness.

At first he thought he would repeal the Liberty Bill, hut when he went
to do so he found the politicians did not care to fool with the votes
of 3000 wheelmen in so important a political State as New York, and he
concluded he wouldn't court defeat by attempting repealing the
wheelmen's bill.

Then some very wise and very generous horseman was struck with a
brilliant idea, the very quintessence of horse sense; he would have a
portion of Central Park set apart for the exclusive use of his kind;
he knew the public would be glad to pay $1,500,000 for the privilege
of building this road for him, so he went to Albany and rushed through
the bill to build a race track in Central Park, regarding which I
wrote you last week.

Right here is where this wise horseman slipped up.

The public didn't want to spend any $1,500,000 for his pleasure; they
didn't want even to be robbed of the room his road would take up in
Central Park; they didn't want anything of any kind to do with him or
his race track.

The Park Commissioners, the Governor, and the politicians were all
astounded at the furor which the measure kicked up. Rich and poor
objected and protested, and there was a regular monkey and a parrot
sort of a time in general.

When the indignant citizens met in the office of the Park Board to be
heard regarding the bill, it was discovered that out of sixteen
associations represented two only were in favor and fourteen opposed
to the measure. Then in the course of the debate the gentle and
gentlemanly horseman showed what a nice respectable citizen he was by
calling one of the objectors to his
scheme 'a liar,' etc.

Mr. De La Vergne represented his fellow horsemen, and when narrowed
down to the real cause for his advocacy of this road he said it was to
avoid 'being run over by those bicycle fellows.'

Truly, a masterly argument, a Simon pure dyed-in-the-wool road-hog
untruth. Whoever heard of a wheelman 'running over' any other vehicle
when he could avoid it? Who has not heard of these same road-hogs
running over a wheelman when he could not avoid it?

Then this fit representative of his class said that under the present
law the Park Commissioners could not exclude bicycles from any road
where vehicles were allowed, but if they would build this new road the
horsemen interested would undertake to go before the Legislature and
secure the passage of a bill excluding bicycles.

Now, my dear Mr. De La Vergne, this is your first appearance in
public; it is not a very creditable one to your learning, either; so
don't make it any worse by 'biting off more than you can chew'--to use
a vulgarism.

Don't he so positive as to what you will do in legislating
againstwheelmen; read up history just a little bit and see what
happens to people who try to do this, then, perhaps, you will not be
quite so positive.

When however, you have tried this and met with the defeat which surelv
will be meted out to you, then you will know more about wheelmen than
you do now, and you will have your eyes opened to the fact that,
strange as it will undoubtedly seem to you, the purchase of a horse
does not give the owner an exclusive ownership of every road he may
drive over.

On Friday evening a mass meeting was held in the great hall of the
Cooper Union in protest against the attempt of the horsemen to steal
Central Park, and the meeting demanded the immediate repeal of the
bill which gave them power to do so.

--Sporting Life, April 2d, 1892

http://la84foundation.org/SportsLibr.../SL1901007.pdf

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

and then it rained

On 3/28/2010 10:38 PM, datakoll wrote:
and then it rained

POO!

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007

I remeber one or two other bike-horse conflicts researching BLM, USDA,
and other trails in the west.