Beasts of Burden

 New York City apparently passed a resolution this week phasing out the use of horse-drawn carriages over the next two years. 

I thought of a passage in that aching pastoral novel I just read—beloved by many—J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country, about the passing of horse-centric civilization from rural England. 

"From childhood," Carr writes, "they had always known the sound of hooves fitfully beating stable floors in the night hours [....] How could they foresee that, in a few brief years, their fellow sharers of field and road would be gone for ever?"

Of course, the measure was justified in part by arguments that it would be better for the horses. The use of horses as pack animals was exploitative, and the conditions under which these creatures labored were miserable, people allege. 

This of course raises the question of what will happen to the horses when they no longer work. The resolution anticipates this by calling for their "humane disposition." Presumably this means: something other than being sent to the glue factory. 

But critics of the resolution reportedly say that horses were actually treated well under city regulations, and that there is no guarantee under the new rules that they will meet a kinder fate elsewhere. 

Moreover, they point to the fact that the horses' human handlers are now going to be out of work. "The drivers, many of whom are immigrants, say the ban will eliminate their livelihoods without offering a viable alternative," the Wall Street Journal reports. 

Where is the plan for the "humane disposition" of them? 

The horses are being put out to pasture. Where are the humans who drive them supposed to go?

I am inclined to say to the horses what the young Coleridge did to a donkey: 

Poor Ass! thy master should have learnt to show

Pity - best taught by fellowship of Woe!

For much I fear me that He lives like thee,

Half famished in a land of Luxury!

To both the horses and the humans who depend on them for their livelihoods, I say with Coleridge: 

I hail thee Brother - spite of the fool's scorn!

And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell

Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell[.]