In the same issue (April 1) Archibald MacNeilage, secretary of the Clydesdale Society in Scotland said, “In spite of a cheering demand for heavy horses for street traffic, the year 1925 saw little substantial revival in horse breeding generally.” Sounds like Chicago. He also expressed disappointment in their export trade of only 106 head, 82 of them to Canada and only 3 to the U.S. in the year just past. Those paltry numbers were not what the Scots had grown accustomed to, early in that century.

More deja vu, this time about urban sprawl. The April 8 issue carried news of the sale of the famous Oaklawn Horse Farm, the time-honored estate of 1700 acres at Wayne, Illinois, near Chicago. It was owned by Wirth S. Dunham, having been founded some 90 plus years before that by his grandfather and made famous world-wide by his father, Mark W. Dunham. If one man is entitled to be known as “The Father of the Percheron breed in North America” it is Mark Dunham. There are no close competitors.

The 1700 acres were purchased by a real estate combine and “will be subdivided and artistically landscaped in keeping with the natural beauty of the farm, according to the prospectus. The reported price paid for the entire tract, which includes some land in addition to Oaklawn is two million dollars. The new community which the promoters expect to develop includes the present town of Wayne, and will be named Dunham Woods, in honor of the family which established the world famous reputation there in Percheron importing and breeding.”

There were no eviction notices. This was not a foreclosure sale. This is indicated by Wirth’s leisurely exit from the Percheron business. He might have even been part of the real estate combine that bought the place. I would guess he had a substantial part of his wealth in other things–as well as horses.
dunham

His full page ad in the 1926 PERCHERON REVIEW listed 46 matrons and several stallions for sale at private treaty. In 1927-28, ads in the paper were much the same and reminded folks that “Oaklawn has shown more grand champions at the Chicago International than any other exhibitor.” But the 1929 ad was different. It was a half page, not a whole, and it announced a final dispersal sale of 10 stallions and 25 mares on February 15 of that year. And with that the curtain came down on the greatest single family saga in American Percheron history.

Wirth Dunham was a very young man when, just before the turn of the century, he was thrown into the breech due to the untimely death of his father. He proved to be a worthy son of a famous sire, playing major roles in the affairs of the Percheron Horse Association, the Horse and Mule Association of America and the city of Chicago. It was certainly not his doing that he “inherited the kingdom of the horse” at the very same time that Henry Ford and others were founding their kingdoms, dedicated to putting the horse out of business. In the 1920s the farm was used, in part, as an experimental farm for International Harvester.

Several years ago Jeannine and I were visiting our oldest daughter in Chicago. We needed something to do on a Sunday afternoon so we took the elevated train up to Wrigley Field, and then walked out past the ball park, due north to an old cemetery that came highly recommended by Melany.

Talk about getting into an exclusive and upscale neighborhood–Wow! Joe Pullman, founder of pullman rail car fame was there in quite an extravagant setting. There were McCormicks of the Farmall tractor and the Chicago Tribune tribe. Mr Pinkerton, founder of the great detective agency had chosen it as his final earthly abode and had even found room on his lot for some of his trusty agents who had been killed in the line of duty. The tombstones read like a “Who’s Who” of old Chicago money. I can’t remember every slab of marble but I think we even saw the ghost of former Governor, (and once would-be-president of the U.S.–he was president of the Holstein Friesian Cattle Association) Frank Lowden, skulking around behind a tree. I also do recall one Adams from Massachusetts who had taken Horace Greeley’s advice and “gone west and married well.” And you know what? There were a few Dunhams there too. Not the Oaklawn ones we know about, but Dunhams nonetheless.

Another time we dawdled out at Oaklawn itself. The stables were occupied by light horses. It appeared to be headquarters for a Hunt/Jump club of some kind. On one of the walls in a barn office hung the pedigree of Pink Brillante, grand champion Percheron mare at the 1916 International, bred and shown by Dunhams. As for Mark Dunham’s famous old house (built to resemble one he had admired in France), it was there too–but is now a private residence. It was and is called Dunham’s Castle and it looks like one. In the not too distant past it has been featured in the Chicago Tribune.

There you have it–a low cost one day “vacation” in Chicago’s north end and out by Elgin. A few hours at a cemetery populated by the rich, famous and forgotten, with elevated trains rushing by every few minutes and then out to Dunham Woods. It can be done on the cheap. I have half a notion to offer it to some perky little 23 year old in a travel agency just to see if she thinks I’m certifiably insane. Of course, things may have changed–these daring excursions of ours took place 15-20 years ago.

Professor H. H. Kildee, head of the animal husbandry department at Iowa State sailed from New York on May 1, 1926 on a three month leave of absence. He was accompanied by Professor Ferrin from the University of Minnesota. The main mission was to study the Danish system of swine production and breeding, but also included extensive travels in Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the channel islands–checking out the home lands of nearly all breeds of livestock important to Iowa and Minnesota farmers.

I also tossed in a little ad from W. S. Corsa’s Gregory Farm (April 1, 1926 BREEDER’S GAZETTE) that does not so much as mention either Percheron horses or Berkshire hogs. He was famous for both. Corsa belongs up there with the Dunhams in our pantheon of heroes of the barnyard. Best known for his Percheron stallion, Carnot, he was also involved–as president of the Illinois Swine Producers–in developing a hog cholera serum on his farm as well as producing great Berks. He operated a lab on his farm for years. We livestock producers have a great heritage, populated with our own Washingtons, Jeffersons and Lincolns. We are not just farmers and never were. As the rural areas of the country empty themselves out of people, I’m not sure what we are becoming, other than scarce.

There were a lot of sale reports, primarily of cattle, in the May and June issues. The GAZETTE said that purebred prices were “trending upwards” in both the meat and milk breeds. But the best sales, in terms of top dollar animals, were found in the Guernseys and Holsteins. Four figure animals were plentiful in both those breeds.

The GAZETTE’s June 10 issue was jubilant. Secretary of Agriculture Jardine announced that the federal government was going to standards and a grading system for meat. This was something that paper had harped on and worked on for years. The day of prime, choice, good, etc. through five grades of fresh meat going to the consumer had finally arrived. During their campaign the GAZETTE had made many references to “cat meat” for the bottom of the ladder, but the government did not adopt that language. Anyhow, the editors felt victorious. They were sure this would reward the producers of the best grades, while at the same time protecting the consumer.

I will close out 75 Years Ago with one final obscure little note from a column called “What They Are Doing” from the June 17, 1926 issue.

“The federal department of agriculture has announced that on June 10, 1926 all domestic quarantines on account of foot-and-mouth disease were revoked. This applies particularly to California where certain areas have been under supervision as a precautionary measure. No recurrence of the infection has been detected in California within the 12 months ending June 10. The United States is now free of foot-and-mouth disease.”

The very next paragraph announced that effective on May 7, shipments of cattle, sheep, goats, other ruminants or swine, and hides, skins or other animal by-products, hay, straw or other feeding materials originating in a certain portion of Mexico or shipped through those areas, would be denied entry into the United States, as the disease did exist among livestock in that region of Mexico.

My old friend from California, Clarence Dudley, says he recalls the last outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in our country. It was in California and occurred in 1929. He ought to know. He was there. He does not recall it as being widespread and was very limited geographically.

With all the current furor about the devastation that British livestock producers are going through at this time, I thought it timely to reproduce a couple pages from my 75 Years Ago column of twelve years ago, concerning our bout with it in 1914. That one broke out in the worst possible place, the Union Stockyards in Chicago. In addition to a good bit of financial loss and heartache, this disease resulted in the cancellation of the 1914 and 1915 International Livestock Shows. Everything was being shipped by rail and it really raised hob with interstate commerce.

HERE ARE THOSE TWO PAGES FROM ‘75 YEARS AGO’ IN THE WINTER 1989-1990 DHJ

In late October, the ninth National Dairy Show opened at the International Amphitheater in Chicago. It was a great show, preceding the show of beef cattle, swine, sheep and horses in the same place by about a month and the November 5th issue of the GAZETTE carried on for several pages about the scope and wonder of it all.

Toward the end there was one little disturbing paragraph in that report that read as follows: “As a precautionary measure the Department of Agriculture placed the Union Stockyards and all the cattle in the National Dairy show in quarantine for a week, on account of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Michigan and Indiana. The disease has not been found in the stockyards, but it is feared that quarantine was rather loose in Indiana immediately following the outbreak, and on account of the insidious nature of the disease, it was deemed best to hold the show cattle in their stalls until November 7th. Release is promised on that date, unless complications appear. A disposition to murmur was at first apparent among exhibitors but they finally accepted the assurance of the officials that the embargo was merely of a precautionary nature, and realized that release at the end of the week amounted to a clean bill of health from the Federal authorities, which would be worth all that the detention had cost.”

That turned out to be a very long week indeed. The disease was probably already present in the great Chicago stockyards when the quarantine was issued– along with the rosy promise that it was merely a “precautionary measure” and “you can all go home with a clean bill of health in a week.”

That show cattle quarantine proclamation was issued on Thursday, October 29. By the following Sunday one of the show cows was moved to the hospital as probably infected by foot-and-mouth disease. By Tuesday the disease was plentifully evident in the stocker section of the yards, and the movement out of the yards of all stockers and feeders was stopped.

In a matter of days, parts of fourteen states (all in the Midwest) were under quarantine and the big Chicago and St. Louis terminal markets were closed. The American Royal in Kansas City and the International Livestock Show in Chicago, scheduled to take place within the month, were cancelled.

The disease had made its first appearance at Niles, Michigan, and it was supposed to have been carried to the great Chicago stockyards in a carload of cattle from that area. Every shipment made from those Chicago yards to the country for three weeks prior to the discovery of the disease, was traced by state or federal inspectors. Cattle from the yards were located in 50 counties in Illinois and centers of infection had been reported from half of them. At first only the infected farms were placed under quarantine, then entire counties. To say that panic reigned in the markets, and out in the country, would be an understatement.

The policy of control was quarantine and mandatory slaughter with the highest appraised value of $75 per head, with the state paying half and the federal government the other half. The 800 show cattle were exempted from the slaughter provision due to the high regard in which the purebred industry was held and the political clout of the wealthy owners. Eventually virtually every one of those 800 animals had the disease, generally in a mild form followed by recovery.

It was a case of the animal industry “mobilizing” for a war against the disease, not unlike what Europe was going through militarily. The dislocations radiated out in many ways in those confused and fearful weeks of November. Killing plants in stockyards at places such as Detroit and Indianapolis, outside the quarantine area, made a quick killing. Not unlike Exxon’s price hike of gasoline following the oil spill debacle in Alaska recently. The GAZETTE commented that “producers have had a taste of what commercial conditions would be if interstate traffic were interfered with for any length of time.” In areas that were still killing, lightweight stuff was hurried to slaughter by many frightened feeders.

For a few weeks attention was diverted from the war in Europe–our livestock industry had a war of its own to wage. But our war against this disease was to be of much shorter duration. By year’s end the entire states of Michigan and Indiana were released from quarantine for shipment of livestock to slaughter, but in counties where the disease had appeared, a federal inspection before loading on the rail cars was obligatory.

The December 24 issue reported that “The cattle in the National Dairy Show barn were in splendid condition. No cases of reinfection have occurred. One bull that had gamely withstood the disease turned up a blistered nose to inspection last week. It was about the last of them.” Most of them had it in a mild form and quickly recovered.

Since foot and mouth disease is fatal in only from two to five percent of the cases, and the cooked meat and pasteurized milk from infected cows is safe to use, and little danger existed of the transfer of the disease to people, you might wonder why such draconian measures were taken. The federal inspectors decided on the slaughter plan because it is so infectious and farm quarantines did not work. The consensus was that it was cheaper and safer to kill entire herds than to quarantine them until all danger had passed. The GAZETTE concluded (on Dec. 3, in their defense of the policy) with: “the great point is that it is not so dreadful a disease itself, but that it spreads like wildfire.”

Most of South America, and much of Europe, simply “lived with the disease.” Since it affects only cloven hoofed animals, it does not afflict horses. Nonetheless, as one writer pointed out, it was not wise to use the same ships to bring draft stallions over as cattle and sheep.” His point may have been well taken but the plain fact of the matter was that the days of massive importations of both cattle and horses were over anyhow.

In due time the National Dairy Show cattle were transferred to special quarters at the Hawthorne Race Track. You can be sure there was a lot of grousing from farmers who had seen their entire herds buried in lime pits on their farms about this “special case.” (Sort of like a Chrysler bail-out . . . the more things change, the more they remain the same.) Maybe that is why when the disease appeared in E.M. Barton’s great Sedgeley Farm Brown Swiss in Hinsdale, Illinois, the entire herd was slaughtered on the farm in spite of vigorous protests. It was probably the top herd of the breed at the time and all that remained after the “plague” was his show herd which had been in quarantine. This was quite a setback to the Swiss breed, which was very small in number.