1870s Horse Flu Epidemic Brought US Economy To Its Knees

Nemo the Magnificent writes with this excerpt from the University of Arizona: "A new study (paywalled) published in the journal Nature provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the evolutionary relationships of influenza virus across different host species over time... In the 1870s, an immense horse flu outbreak swept across North America. City by city and town by town, horses got sick and perhaps five percent of them died. Half of Boston burned down during the outbreak, because there were no horses to pull the pump wagons. In the West, the U.S. Cavalry was fighting the Apaches on foot because all the horses were sick... The horse flu outbreak pulled the rug out from under the economy.""

Comments

ICF

[Dan East]

That's nothing. Just wait until the ICF hits (internal combustion flu). Tesla will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:ICF

[pushing-robot]

It seems to be a cyclical problem.

Re:ICF

[mysidia]

That's nothing. Just wait until the ICF hits (internal combustion flu). Tesla will be laughing all the way to the bank.

It's called peak oil.... it just got delayed by 10 to 20 years, perhaps, due to the introduction of fracking.

When gasoline is no longer available due to global or local resource shortages, or prices --- the same could occur again.

It may be even worse, since the petroleum products are not merely used to fuel our vehicles, BUT they are also required to produce fertilizers, so our farms can grow enough food for us to eat, AND required to produce plastics for new products that are critical to our daily lives.

Re:ICF

[drinkypoo]

We already know how to make biofuels which are 1:1 replacements for gasoline. The most notable is butanol, which Gevo and Butamax are fighting over the rights to produce. Except only Gevo is actually trying to sell fuel, and Butamax's patent was produced at a public university. That to me makes Butamax no better than patent trolls.

Re:ICF

[drinkypoo]

I think it's the other way around... Tesla cars, Boeing jets, and laptops before them have been catching the Lithium Flu. You'll know it when you see it, because it comes with *quite* the high fever...

...yet, still not quite the same level of fever as the internal combustion flu. And the transmission rate is significantly lower.

Sure, blame the flu

[bondsbw]

But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.

Re:Sure, blame the flu

[cold fjord]

The picture was pretty complex as it turns out - there was a lot going on. But I wouldn't be surprised that the flu outbreak could have had a major impact. The economy was horse driven at the time. Imagine if cars could catch the flu and you couldn't drive them, or they even "died." That could be very disruptive to many sectors of the economy.

The Long Depression (1873-1878)

The period following the Civil War in the United States from 1865-1873 is generally considered one of economic prosperity. Northern owners of industry and bankers had become wealthy in the war, while cotton exports in the south within the U.S. and abroad met the growing demands of foreign manufacturing for raw materials. In addition to a developing of manufacturing at home and abroad, technological innovations led to improvements in mining, agriculture, and infrastructure.

The Economic Costs of the Civil War

The first and most important point is that the Civil War was expensive. In 1860 the U.S. national debt was $65 million. To put that in perspective, the national debt in 1789, the year George Washington took office, was $77 million. In other words, from 1789 to 1860, the United States spanned the continent, fought two major wars, and began its industrial growth—all the while reducing its national debt.

We had limited government, few federal expenses, and low taxes. In 1860, on the eve of war, almost all federal revenue derived from the tariff. We had no income tax, no estate tax, and no excise taxes. Even the hated whiskey tax was gone. We had seemingly fulfilled Thomas Jefferson’s vision: “What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?”

Four years of civil war changed all that forever. In 1865 the national debt stood at $2.7 billion. Just the annual interest on that debt was more than twice our entire national budget in 1860. In fact, that Civil War debt is almost twice what the federal government spent before 1860.

What’s worse, Jefferson’s vision had become a nightmare. The United States had a progressive income tax, an estate tax, and excise taxes as well. The revenue department had greatly expanded, and tax-gatherers were a big part of the federal bureaucracy.

Furthermore, our currency was tainted. The Union government had issued more than $430 million in paper money (greenbacks) and demanded it be legal tender for all debts. No gold backed the notes.

Re:Sure, blame the flu

[westlake]

But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.

Not as much as you might think.

The country was 50% urban by census definition in 1860. Northern industry, agriculture and transportation prospered mightily during and after the war. The South no longer had a veto over economic development.

Cotton production in the South recovered rapidly. COTTON PRODUCTION FACTS STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS.; STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS. 1850-1880

What cowboy movies mention this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not true if it doesn't exist in any cowboy movies.

Re:What cowboy movies mention this?

[cold fjord]

It's not true if it doesn't exist in any cowboy movies.

That's a fair point. I don't recall ever hearing of any cowboy movies featuring plagues or epidemics as part of the movie even if individuals became sick. Of course there were a number of them in history, such a small pox, etc. The flu epidemic is one I don't recall hearing about before though. It should make for some interesting follow up reading.

Re:What cowboy movies mention this?

[hey!]

You don't see any war movies which feature epidemics, either, even though infectious disease has killed more soldiers in war than battle wounds.

Re:What cowboy movies mention this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's "The Way West" starring Kirk Douglas where smallpox is a plot point and much more recently there's the miniseries "Broken Trail" starring Robert Duvall where in one scene he kills a man whose line of work is selling smallpox-exposed blankets to indians. IIRC smallpox is in "Little Big Man" as well.

That outbreak had a name

[QilessQi]

Folks at the time called it the Great Epizootic* of 1872: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... . In cities where it hit hardest, men were reportedly pulling carts in the streets because of the shortage of horses.

*pronouced ep-eh-zoo-AH-tick

Poor US Calvalry

[wisnoskij]

Committing genocide on foot is tiring work.

Re:./ sinks to a new low

[Firethorn]

That's the thing; nerds are interested in darn near everything.

The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting. The impact of loss of transportation on the economy, even an ancient one, is also interesting.

Re:ICF, no, just a virus

[tchdab1]

How long before a software virus cripples a good amount of cars and brings "transportation to a halt"?

Don't use technical terms unless you know their me

[dbIII]

It's called peak oil.... it just got delayed by 10 to 20 years, perhaps, due to the introduction of fracking.

Don't use technical terms unless you know their meaning. Peak oil looks like it happened in 2008 because it's the maximum point on the graph of crude oil extraction over time. Gas from shale, coal, whatever is something else.
The term "peak oil" acquired a lot of baggage from people who liked to oversimplify things and pretend that crude oil was the only form of energy. The post above is a good example of being influenced by that baggage.

Re:EGW

[u38cg]

Actually, horses have a single stomach and produce minimal, if any, methane.

Re:./ sinks to a new low

[u38cg]

Well, at least they still get the slash and the dot in the right order.

Re:./ sinks to a new low

[westlake]

The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting.

The horse was a big city crisis.

A 1000-pound horse will defecate from 4 to 13 times per day. On the average, this horse's manure will contain about 31 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons (~ 20 pounds) of urine, totaling up to 50 pounds of manure (not including bedding) per day as excreted.

Stall Waste Production

New York City had 100,000 horses on the streets in 1900. The stench of the manure could be over-powering and flies spread diseases. Dead horses were simply shoved to the sides of streets in summer, as you can see in uncensored photographs of the era. It was simply impossible to clear the carcasses quickly enough.

Peak oil

[swb]

Every time I hear about peak oil as a concept it gets turned into the idea we'll just run out, all at once.

Why won't the pricing mechanism of markets just raise the price over time and slow consumption, or increase the use of alternatives where they exist, increase research into improving or finding new alternatives? It will also affect choices, so as food prices increase because of fertilizer price increases people will choose food over, say, power boats.

Fracking is kind of the great example as well. AFAIK it was a known technique but not economically viable. As prices increased it was improved as a process and put into use because it was more economically viable at higher price levels.

I have read some arguments that claim significant economic disruption as oil prices cross a certain threshold creating an amplification effect. I think one example is the use of trucks for transportation -- the cost of shipping increases it makes other activities dependent on trucking not economically viable as the transportation costs exceed the marginal value of the thing being transported. I buy this, sort of, but it doesn't take into account the adaptation of the use of localized production or alternative products being used.

Overall I buy the idea that oil is a limited resource, but find the predictions of its increasing scarcity a lot less due to the complexity and sophistication of economies.

Re:Peak oil

[swb]

But isn't the history of oil consumption a de facto demonstration of pricing? As demand increases, prices increase and production technology improves? The 1970s brought off-shore and deep water oil production, followed by increasingly more fuel efficient cars (as one example).

Contemporary pricing has given us hybrid and viable electric cars. Fracking and tar sands have extended oil production. Even trucking has gotten aerodynamic.