Before 1925 or so horses were the dominant form of "horsepower" in urban areas. Stables were everywhere to house wagon teams. And everyone who was upper middle class or rich had one or more. A horse can easily produce 100 pounds of "soiled bedding" in a day, which means a LOT of manure to remove from an average-sized city. So besides stockyards (most of which were inside major cities) there was a lot of manure to move around.
Larger cities, or smaller ones with a disproportionately large number of private buggy horses, usually had manure loading ramps to help the process. While manpower was dead cheap before the 1950s, time was still a finite commodity. If you had a lot of poop to move out of town, you had to have a ram to speed up the process.
I've attached a few photos.
Ray Breyer Elgin, IL
On Tuesday, September 14, 2021, 08:53:36 AM CDT, ron christensen via groups.io <rxensen@...> wrote:
I have never heard of a farmer selling or giving away manure, but that might have happened. That was a very useful fertilizer for the farmer. Usually the manure is a product of large stock yards or race tracks In the case of Chicago race tracks a lot of manure was shipped on the old PM to mushroom plants in Michigan. The manure was shipped in gondolas and weighed in New buffalo Mi. If the car was too heavy some had to be unloaded. All that went away in the 70s as trucks started hauling the manure Ron Christensen
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