The Peril of the Pneumatic Tire: A Lament from a Veteran Buggy-Maker

*By Ezekiel Harrington, Proprietor of Harrington's Fine Carriages and Buggies, Est. 1872*

*Published in the Daily Gazette, March 15, 1905*

Fellow citizens and countrymen, I come before you today not as a mere merchant peddling his wares, but as a man whose very livelihood hangs in the balance, threatened by the insidious encroachment of that infernal contraption known as the automobile. Aye, and at the heart of this mechanical monstrosity lies the true villain: the rubber tire, that bouncy, air-filled abomination which rolls over our traditions and crushes the honest toil of generations under its merciless tread.

For nigh on three decades, I have plied my trade in the noble art of buggy-making. My workshop in the heart of this fair town has turned out the finest surreys, phaetons, and wagons that ever graced a dusty road. Employing a score of sturdy craftsmen—blacksmiths hammering axles, wheelwrights shaping spokes, and upholsterers stitching fine leather seats—we have built vehicles that rely on the God-given strength of the horse, not some sputtering engine belching smoke like a dragon from the pits of Hades. Our buggies have carried families to church, farmers to market, and lovers on moonlit jaunts, all without a single breakdown that a good feedbag and a rubdown couldn't mend.

But now, mark my words, this tide of progress—so-called—sweeps in like a plague upon our land. These horseless carriages, propelled by gasoline and shod with those confounded pneumatic tires invented by that Scotsman Dunlop, are multiplying faster than rabbits in springtime. They roar through our streets, scattering pedestrians and frightening the livestock, their tires gripping the earth with an unnatural tenacity that no iron-shod hoof could match. And what of the jobs, I ask you? What of the men who shoe horses, the stable boys who groom them, the breeders who raise them from colts? All cast aside like yesterday's newspaper!

I have seen it with mine own eyes: orders for my buggies dwindle as the wealthy gadabouts flock to these auto-mobiles, seduced by the promise of speed without sweat. My apprentices, once eager to learn the curve of a well-bent hickory shaft, now whisper of seeking work in those foul factories where tires are molded from the sap of distant jungles. Tires! Those vulgar rings of rubber, inflated with air as if to mock the solid reliability of our wooden wheels. They promise a smoother ride, they say, but at what cost? A puncture here, a blowout there, and you're stranded in the mud, cursing the day you forsook your faithful steed.

Nay, these tires are not mere conveniences; they are thieves in the night, stealing the bread from our tables. The automobile barons—your Fords and your Oldses—grow fat on profits while we, the backbone of American transportation, wither on the vine. Where once a man could earn a decent wage crafting a buggy that would last a lifetime, now he must bow to the machine, churning out tires by the thousand in some soulless mill. And let us not forget the poor horses themselves, condemned to idleness or worse, their pastures turned to parking lots for these tire-shod behemoths.

I implore you, good people: resist this rubber tyranny! Return to the ways of our fathers, where a horse's neigh was the sweetest music and a buggy's creak the rhythm of progress true and steady. Let us petition our lawmakers to curb these noisy nuisances, to tax their tires until they burst from the burden. For if we do not act, the day will come when the clip-clop of hooves is but a memory, and our children will know only the whine of engines and the stench of exhaust.

In closing, I say this: the pneumatic tire may roll on, but it shall not roll over the spirit of the American craftsman. Not while breath remains in these old lungs. God bless the horse and buggy, and confound the tire!

*Ezekiel Harrington*

*Harrington's Fine Carriages and Buggies*

*Inquire Within for Special Rates on Spring Models*