Urban Pollution Through History: Horses, Cars, and Technology
This paper reviews Joel A. Tarr's article "Urban Pollution — Many Long Years Ago," which examines how horse-drawn transportation created severe pollution in urban environments before the automobile age. The review summarizes Tarr's comparison of horse manure, disease, noise, and visual blight with modern automobile smog and traffic hazards. It also engages with Tarr's broader argument that every dominant technology — from horses to cars to nuclear power — follows a cycle of enthusiasm and disillusionment. The reviewer ultimately agrees with Tarr's thesis, connecting it to observations about human nature, greed, and society's tendency toward dissatisfaction with any means of production.
- Introduction to Tarr's Argument: Overview of Tarr's horse-versus-automobile pollution comparison
- Horse Pollution in Urban Environments: Manure, disease, and street sanitation problems detailed
- Parallels Between Horse and Automobile Pollution: Health, visual, and noise pollution shared by both eras
- Technology, Power, and Disillusionment: Cars and nuclear power as examples of technology cycles
- Personal Reflection and Agreement with Tarr: Student endorses Tarr's thesis via human nature argument
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper clearly identifies and restates Tarr's central thesis before evaluating it, giving the review a logical foundation.
- It moves systematically from summary to analysis to personal response, keeping each function distinct and readable.
- The student supports agreement with Tarr by drawing on additional examples — nuclear power, technology hype cycles — that extend rather than merely restate the source argument.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates source-engaged critical response: the student faithfully summarizes Tarr's evidence (manure volumes, disease links, noise and visual pollution) and then steps back to evaluate the overarching argument on its own terms. Rather than accepting or rejecting the thesis superficially, the writer grounds personal agreement in a broader claim about human nature and the recurring cycle of technological enthusiasm and disillusionment.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction that identifies the article and its central comparison. It then devotes two body sections to Tarr's content — first the specifics of horse pollution, then the parallels with automobiles. A third analytical section addresses Tarr's wider point about technology cycles and nuclear power. The final section shifts to first-person reflection, where the student evaluates and endorses Tarr's thesis. The Works Cited entry closes the paper.
Introduction to Tarr's Argument
Joel Tarr's article "Urban Pollution — Many Long Years Ago" is largely about the form of urban pollution that preceded that created by automobiles. This pollution was caused primarily by horses, which served as the dominant form of transportation from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. Tarr essentially establishes a comparison between the pollution caused by horses and that caused by automobiles, though he devotes the vast majority of the article to elaborating on the fact that horse-related pollution was considered as serious a problem in its time as automobile pollution was in the 1970s. If one examines the amount of space he devotes to horse pollution versus automobile pollution, one can infer that the former appears, in some respects, to have been worse than the latter.
Horse Pollution in Urban Environments
To Tarr's credit, he presents a fairly comprehensive overview of the problems that the widespread use of horses caused in terms of polluting urban environments. A substantial portion of the article focuses on the literal pollution these horses produced through their daily excrement. In some of the more vivid passages, the author details just how much manure horses generated; in others, he describes the many ways in which the smell and sight of that manure blighted urban landscapes. He also traces the rise of street sweeping within cities as a key necessity driven by the widespread use of horses, and discusses the inadequacies of many of these early efforts.
The pollution caused by horses was not merely a matter of bad sights and smells. The accumulation of manure on city streets was linked to disease — a key parallel between the urban pollution of earlier eras and the automobile pollution of the 1970s and today. Some of the most serious diseases of the period were connected to the filth of horse manure, and in certain instances those diseases were exacerbated by the enormous quantities of waste left on city streets.
Parallels Between Horse and Automobile Pollution
It is worth noting that the essential point Tarr argues goes beyond a simple comparison of horses and cars. He provides extensive detail about horses in order to emphasize that whatever technology or means of production people rely upon, there will inherently be problems associated with it — and, more strikingly, that those problems will tend to resemble one another across eras. This theme is supported by the points of similarity he draws between horse pollution and automobile pollution. As previously noted, both forms of pollution are linked to poor health: horse pollution contributed to widespread disease, while automobile pollution is associated with long-term detrimental health effects (Tarr 49). The smog produced by cars and the sight of dead horses and manure are both forms of visual pollution. Both cars and horses also generate noise pollution — evident in modern traffic through honking horns and the rumble of large trucks and buses.
Works Cited
Tarr, Joel. "Urban Pollution — Many Long Years Ago."
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