Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1859. I’m dying to find out more about this obscene handbill issue. References to “quacks and harpies” and “public morals” make me wonder if we’re not talking about the advertisement of abortion services. As for the “cow nuisance,” it’s regrettable that the locavores of the day didn’t hold their ground against these busybody reformers.
I love it that a primary argument against allowing cows in the city center is that they mess with people’s gardens. We’re talking about a very different Chicago here.
This herdsman, would he be an employee of the city? Sounds suspiciously like socialism to me.
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4 Comments
I think this was my favorite argument against urban cows: “We need scarcely refer to the nuisance they are to the sidewalks.”
Yeah, well, you had the Urban Cattlemen’s Association shooting down every attempt to pass a poop-scoop ordinance. Very powerful lobby, that.
The obscene handbills are likely to be advertising cures for the clap. You will no doubt remember that in Ulysses Leopold Bloom remembers with admiration the quack who had his handbills posted over urinals.
As for the menace of cows in the city, I was reading in a newspaper just the other day about a mad cow on Canal street in Manhattan who gored a couple of people to death.
Well, actually, the newspaper was from 1828 — but it could happen anywhere, anytime. That’s what’s so insidious about cows.
Could indeed be clap, and/or cures for impotence.
I have myself had occasion to run from cows, and consider them more dangerous than clap.