Now You See It, Now You Don't!

TellZall's object for March is the Blacksmith.
Today, as you travel throughout the United States, the landscape is dotted with businesses that cater to the automobile. Among the more common are filling stations where motorists can purchase gasoline, oil, and other necessities, and automobile repair facilities, which range from small, one-person operations to large corporate concerns. These businesses provide the fuel and the repair and maintenance services needed to keep automobiles on the road.

Before the widespread adoption of the automobile, horses provided much of the energy that powered transportation. People might ride a horse or harness one or more to a variety of vehicles and machines. Buses, carriages, and wagons relied upon horses, and so did plows, road scrapers, and other machines.

No less than automobiles, horses needed care and maintenance. Veterinarians, rather than mechanics, looked after the animals' health, and livery stables provided fuel, which was grain rather than gasoline. Perhaps one skilled craftsperson was more closely associated with taking care of America's horse-drawn fleet than any other: the blacksmith.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even the smallest of towns would have at least one blacksmith shop. Unlike blacksmiths in Europe and Great Britain, blacksmiths in the United States did not specialize but instead engaged in a number of activities, nearly all of them associated with the production or repair of iron objects.

Today, we may think of the blacksmith as someone who fitted iron shoes to the hooves of horses, and, indeed, most blacksmiths did perform this very important service. But the blacksmith carried out other tasks in his shop. The central fixture in a blacksmith's shop was his forge, which was a furnace, usually fueled with coal, where the blacksmith heated iron to make it soft and more easily shaped by hammering it on an anvil, which is a heavy iron device that can withstand the rigors of having hot metal pounded upon it. The blacksmith would trim the horse's hooves and then carefully shape the iron horseshoe to fit. Finally, he would attach the shoe to hoof with nails. The process did not cause the horse any pain, and the shoes protected the hooves.

In addition to shoeing horses, blacksmiths made and repaired a variety of things made of iron. The list would include wheel rims and other wagon and carriage parts, plows and other farming implements, and any number of common household items.

As the twentieth century moved forward, automobiles, trucks, and tractors began replacing horse-powered machines. And steel began to replace iron as the metal of choice. Stronger than iron, steel was more difficult to shape and repair, and the village blacksmith was not equipped to handle the transition. In the early years of the automobile, blacksmiths frequently were called upon to repair the "new-fangled" machines. Soon, however, automobiles and other equipment became more complex and required new tools and new skills - the day of the blacksmith had passed.

Today, blacksmiths are still with us. They shoe horses and may make iron hardware that customers like because they are handmade objects. These few blacksmiths, however, are no longer the community's primary repairmen.

In 1839 poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a famous poem called The Village Blacksmith. At this time, the blacksmith was at his zenith, and Longfellow's poem recalls for us that time long ago.