The Harriers claims to be a benign running society, but its past is far more interesting. The organization was originally formed by the Buggymasters Labor Guild in 1905 to combat the growing use of gas powered conveyances on New York City streets.

Though strictly burgeouis in its capitalist goals, the organization nonetheless affected a socialist interest when it draped itself in an eco friendly mantle, defending horse droppings as part of “man and god’s nature” while decrying the “sooty filth and pesilence” of the smoking motorcars. As such, the group was an early predecessor of the current conservation/anti-pollution movement.

The Harrier runners would travel in packs through Manhattan (sometimes Brooklyn), disrupting all non-horse traffic and causing general chaos. It was rumored that Teddy Roosevelt, President at the time, one night masked up with the Harriers to beat a Model T motorist half to death with a riding crop he had purchased specifically for the occasion.

In the end, the cars won, but the organization survives, a tame version of its former self.