ment of the herds. The "long-horn" and the "dogie" are no more. The slender, narrow-faced, nervous animal that could run like a deer, was subject to panic when it saw a man not on horseback, and had horns reaching far out on either side, is not seen. In its place has come the broad-backed, thick-loined, wideshouldered, dehorned, white-faced steer that gives the largest possible amount of beef for the least possible amount of food, tops the market, and is as easy to manage as a pet heifer of the farmyard. A revolution has been worked in the cattle business during the past dozen years through the efforts of the ranch-owners to build up and improve their herds. It has lost some of its picturesque features, perhaps, and is less fitted for the purposes of the romancer, but it is on a higher plane and stands as one of the great business enterprises of the West, its influence extending further than most people realize.

The early ranchers thought that they had a perpetual possession. The character of the grazing lands appeared to the men of those days as totally unfit for agriculture. It was for the most part upland, some of it with rich blue stem, but the larger portion covered with the short, close-curled buffalo-grass that winter does not wither. Then there was the desert, the open plain back from the streams and railroads-everybody's land, free range where herds might roam the twelvemonth through. Once a year there was a great gathering of cattle, the "roundup," when, by means of the brands burned into the hides of the animals, the various ownership of the herds was determined. Out of this sort of management, and the impression that there would never be a demand for the cattle lands for farming, grew up a race of cattle barons, men who counted their cattle by the tens of thousands and dictated the business in the Southwest. Allied with them were the ranchers of the Northwest, where the summer feeding-grounds offered a grazingplace for the wandering herds, and the only competition was from the owners of vast flocks of sheep. The cattle business was thus on a basis of independence, and the open range offered to the owners of the herds an apparently unending income, furnished by the Government, and one which could not be lessened.

The transition period dawned fifteen years ago, when the boom in Western realty caused attention to be directed to the opportunities for making farms out of the open lands of the western Mississippi valley. The boom was a failure as a business proposition, but it did this: it opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Eastern and Middle States farmers to the possibilities of the West. It showed what might be done if agriculture could conquer the lands that had been included in the semi-arid region. This agriculture proceeded to do. By means of crops that depend less on the supply of moisture than do wheat and corn, and by improved methods of soil culture, the farming of the prairies has been developed until on the lands where once grew only grass and sunflowers are now produced four crops of alfalfa annually, while alongside wave the rich fields of millet and kaffir corn, alike regardless of the amount of rainfall.

Every success in the West is heralded among the home-seekers of the East, and immediately thousands proceed to start for the new lands. So it was that the settlers took up their journey toward the open plain and asked the Government for homestead title to the portions that seemed most available for crop-raising. Along the edges of the range region the hordes of settlers camped, every day pushing a little further toward the interior. The opening of the Indian lands of Oklahoma took from the cattlemen a vast area to turn it over to farming. The building of irrigation ditches in the Southwest made of other areas valuable fields instead of open plain. Orchards and gardens succeeded the pastures. There was but one result possible: the cattlemen must own or control their grazing land. They built barbed-wire fences and leased great reaches of prairies. Some syndicates bought outright the lands needed, and established estates that had been unknown in the cattle country. In short, the transformation from range to ranch was complete, and a new system of cattle production had come to succeed the old. Comfortable ranch-houses took the place of shacks, and thoroughbred animals gave better returns at the sale-yard.

It is estimated that twenty acres is necessary to pasture a steer through the season on the upland pastures. Thus, to

care for a herd of 1,000 animals there must be 20,000 acres. Ranches ten times as large are not uncommon in the Southwest.

The management is so systematized that a few men, comparatively, are able to care for the thousands of head of stock. For instance, on the largest ranch in that section, covering 5,000 square miles, only 125 men were needed. There were 125,000 cattle, besides 1,600 horses. The ranch was divided into seven divisions, and each had its ranch house and wells. The draws were used for reservoirs, and the streams were held back in great ponds. The cattle lost on this ranch, through several years, averaged only two to five per cent. annually, due largely to occasional severe storms rather than to disease. This ranch has lately been divided into smaller holdings, but it is a fair example of how the business is conducted.

When the ranches are located, the houses are usually by the side of a stream or in a grove of trees. Some of these

A TYPICAL RANCH

dwellings are of the most comfortable character and have within their spacious walls all the conveniences of modern life, including bath-rooms, lighting, and furnishings. Great cottonwoods lift their trembling branches in the never-ceasing breeze, and the hot winds of summer are tempered by the shade. On the outskirts of the home place are the stables and the dwell ngs of the herders. The herders are occasionally Mexicans, and as such make a not over-agreeable combination. More often they are Americans of good address and sometimes of exceptional education. They take pride in their business and give to it the best of their ability.

Taking the fat stock to market-the steers are sold and the heifers are kept on the ranch, if it is properly conducted-is not the task that it was of old. Railroads extend into the very heart of the cattle country, and others are yet more closely dividing the territory. It is no uncommon thing for ten trains of stock to go to

market from a single ranch. So perfect are the arrangements for feeding and watering en route and for care in the yards at Kansas City, Omaha, Chicago, and St. Louis, that the prime beef stock intended for the export trade, as well as that which enters into the every-day traffic of the packing-houses, reaches the slaughter-houses in the best possible con

dition.

In addition to the development of the more popular strains on the Western ranches-Herefords, Angus, Shorthorns, Galloways, Durhams-on the Good Night ranch of Texas an experiment is now being conducted in crossing the buffalo with the sturdier varieties of cattle, securing what is termed the "cattalo," combining something of the shaggy coat and sturdy shoulders of the native of the plains and the beef qualities of its successor. The result has not yet reached proportions sufficient to determine the practicability of marketing this new breed

successfully, but the animals are increas ing and present an interesting sight on the prairies of the ranch.

The ups and downs of the Southwest cattle business have been many. In 1878 and 1879, cattle were worth $8 a head on the range; in 1882, with the extension of railway transportation, they went to $12.50; then they jumped to $22.50. There were ten millions of them, called "dogies" in east Texas, "sea lions" on the Gulf, and "long-horns" in the Panhandle. Fortunes were made in those days, and cattle companies came into being by the hundred. So rapidly was the cattle business developed that when the early nineties came, with the depression in the demand for beef, the Southwest was overstocked and the prices went to pieces. The Northwest cattle ranches fared better, for they had always been conducted on a more businesslike and less speculative basis.

The next change came about 1897,

COWBOYS AT DALHART, TEXAS

when the country suddenly demanded large shipments of cattle for beef. The cattlemen were masters of the market. Up and up the prices went. Every one who handled the steers from the time the train left the lonely siding in the midst of the prairie until the juicy porterhouse had been served at dinner made money. Cattle paper (the mortgages given by feeders when they take stock to fatten through the winter) was gilt edged. So popular was it with investors in the East that some dealers issued several sets on the same bunch of cattle-and then skipped to Mexico.

Faster than the ranches could increase their herds, in the face of constantly diminishing pasture land because of the influx of settlers, did the demand grow. The export trade increased along with added facilities for shipping meats abroad. The supply was kept down by the conditions attending the settlement of both Southwest and Northwest, while the demand

gained an added impetus with each month.

An authority on this subject says: "Notwithstanding the great increase in the meat-consuming capacity of the country by reason of the increased prosperity in 1900 as compared with 1892, the more general employment of the people, and an actual increase in the population of 11,000,000, or 16 per cent., there was in that period a decrease in meat-producing animals of 27,000,000 head, or approximately 20 per cent." The average price of cattle increased from $14.06 in 1895 to $24.90 in 1900. Since that time the conditions have been even more in favor of higher prices, owing partly to the steadily increasing demand for beef and the situation regarding feed and pasture. The fact that something like 200,000 people moved into Oklahoma and northern Texas last year, the immigration of 160,000 to the Northwest this spring, and the steady Western tide of settlement from the Middle States to the territory of Kansas and Nebraska, have been a menace to the cattlemen. They have lessened the grazing land by using it

for farms and raised the cost of pasturage by limiting the supply. The ultimate result is to make the meat cost

more.

Of recent years there has come into the cattle business a new element that was once taken into account but little. This is the feeding industry. Upon the corn crop of the West depends much of the rancher's profit, something little considered by the average citizen. Timely rains in July mean riches to the stockman as well as to the farmer.

The one output of the cattle ranch is beef. The by-products, such as the hides or the creamery returns for milk, do not interest the rancher. He is raising beef cattle, not milch cows, and just so far as his cattle go to the market ready for the butcher, just to that extent is he successful.

He sells to the commission men of the Western cities all the stock he can spare in the fall. While the animals are off the grass and once would have been considered fit for beef, they must now go

into another process. The farmer of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, or Iowa, who has a large corn crop, does not wish to sell it for twenty-five cents a bushel. He wants to put it into beef and make it net him forty to fifty cents-good return for a few months' labor in feeding. The commission man lets him have the cattle and takes a mortgage on the stock and the corn. This paper is sold to Eastern investors and banks. The feeder pays, say, six per cent., the Eastern investor gets, say, four per cent., the commission man gets the difference. When the cattle are fat they are sold to the packing-houses, the notes are paid and the mortgages released; the farmer goes home with a check that pays him well for his work and for his corn. When there is a corn failure the farmer does not feed cattle, for he can sell his corn-what he has-for enough to pay him better than it would in beef. The rancher finds small market for his feeders; the best of them are put on the market without corn fattening, the others go over for another year.

the same conditions that shortened the corn crop also shortened the grass. Not over one-third the normal amount of grass was produced on the ranges of the Southwest, and for some of the ranchers the situation became serious.

Corn was worth sixty-five to seventy cents; hay, when it could be secured, $10 to $12 a ton. Farmers could not fatten cattle profitably on that ration. A Western agricultural paper gave this example of one feeder's experience: His ability is shown by the fact that he reached the highest price paid in Kansas City since 1882. He bought thirty steers in November for $48.14 each and fed them six months. The corn cost thirty cents a day and hay ten cents, the total cost of the feed being $74, making the steers net him, without transportation or labor counted, $122.14 each. They sold for $121.06 each. The farmer would have made more money to have sold his corn and hay in the market and let the cattle alone.

David Rankin, of Missouri, who enjoys the distinction of feeding more cattle each winter than any one East or West, says of his experience: "I bought my cattle last fall at four cents, and each weighed about 1,000 pounds. It takes 75 bushels