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Show ,The Cattle King Who Years Ago Started North Up the Chisholm Trail r.y rilll.IP ASUTON ROLLINS, In Nuture Magazine. SO COMPLETE lias been the change that the United States government, gov-ernment, in its printed census reports for the year 1920, lias wholly omitted the words "ranch" and "ranchmen" and has spoken everywhere only of farmers and of farms. The cattle king who years ago started northward, up the Chisholm trail, herds each of three thousand animals, and who was acclaimed throughout the West as a prince despite America's democracy, where is he? Passed, with pitifully piti-fully few exceptions, into history. Where are the cowboys who once dominated dom-inated the West? They, too, have ridden into history, save that there still remain, in little corners of the West, scant tracts as yet uncorseted by the farmers' fences. From these tracts there periodically ride forth, in jaunty picturesqueness, cowboys who are replicas of the early pioneers, and in muny eases their blood descendants ride forth, not to guide herds from the Kin Grande to the Canadian border but merely to take an honest hon-est part in current Wild West shows. In place of the great live stock ownerships common in a generation now bygone, the average modern farmer owns, if in Texas, but 14 1-10 cattle; if in Montana, bul 22 such animals; and, if in Wyoming, but 05 G-lO.of them. And do you ask 55 6-10 of what? Of cattle, which the present writer, years since, saw, in terms of thousands, winding their way in serpentine course along fenceless, endless miles, and straining the ire of leather-clad men who were sitting astride of impish bronchos. But the modern farmer, despite the accusation of commonplaeeness, has, since he assumed virtually exclusive management of livestock raising, rais-ing, both increased the aggregate number of America's cattle and also bettered bet-tered their quality. The nation's cattle, notwithstanding occasional set-hacks set-hacks caused by war, drought, or economic conditions, have more or less ntcadily shown increment in number. The aggregate number of the nation's na-tion's beasts in 1924 is one and one-quarter times what it was in the year 1890, one and two-thirds times what it was in the year 1880, and two and two-thirds times what it was in the years 1S70 and 1860. |