IV. THE RANGE INDUSTRY
"In the ante-bellum period, central Illinois was a vast blue grass pasture. The people were breeding many cattle, but not enough to supply the steady increasing demand for stockers and feeders. Cattle feeders made good the deficiency in the local production by heavy drafts on Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and other sections of the trans-Mississippi region. The subsequent reign of King Corn was then barely in the incubating stage. Grass was the beef maker's principal reliance.
"Not until well along in the sixties did the cultivation of corn begin on an extensive scale and corn-fed steers become conspicuous on the markets. After the grazing period, corn speedily took possession of the whole of central Illinois, until now less than 15 per cent remains in pastures, whereas in the days of the "barons" an exactly reverse condition existed. At that time, fully 85 per cent of such counties as Sangamon, Morgan, and Logan, were in grass.
"The cattle that were secured from Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas, were purchased during the fall months. By the early part of winter, central Illinois pastures would be fully stocked with three and four year old bullocks, which were allowed to graze all through the winter and the following spring and summer. About three acres of the rich blue grass was allowed to a steer and on this they fattened rapidly.
"There are men now living in Missouri and Illinois who drove cattle from that vast breeding ground west of the Mississippi river, into central Illinois, for the cattle kings, Jacob Strawn and John T. Alexander. These herds, numbering about 300 to 400 head, grazed leisurely across the open country at about 15 miles or so a day. During the war, the trade was more or less interrupted, but the practice was continued until settlement and railroads rendered trailing both unnecessary and impossible.
"The annexation of Texas to the United States, and the discovery of gold in California in 1849, resulted in an influx of population and capital that soon exerted a stimulating effect upon the production of cattle throughout the southwest, as well as beyond the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the west.
"At a comparatively early date, there was a ready market for Illinois bred cattle to go to the states west of the Mississippi river to be used for breeding stock. The development of the range cattle industry created a strong demand for pure bred bulls, and cattle breeders of Illinois were called upon, perhaps to a greater extent than those of any other state in the Union, to supply this demand. The range cattle business also created a market for young cows and heifers to be used for breeding purposes. This demand steadily increased from year to year, until a very large part of the yearly product of pure bred cattle in Illinois was absorbed for that purpose."[21]
"In 1880, the range cattle trade was yet in a transition stage, especially as to the destination of marketable cattle and the special use to which they were put. Before this time, the bulk of the range cattle trade was divided between the coming establishments of the west, slaughter for home consumption, for exportation as dressed carcasses to the eastern markets, and shipping on the hoof to eastern states as feeders. Large feeding stables had been established in Nebraska for the purpose of feeding out these large numbers of rangers, but they could not utilize all of them. The overflow of these grass fat rangers found their way to eastern feed lots to be finished on the grain of the corn belt. The numbers increased from year to year, and extended farther and father east as the numbers increased.
"The fact that one of the large feeding plants of Nebraska could turn off as many as 2000 ripe range steers in one month, gives some indication of the immense capacity of the range cattle trade.
"As the Indians were confined more closely from year to year, there were more grazing lands opened up to be devoted to the raising of these range cattle. Most people at this time, seeing the rapid increase of the range industry, thought there would never be a beef famine as the economists of the time predicted. They said such economists always look on the dark side of things."[22]
"Not many had any adequate conception of the vastness of the cattle interest in the great pasture region lying on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains during the seventies and eighties. It was worth quite a journey to see a single thousand head of these cattle engaged in feeding together. To witness a drove of 4000 moving leisurely along at a convenient distance from each other, to allow the animals to graze as they traveled a mile or so an hour, would seem to an unaccustomed eye as if the herd must consist of tens of thousands. The appearance of such a drove as this might be recalled by a single transaction made by Dennis Sheedy of Colorado, who sold 27000 head of cattle to the Ogalla Cattle Company. This company was composed of A. H. Swan, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, William Paxton, of Omaha, Nebraska, and J. H. Bosler of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The cattle were put on a range on the north side of the north Platte Run in Nebraska and Wyoming. The lumping price was $30 per head, amounting to $810,000 for the entire lot."[23]
Texas Cattle
"It will be no departure from the strictest truth to say that the oldest known race of cattle on this continent is the Texas or Spanish cattle. They have been very generally popular with the stockmen of the plains, because they turned the free grass of the plains into available cash for their owners.
"The Texas cattle are truly the only animals except the bison that deserve the name of "Native" American cattle. All the other scrubs in the country are foreigners by blood, or are descendants of intruders from other lands. These long legged, big headed, thin fleshed brutes were in this country centuries ago. It is by no means certain that their ancestors did not roam the plains of the Brazos and the Rio Grande a thousand years or more before America was visited by the Spaniards. There is evidence that the real ancestors of the cattle of Texas were seen in Old Mexico and described about five hundred years after the Christian era, but this evidence has been considered unworthy of full confidence, because to admit its truth would be to confess that the honor of first discovering America belongs to the barbarians from the Orient.
"In the carefully edited official records, known as the "Chinese Year Book", which was written some fourteen hundred years ago, a circumstantial account of a visit to Mexico by a party of Buddhist Priests is given. These priests saw in the country two breeds of cattle. One of these breeds was described as having very large horns which would hold ten measures. These were probably the earliest ancestors of the present race of Texas cattle, while the other breed with shorter horns was, it is likely, the ancestors of the bison that later roamed over the ranges of the western plains. Those ancient travelers were too well accustomed to seeing cattle and horses in their own country to be in even the slightest degree likely to mistake any other animal for kine. The generally accepted belief, however, is that the Texas cattle are descendants of cattle brought to America by the Spanish invaders, although no definite proof seems to have been brought forward to show that those roistering, plundering explorers ever imported any cattle to this continent, and turned them loose in such numbers as would have produced the vast horde that covered the Southwestern plains before the Civil War.
"To western people, especially in those parts where Spanish or Texas fever has caused the destruction of stock, Texas cattle are so well known that a description of their peculiarities will appear unnecessary. There are many who do not know that the chief purpose of the Texas bullock, pure and simple, seems to be the lugging about of a prodigious pair of horns. To this end, a big head and coarse shoulders have been given him. Behind these are a flat ribbed, thin chested, light body, held up at the hinder end by a pair of cat hams on thin, deer-like legs. The whole outfit, unburdened by flesh or fat, is muscular, nervous, and active. Such of them as lived through alternate roasting, starving, and freezing during the early years of their lives, found their way to the northern markets to be fattened and slaughtered. These rangers fattened very readily in the northern feed lots and those that were not too old and tough made very good beef. Thousands of them were driven from Texas in the early forties and fifties to Illinois feed lots, where they were fattened and then re-driven to the markets on the seaboard. In later years, they were slaughtered in Illinois and shipped in refrigerator cars, in the form of dressed carcasses, to the Atlantic States. Choice parts, as steaks, roasts, and tenderloins, were sent to health resorts, watering places, and to hotels and restaurants. A vast quantity of their flesh found its way into tin cans, to feed hungry humanity, in the hut of the laborer, at the picnic of the aristocrat, in the camp of the miner, and in the forecastle of the sailor in every corner of the world. It will be seen that the mission of the Texas steer was to raise the standard of living, to add to the comfort, and preserve the health and strength of people the world over."[24]