The Delta Independent

The Cattle King Who Years Ago Started North Up the Chisholm Trail
By PHILIP ASHTON ROLLINS. In Nature Magazine.

So complete has been the change that the United States government, in its printed census reports for the year 1920, has 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 few exceptions, into history. Where are the cowboys who once dominated the West? They, too, have ridden into history, save that there still remain, in little corners of the West, scant tracts as yet unconquered by the farmers' fences. From these tracts there periodically ride forth, in jaunty picturesqueness, cowboys who are replicas of the early pioneers, and in many cases their blood descendants ride forth, not to guide herds from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border but merely to take an honest 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, but 22 such animals; and, if in Wyoming, but 55 6/10 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 commonplaceness, has, since he assumed virtually exclusive management of livestock raising, both increased the aggregate number of America's cattle and also bettered their quality. The nation's cattle, notwithstanding occasional setbacks caused by war, drought, or economic conditions, have more or less steadily shown increment in number. The aggregate number of the nation'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 1870 and 1860.