USA > Texas > A Twentieth century history of southwest Texas, Volume I > Part 34
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to forty-five men. Captain McNeel was a brave and courageous officer and it was due to his efforts, combined with those of Captain Mckinney and other men of that high type, that the rough element was driven out of Southwestern Texas, for the Rio Grande border had been for many years the scene of operations by thieves and other criminals.
Since 1893 Mr. McNeel has spent much of his time in travel both in the United States and Mexico, and for some years represented an industrial establishment of New Orleans. More recently he has returned to the stock business, in which he has been interested throughout the. greater part of his life, and he is now occupying a nice home in San Antonio, from which city he superintends his stock and ranching in- terests.
Captain and Mrs. McNeel have a family of four children : Pleas- ant J .. James S., Jr., William and Mrs. Anna Maud Patterson. Mr. McNeel is a member of Anchor Lodge 424, A. F. & M., San Antonio.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HISTORY OF THE LIVE STOCK INDUSTRY.
There occurs nowhere in literature a happier description of the posi- tion of the range cattle business in the history of our country than in the following terse and characteristically vivid words of Alfred H. Lewis :
"With a civilized people extending themselves over new lands, cat- tle form ever the advance guard. Then come the farms. This is the procession of a civilized, peaceful invasion ; thus is the column marshaled. First, the pastoral; next, the agricultural; third and last, the manufac- turing ;- and per consequence, the big cities, where the treasure chests of a race are kept. Blood and bone and muscle and heart are to the front ; and the money that steadies and stays and protects and repays them and their efforts, to the rear. Forty years ago about all that took place west of the Mississippi of a money-making character was born of cattle. The cattle were worked in huge herds and, like the buffalo sup- planted by them, roamed in unnumbered thousands. Cattle find a natural theatre of existence on the plains. There, likewise, flourishes the pas- toral man. But cattle herding, confined to the plains, gives way before the westward creep of agriculture. Each year beholds more western acres broken by the plough ; each year witnesses a diminution of the cat- tle ranges and cattle herding. This need ring no bell of alarm concern- ing a future barren of a beef supply. More cattle are the product of the farm regions than of the ranges. That ground, once range and now farm, raises more cattle now than then. Texas is a great cattle state. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, lowa and Missouri are first states of agriculture. The area of Texas is about even with the collected area of the other five. Yet one finds double the number of cattle in Ohio, Indiana, Illi- nois, Jowa and Missouri than in Texas, to say nothing of ten-fold the sheep and hogs. But while the farms in their westward pushing do not diminish the cattle, they reduce the cattleman and pinch off much that is romantic and picturesque. Between the farm and the wire fence, the cowboy. as once he flourished, has been modified, subdued, and made partially to disappear."
Perhaps it is unnecessary to repeat the well known aphorism that the welfare of a state rests upon the basic art of agriculture. With the realization of the proper possibilities of agriculture in the western coun- ties and the extension of railroads and a farming population into those regions, has resulted the development of a splendid empire which it is the province of this work to describe. The range stock industry natural- ly rested upon the surface, was not anchored in the soil, and, like the picturesque "tumbleweed" of the plains, it was moved hither and thither by the natural influences of the seasons and topography. While the
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vast ranges were free, when nature without effort provided her native grasses, the stockman could herd his cattle on the free pastures and, on similar terms with the gold miner, could reap the profits produced by nature's own bounty. For twenty years West Texas has been under- going the changes incident to the forward march of agriculture and the breaking up of the free range, and the range cattle industry is now prac- tically a thing of the past. Modern stock farming, which is still the main source of wealth in West Texas, is a very different business from the range industry, which forms the principal subject of this chapter. The range industry preceded the railroad epoch and in a sense was hostile to the approach of civilization; the modern live-stock ranching is co- efficient with the tilling of the soil, and both are phases of the present era of industrialism.
The Industry Before the War.
The settlers who came in from the border states during the forties and fifties, bringing with them at least a small capital of live stock, car- ried on their farming and stock raising in co-operation. There is no definite time to be set when the stock industry became independent of farming and was engaged in as a great enterprise requiring altogether different methods of management.
In the early years there was little market for cattle outside of supply- ing the local demand, and therefore no special incentive to engage in a business which in its palmy days depended altogether on the eastern mar- kets. It has been well said that the world had to be educated to eat beef, and it is only as a great want has arisen through that process of dietary training that the supplying of the world with fresh beef has become one of the largest and most systematically organized industries. A writer in describing the region about Fort Belknap and Camp Cooper, about 1847, states that cattle were raised in considerable numbers in that vicinity, but that the only market was afforded by the Indian agency and the mili- tary post, the prices which he quoted per head being, according to mod- ern standards, ridiculously low. New Orleans was the principal cattle
COLONEL THOMAS A. COLEMAN, stockman and landowner, with large interests in Southwest Texas, especially in Zavalla county, is a native Texan, born in historic Goliad county. Many old residents remember the prominent part taken by his father, the late T. M. Coleman, in Texas during the early years of the cattle industry. Born, in Jackson county, Texas, he early became identified with cattle raising. During the late fifties he performed the remarkable feat of driving two herds of cattle from the Gulf of Mexico across the country to Chicago. Such a thing had never been done before, and so far as known was not again paralleled, because when the stock industry revived in Texas after the war, stock was seldom driven further than St. Louis, where it was taken east by train. T. M. Coleman, whose death occurred in 1900, was a successful man, making a fortune in the cattle business, and his name is permanently identified with the Texas cattle industry of the last century.
Colonel Coleman, though "to the manner born," as it were in the
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market before the war, but it is not likely that any large number of West Texas cattle found their way thither.
In view of the fact that the movement of cattle to market has so gen- erally taken an easterly direction, the west supplying the east with meat, it is an interesting piece of information that during the years immediate- ly following the great gold discovery in California, thousands of beef cattle were driven from Texas and Mississippi valley points across the plains to feed the hordes of gold seekers and the population that followed in their wake. During the brief period of the existence of this demand many herds passed through El Paso, encountering the frightful difficult- ies of the trail and the worse dangers from the Indians, and seldom did a party on this long drive escape the attack of Indians, and too often, the loss of most of. their stock.
Although the range cattle business had attained sufficient importance by the middle of the century to give Texas a reputation as a great cattle state, the operations were still confined to the eastern and southern parts of the state. The driving of cattle to the northern markets, which until less than twenty years ago was the most picturesque feature of the Texas cattle business, was inaugurated about 1856, when several large herds were trailed into Missouri, some being taken to the St. Louis markets. During the remaining years before the war, St. Louis and Memphis re- ceived large quantities of Texas cattle, most of them from the northeast- ern part of the state.
The commencement of hostilities broke all commercial relations be- tween the north and the south. The drives across the country stopped, while the blockade of the gulf ports ended exportation to foreign markets. Before the capture of Vicksburg in 1863 and the interposing of that river as a federal barrier between the east and the west Confederacy, there had been only. a moderate demand for Texas cattle in the states east of the Mississippi, and as, in the latter half of the war, food supplies of all kinds became scarcer, so also to transport them from the west through the fed- eral lines became an increasingly difficult task.
The paralysis of the cattle business during the war was coincident
cattle business, with which he has been familiar since boyhood, is a col- lege-bred man, a graduate of the University of Virginia. At first in connection with his father and for many years independently, he has managed large ranch interests. In Dimmit and Zavalla counties are his principal holdings, and in the remarkable settlement and development of that portion of Southwest Texas during the last few years he has taken a
Cometa.
very active part. Around the new town of Cometa in Zavalla county he has divided up what was formerly an immense grazing ranch into small tracts suitable for farming, and these are now being bought up by the immigrants from the north and other portions of the country, who are now invading Texas to find homes with the ideal environment of the southwest.
Cometa is located fifteen miles northwest of Carrizo Springs, in the Vol. I. 17
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with that which befell all other activities. Not only were the avenues of trade blocked, but also the former active participants in the business were now for the most part in the service of their country as soldiers. De- structive drouths were also a feature of this period, and all conditions seemed to conjoin in throttling the life out of the young industry of stock raising. These conditions caused at least one very noteworthy con- sequence. By stress of circumstances many stock owners had been com- pelled to abandon their herds, and from lack of sufficient guarding many cattle had wandered away from their regular range. At the close of the war therefore many thousands of half-wild range cattle were shifting for themselves in the remote districts. Incursions of Indian and wild beast had made them almost intractable and had increased the qualities of rangi- ness and nimbleness of hoof to a point where they were more than ever able to take care of themselves. When settled conditions once more came upon the country, it is said that more than one poor but enterprising cowman got his start by rounding up and branding these "mavericks," and from the herd thus acquired built up a business equal to that of many who in the beginning had been more fortunately circumstanced.
After the War.
The revival of the cattle business after the close of the war was swifter than that which followed in other industries; and perhaps for the reason based upon facts already presented: Given a good range on the one hand and an attractive market on the other, the principal conditions of a prosperous range stock business are satisfied and the industry will spring into large proportions in a short time. The reopening of the mar- kets of the north for southern cattle, and the fact that war-time prices for
artesian belt. The site occupies an elevation of such unusual height as to give an unobstructed view of the surrounding country in all directions, and yet on the very summit of this eminence artesian wells pour forth in great volume their pure crystal waters, making glad the heart of man and beast, and assuring to all who become residents of this young town beautiful homes, green lawns and shrubbery, fine orchards and every lux- ury possible in southwest Texas, where water is abundant and cheap. Now, as to what will make Cometa, let us say: First, it has the backing of that public-spirited and energetic stockman, farmer and merchant, Colonel T. A. Coleman. Second, it is surrounded by an artesian district of great extent, with a soil the superior of anything found elsewhere in southwest Texas, being especially adapted to alfalfa, truck and fruit cult- ure, and exceeded by none for corn and cotton. Mr. Coleman has al- ready begun putting one thousand acres under cultivation. There are five flowing wells and others are being drilled.
Mr. Coleman is one of the directors of the San Antonio Fair Asso- ciation and has long been prominently identified with the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association and other public enterprises. As a member of the State Militia he has served as colonel on the governor's staff for several years and is numbered among the distinguished and representative citi- zens of southwestern Texas.
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beef prevailed in those markets for some time after the war, gave a de- cided impetus to Texas stock-raising. To supply this northern demand a large number of cattle were collected in the spring of 1866 and driven across the Red river to principal shipping points. The Dallas Herald in April of that year estimates that from twelve to fifteen thousand beef cattle had crossed the Trinity within the past month or six weeks, bound for the north. The general quality of these herds was greatly inferior even to the general run of the old-time "Texas longhorn." In fact, many of the cattle driven north in 1866 were recruited from the herds of wild cattle then wandering in great numbers over the state. The presence of these wild animals in the drove gave the cowboys no end of trouble, for the least untoward event would set the suspicious brutes on the stampede, every such occasion meaning the loss of hundreds of dollars to the owner of the herd. Then, there were other gauntlets of danger and difficulty to be run by these drovers. The "Texas fever" was the bete noir of cattle- men, not so much because of the actual destruction wrought among the cattle by the disease, as by the general apprehension excited in the public mind that all Texas beef was fever-tainted and that Texas cattle were carriers of the disease among northern stock, all this operating for some time as an almost effectual bar against the sale of cattle from south of the Red river. To resist this invasion of disease, some of the inhabitants of Kansas and Missouri whose farms were along the general route of the Texas drives took exceedingly rigorous methods of stopping the passage of Texas drovers through their neighborhoods. Instances are known in which Texans were severely punished by lashing or other maltreatment and their cattle scattered through the woods and ravines beyond all hope of recovery. Originating in an honest desire to protect their live stock against imported disease, this hostility to Texas cattlemen became a cloak for the operations of gangs of blackmailers and outlaws such as would put to shame the banditti of the middle ages. Says one who wrote of that period from knowledge at first hand: "The bright visions of great profits and sudden wealth that had shimmered before the imagination of the drover, were shocked, if not blasted, by the unexpected reception given him in southern Kansas and Missouri by a determined, organized, armed mob, more lawless, insolent and imperious than a band of wild savages. Could the prairies of southeast Kansas and southwest Missouri talk, they could tell many a thrilling, blood-curdling story of carnage, wrong, out- rage, robbery and revenge, not excelled in the history of any banditti or the annals of the most bloody savages." It became necessary for the drovers to avoid these danger-infested regions, and instead of going di- rectly to the nearest shipping point-which was then Sedalia, Mo .- they detoured to the north or the south, reaching the railroad either at St. Jo- seph or at St. Louis.
The prejudices against Texas cattle and the dangers of the trail gradually subsided, though not till many a cattleman had gone bankrupt or suffered worse injury. In 1867, however, a new status was given the cattle traffic. Up to that time the Missouri river had furnished the near- est and most convenient shipping points for the Texas cattleman, and the trails thither were long and, as we have seen, often dangerous. It was to relieve these conditions that, in the year 1867, Joseph G. McCoy se-
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lected, along the route of the newly built Kansas Pacific Railroad, the embryo town and station of Abilene as the point to which all the cattle trails from the south and southwest should converge and disgorge the long-traveled herds into waiting cars, thence to be hurried away over the steel rails to the abattoirs and packing houses of the east. Abilene was no more than a name at the time, and McCoy and his assistants set about the building of immense cattle pens and the equipments essential to a shipping point. These were completed in time for the fall drive, and Abi- lene was thus launched upon its famous and infamous career as "the wick- edest and most God-forsaken place on the continent ;" a detailed descrip- tion of which is, happily, no part of this history.
By proper advertising of its advantages as the nearest and most con- venient railroad station for Texas shippers, by the year following its es- tablishment all the trail-herds were pointed toward Abilene as their des- tination. There the buyers would meet the drovers, who, having disposed of their cattle to best advantage, would usually turn their steps to the flaunting dens that offered iniquity in every conceivable earthly form. It is estimated that 75,000 Texan cattle were marketed at Abilene in 1868, and in the following year twice that number.
As is well known, the Texas "longhorn" of those days had charac- teristics of figure, proportion and disposition which were of equal fame with his value as beef. Texas fever or almost any evil imputation- could more easily lodge against this animal than against the more sleek and do- cile appearing "farmer cattle," so that it is not strange that on the cattle exchanges "Texans" were usually quoted distinct and at marked disparity of price compared with those brought by other grades. The process of grading which worked out from Texas herds this long-horn breed was a long time in accomplishment, and in time practically covers the epoch of the range cattle industry as distinct from modern cattle ranching. Though the Texan cattle thus labored against adverse influences both at the hands of the buyer and of the consumer, none the less the range business, both through the profits to be derived and through the nature of the enterprise, attracted thousands of energetic men to its pursuit as long as the condi- tions necessary to its continuance existed.
The decade of the seventies was marked with many developments in the cattle industry. Prices were up, the demand for cattle from Texas was not so critical, and it is estimated that 300,000 head were driven out of the state to Kansas points in the year 1870. Another factor that made the cattle traffic for that year profitable was a "freight war" between the trunk lines reaching to the Atlantic, the reduction in freight rates simply adding so much extra profit to the cattle shipper.
In 1871, as a consequence of the prosperity of the preceding year, the trails leading to the north were thronged with cattle, and the constant clouds of dust that hung daily along the trail, the ponderous tread of countless hoofs, and the tossing, glistening current of long-horns, present- ed a spectacle the like of which will never be seen again. Six hundred thousand head of Texas cattle went into Kansas in 1871, and these num- bers were swelled by contributions from the other range states. But the drovers were not met by the eager buyers of the year before; corn-fed beef from the middle states had already partly satisfied the market; the
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economic and financial conditions of the country were not so good as in the year before; railroad rates were again normal-and as a result half of the Texas drive had to be turned on to the winter range in Kansas. A rigorous winter, with much snow following, and much of the pastur- age having already been close-cropped, thousands of cattle perished, and the year goes down in Texas cattle history as almost calamitous.
About this time the railroads were extending their lines to absorb the increasing cattle traffic, and several roads penetrating the cattle regions caused a change of base with regard to the movements of cattle. The Santa Fe reached the Colorado line late in 1872, and about the same time the M. K. & T. reached the Red river, furnishing a shipping point for Texas cattle at Denison. With the year 1872 the town of Abilene begins to lose its lurid reputation, its business advantages as well as its sins be- ing transferred to other railroad points; the extension of the railroads had much to do with this, but in the winter of 1871-72 there had also been a determined revolt on the part of the better element of citizenship, with the result that Abilene became a comparatively "straight" town and what it lost as a cattle center was recompensed by substantial business prosperity.
The year 1872 saw only about half the number of cattle in the pre- ceding year driven north, although better prices prevailed and the average quality of the stock was better. About this time Texas stockmen began the practice of transferring their cattle to the northern ranges for fatten- ing, a method which soon became one of the important features of the business.
Practically all the activities of North Texas caine to an abrupt pause as a result of the panic of 1873, and the cattle business, being more "im- snediate" in its workings, suffered more severely than others. The pall of depression hung over the business world even before the colossal failure of Jay Cooke in September, so that the 400,000 Texas cattle that were driven north found the buyers apathetic to say the least. Many held off for better prices in the fall, only to be met with overwhelming disappoint- ment when the crash came. Naturally, the range cattle fared worse in competition with the farm cattle, which was nearly equal to the market demand. Everywhere there was over supply and glutting of the mar- kets. Many Texans were in debt for money advanced by banks in pre- ceding seasons, and as no extensions of credit could be made there were hundreds of enterprising cowmen in Texas in that year who faced com- plete defeat, although Texas pluck and persistence saved them from anni- hilation. To such straits did the business come in that year that a consid- erable proportion of the cattle were sold to rendering plants, which were set up in various parts of the state as a direct result of the depression ; the hides, horns, hoofs and tallow were more profitable for a time than the beef. Conditions warranted these operations only a short time, and since then there has been no slaughtering of range cattle as a business proposition merely for the by-products.
To quote from a recent publication : "The period from 1865 to the close of 1873 was one of ups and downs in the live-stock industry on the plains ; yet, notwithstanding the intervening misfortunes, and the actual disasters of 1873, the net results were represented by a great advance as
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to territory occupied and an immense increase in the number of animals that were eating the free grass of the ranges."
The cattle trade, said Edward King in 1873, which is one of the most remarkable industries of the Southwest, might be called "an in- dolent industry-for it accomplishes great results in a lazy, disorderly way; and makes men millionaires before they have had time to arouse themselves and go to work. Cattle trading is a grand pastime with hun- dreds of Texans. They like the grandiloquent sound of a 'purchase of sixty thousand head.' There is something at once princely and patriarchal about it. They enjoy the adventurous life on the great grazing plains, the freedom of the ranch, the possibility of an Indian incursion, the swift coursing on horseback over the great stretches, the romance of the road. Nearly all the immense region from the Colorado to the Rio Grande is given up to stock-raising. The mesquite grass carpets the plains from end to end, and the horses, cattle and sheep luxuriate in it. The mountainous regions around San Antonio offer superb facilities for sheep husbandry ; and the valleys along the streams are fertile enough for the most exacting farmer. There are millions of cattle now scattered over the plains between San Antonio and the Rio Grande, and the num- ber is steadily increasing. * The cattle interest is rather heavily taxed, for transportation, and suffers in consequence. In 1872 there were 450,000 cattle driven overland from Western Texas to Kansas, through the Indian Territory, by Bluff Creek and Caldwell, up the famous 'Chis- holm' trail. In 1871 as many as seven hundred thousand were driven across. But few cattle are transported by sea; the outlet for the trade by way of Indianola has never been very successful. The Morgan steam- ships carry perhaps 40,000 beeves yearly that way. The two great shipping points in 1872-73 were Wichita, on the A. T. & S. F. R. R., and Ellsworth, on the Kansas Pacific R. R."
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