USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume II > Part 12
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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 presented 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 numbers 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 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 pasturage having already been close- cropped, thousands of cattle perished, and the year goes down in Texas cattle history as almost calamitous. The year 1872 saw only about half the number of cattle in the preceding 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 fattening, a method which soon became one of the important features of the business.
Practically all the activities of North Texas came to an abrupt pause as a result of the panic of 1873, and the cattle business, being more "immediate" 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 disappointment 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 markets. Many Texans were in debt for money advanced by banks in preceding seasons, and as no extensions of credit could be made there were hundreds of enterprising cowmen in Texas in that year who faced complete defeat, although Texas pluck and persistence saved them from annihilation. To such straits did the business come in that year that a considerable proportion of
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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. Con- ditions warranted these operations only a short time, and since then there has been no slaughtering of range cattle as a business proposi- tion merely for the by-products.
Much interest attaches to the series of developments by which the Texas cattle industry grew in importance during the years before 1873, and how from a limited and unprofitable market at the gulf ports the tide of cattle was turned to the North and was even then being directed toward new shipping centers with almost each succeed- ing year. New Orleans and the lower Mississippi points were the destinations for the earliest cattlemen. Then Memphis and St. Louis received the bulk of the trade; still later Sedalia and Kansas City ; Abilene had its infamous "boom" as a cowtown; and later Junction City, Wichita. Fort Dodge and other railroad points in Southern Kansas, but coincident with the construction of the M. K. & T. Rail- road south through Indian Territory to Denison, which remained its terminal point for several years, the trail-herds of West and South- west Texas were directed in an ever increasing stream toward this part of North Texas. Nevertheless, the railroad mentioned must not be credited with establishing this general route for the drives, and although it was a positive influence to this end and the Denison terminal was a shipping point of more than ordinary magnitude, it remains true that a great part, perhaps a majority, of the cattle were driven past this point and on to the popular herding grounds in South- eastern Kansas. The true explanation seems to be that this "Baxter Springs Trail," as it was long known, and which even in the sixties had become much of the way, a well worn road, was a logical route to the northern markets; that the railroad, in following its general course, merely supplied an iron highway instead of the already favorite trail and that the convergence of the cattle routes through Fort Worth, which began to attract marked notice in 1874, and the subsequent extension of the railroad facilities from the Red River to that point, were a series of events, based in the first instance on natural causes, that have raised Fort Worth to its pre-eminence as the cattle market of the Southwest.
While Abilene held the center of the stage as a shipping point, the "Shawnee Trail" came into general use. This took its course through a more westerly part of the territory than the Baxter Springs route. crossing the Arkansas River near Fort Gibson, thence through the Osage Indian Reservation to the Kansas line, and thence north to Abilene. The promoters of Abilene in 1868 had this route shortened by surveying a direct trail south to the present City of Wichita, marking the course by small mounds of earth; this being the only instance when a cattle trail was located with anything like mathematical precision. The southern end of this trail, terminating at Wichita, was long used after Abilene ceased to be a shipping point.
There is a distinction to be drawn between the trails that were followed primarily as a route to market and those which were established as a
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highway of communication between the southern and the northern ranges. The "Baxter Springs Trail" seems to have combined both these features ; while the "Shawnee Trail" was principally used as the most convenient way to reach the railroad. Further to the west than either of these was the famous "Chisholm" or "Chisum" trail, which took its name from Jesse Chisholm, a half-breed Indian, and one of the earliest stockmen of the territory. This trail came into prominence after the custom had been established of transferring the southern cattle to the northern ranges, there to be held and fattened for market. Beginning at the Red River, it crossed the western portion of the present Oklahoma into Kansas, and during the seventies so many cattle were driven this way that it presented the appearance of a wide, beaten highway, stretching for miles across the country.
The other trail that deserves mention was the "Panhandle Trail," whose location is explained by the name, and which was likewise used principally for the transfer of Texas cattle to the ranges in Colorado or more northern states.
These trails, which were so called with laudable exactness of defi- nition, though leading with sufficient accuracy to certain destinations, were as sinuous in their smaller lengths as the proverbially crooked cow- path. This was especially true of the more westerly routes, where it was necessary for the drover to direct his herds so that a sufficient water and grass supply was each day accessible, these prime considerations making a meandering course, the only feasible one in the plains country.
Notwithstanding that the years immediately following the panic of 1873 was a time of depression in the cattle business as well as other industries, there was a realignment of forces going on in Texas which was to make its influence felt when the time of prosperity again arrived. The natural economic resources which had lain dormant during the war and reconstruction period were just beginning to be touched by the wand of enterprise when the panic came, and though this cause operated as a serious check, it was only temporary, and when stability was once more restored to financial affairs Texas literally bounded forward along every line of progress. This fact is well stated in the following news- paper comment which appeared in April, 1875: "But a very few years ago the traffic in Texas cattle with the North was a very small affair. The first herds were driven into Kansas about eight years ago. Nearly every succeeding year witnessed an increased number until the aggregate of one season amounted to over six hundred thousand, and when esti- mated in dollars the aggregate for the past eight years will reach eighty millions. The peculiar condition of our state and people during the eight years in question, immediately succeeding the close of the war. rendered it necessary to expend the greater part of this sum in bread- stuffs, clothing, wagons, agricultural implements, etc., so that very little of the money found its way back to Texas. A different state of affairs is manifest today, and the balance of trade is slowly swinging in our favor, being assisted by the increase in home manufactures."
Also, about that time the movement became definite which has re- sulted in the extinction of the longhorn range cattle, so that at this writing one of the old-time "Texas steers" is a distinguished rarity
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in the markets. The prophecy of this modern state of affairs was thus couched in a Fort Worth democrat editorial during the spring of 1874: "Several hundred head of blooded cattle have been imported into this county (Tarrant) during the past twelvemonth. These will," the editor states, "in a few years greatly improve the grade of cattle in the county. Stockraising in considerable quantities will soon become obsolete in this section, and fewer numbers, of much finer grades, will be raised. It is conceded by stock-raisers of Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri that more money is realized by raising a few good cattle than from large numbers of ordinary breeds. Our farmers are beginning to appreciate this fact."
The prices for range stock during 1874 and 1875 remained very low, seldom rising above two dollars per hundred.
This continued disparity of the Texas cattle in competition with other grades was no doubt a principal factor in convincing the Texas stockmen of the necessity of improving his breeds.
The refrigerator car as an element in the cattle business of Texas receives notice in May, 1877, in the following paragraph from the Fort Worth Democrat: "The first carload of fifty beeves in quarters, in a Tiffany refrigerator car, which is just now coming into general use, was shipped yesterday from Fort Worth to St. Louis. Some two years ago a company was formed at Denison for shipping beef in refrigerator cars, but proved a failure. Tiffany has since improved the cars to com- mercial efficiency, and has provided ventilation so thorough and adapted to both summer and winter use as will enable meats to be carried almost any distance without taint or loss of flavor." Another issue of the same paper, commenting on this "wonderful discovery," goes on to assert that "so soon as the various railroad lines can supply their roads with these cars, beef and other meats will be slaughtered in the localities where raised and will be sent to market in dressed form, saving transportation fees on offal and useless matter."
But the climax of the range cattle business was now approaching. Not only were the farmer settlers crowding the cattlemen West, but the stock industry itself was proving so attractive that during the early eighties practically every square mile of the range country was utilized to the point of crowding. The rush to the range cattle country during those years was quite comparable to a mining rush, in the splendid visions of the sudden wealth that actuated the participants, as also in the later failure and disappointment that swept into oblivion the majority of such fortune hunters. The glamour of romance and the gleam of riches had been thrown over the cattle range. Its stern aspects, its hard- ships, its sacrificing toil, were subordinated to its picturesque features. which many an old cattleman will dispute ever having existed elsewhere than on the pages of romance. The titles "cattle king" and "cattle baron," coined probably by some zealous newspaper man, sounded im- pressive to the uninitiated and were often an all-sufficient stimulas to the ambition of an easterner plodding the slow road to prosperity. As one miraculous cure will establish the world-wide fame of a relic which thousands of other worshipers have adored in vain, likewise a few examples of success in cattle ranching gave dazzling promise to all who
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would undertake its pursuit. The glowing reports of the western cattle industry that were found current in all parts of the world resulted in a large immigration to the range country, and the mania for investment in cattle and for booming every department of the business stimulated a false prosperity that could have but one end. Values rose beyond all precedent, and those who marketed their stock during the first two or three years of the "boom" realized profits that, had they then withdrawn from the business, would have left them well within the realm of wealth. But the contagion of the enterprise seemed to infect the experienced cattleman as well as the tyro. The season's drive ended. the accruing profits were reinvested, and thus the bubble expanded till it burst.
To properly understand the culmination of the conditions which brought the range cattle industry to its climax in the eighties, it is neces- sary to go back to the origin of the industry and state the "rules of the game" which had obtained as unwritten law as long as free range lasted. "For a decade or two after the Civil war the range country of Texas was open and free to whosoever might go in and occupy parts of it. and nature provided food for the cattle without labor, without money and without price from their owners. The cattlemen of that period thought they 'had struck it rich,' as indeed they had, so far as free grass and a range that appeared to be unlimited and inexhaustible could help them on to fortune. They had also thought that they had a perpetua. possession in which these conditions would continue, but little, if at all. disturbed, and that their business would go on indefinitely independent of most of the trammels and restraints to which men were subject in the settled parts of the country. The country appeared so endlessly big and its grazing resources seemed so great that it was hard for any man to foresee its 'crowded' occupation by range cattle far within the period of his own lifetime, to say nothing of serious encroachments upon it by tillers of the soil. In these years the methods and practices of the western stockmen as they advanced into the range country were much the same wherever they went.
"The first impulse of a pioneer cattleman who had entered a virgin district with his herd and established his headquarters there was mentally to claim everything within sight and for a long distance beyond. But when the second one appeared with his stock the two would divide the district, and each keep on his side of the division line as agreed upon. As others came in, the district would be still further divided, until. according to the very broad views our pioneer friends held as to the length and breath of land each should have for 'elbow room,' it had become fully occupied. There was nothing to prevent them from appro- priating the country in this manner and arbitrarily defining the boundaries of their respective ranges, and with this practice there developed the theory of 'range rights'-that is, of a man's right to his range in conse- quence of priority of occupation and continuous possession, although none asserted actual ownership of the range land, nor did any of them really own as much as a square yard of it. Still, under the circumstances, the theory of 'range rights' was not an unreasonable proposition.
"For a district to become 'fully occupied' did not at that time imply that the cattle outfits in it were near neighbors. In making claim to a
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range each stockman kept far over on the safe side by taking to himself a-plenty, and therefore their ranch buildings were anywhere from fifteen to thirty miles apart, and sometimes even farther. As a common rule each man recognized and respected the range rights of his neighbors in good faith, but occasionally there were conflicts."
Such were the conditions up to the time of the boom. Then, in con- sequence of the immigration of farmers and the many new aspirants for success in the range business, the old cattlemen became generally apprehensive for the future of their business. It seemed that even the vast range country, much of which, indeed, has since been proved agri- culturally valuable, might at no distant day be filled up by the land-own- ing, fence-building and generally troublesome farmer, not to mention the restrictions of range freedom that were being set by the greater numbers of cattlemen.
Therefore the majority decided to make their shortening days of grace strenuous ones, and to this end began the practice of stocking their ranges to the very limit. Where the long-horn had hitherto grazed the grass from twenty-five or more acres, he was now often limited to ten. This practice of overstocking the ranges became increasingly general, and the several inevitable results were not long in precipitating widespread calamity.
The practice led first of all to an abnormal demand for stock cattle. Prices quickly rose from $7.00 to $8.00 a head and $10.00 and $12.00, and large shipments were even sent from the middle states to form the basis for the range herds. Of course this inflation of values deepened the veneer of prosperity which gilded the entire business and increased the recklessness of those who hoped to catch the golden bubble before it burst. The beef-cattle market continued strong, some Texas "grass fed" steers selling in Chicago in May, 1882, at $6.80 a hundred, and upwards of $6.00 being offered in the corresponding month of the next year. But the ranges were not capable of supporting the great herds of hungry cattle that cropped their grasses so close and in many cases so trampled them that their productiveness was permanently impaired. A rainy season and an open winter alone could maintain the cattle industry at the high pressure at which it was being driven, and those conditions could not be depended upon. In the hard winter of 1882-1883 cattle died by the thousands, and those that were not ruined by nature's penalties did not have long to wait for the economic overthrow. Prices for market stock remained high throughout 1883 and the early months of 1884, but in the fall of that year the decline began and by the middle of 1885 range cattle sold high at $10.00 a head and thousands went for less. The delusive value of "range rights" and "free grass," so often estimated as assets, could not be realized on, and the unfortunate stockmen found the returns from their herds to give them a mere pittance compared with the original investments. A case is recorded in which a Texas cattleman, who in 1883 had refused $1,500,000 for his cattle, ranch out- fit and range rights sold them all in 1886 for $245,000.
With the collapse of the great boom of the eighties, it may be said that the doom of the range cattle industry was sounded, and since then a complete rearrangement has been taking place by which modern con- VOL. II-7
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ditions have been ushered in. The fiction of "range rights" gave place to the purchase outright or the leasing of tracts of range land. The in- troduction of wire fences into general use set definite boundaries to each cattleman's possessions and largely did away with the "open range." Railroads went West and South, and were intersected by cross lines, which, more than any other influence, caused the breaking up of the range into ranches and stock farms. The improvement of the grades of cattle, and the gradual elimination of the long-horns, the beginnings of which we have already noted, have been steadily working the trans- formation which is now so complete that only the older stockmen have any knowledge of the conditions that we have just described. The stock industry is now a business, almost a science, and is conducted along the same systematic lines with other departments of modern industrialism. Cattlemen no longer pursue their calling outside the borders of the perma- nent settlements; receding before the whistle of the locomotive they built their ranch houses along the lines of steel, and their industry has become an organic factor in the world's activities.
During the sixties and early seventies Mr. J. F. Glidden, at his home in DeKalb, Illinois, had been conducting the experiments which resulted in the production of barb-wire, and it is worth while to turn aside and give in some detail the history of the invention which has meant so much in Texas. The first patent covering his invention was secured and bore date November 24, 1874. Smooth wire had already been used to a con- siderable extent for fencing purposes. It was cheap and answered the purpose to a certain extent, but it was by no means proof against cattle, and in consequence smooth-wire fences were constantly in need of repair. It was while replacing wires that had been torn from the posts by cattle that Mr. Glidden noticed some staples hanging to the wires, and from this conceived the idea of attaching barbs or points firmly to the wire at regular intervals, in this way preventing cattle from exerting pressure on the fence. It was at first only an idea, and there were many things to overcome in perfecting it, but it continued prominent in Mr. Glidden's mind, and after considerable thought he began experiments in perfecting a style of barb and firmly attaching it to the wire. He made his first perfected coil barb by the use of an old-fashioned coffee mill, of which he turned the crank by hand. Later on he devised better and more sub- stantial machinery for this purpose, and would then string a number of barbs on a wire, placing them at regular intervals, and laying another wire without barb by its side, twist the two together by the use of horse power. Thus by the twisting of the wires the barbs were permanently held in place, and the result obtained in this primitive way was sufficiently satisfactory to convince him of the ultimate success of his invention. In the fall of 1874 Mr. Glidden gave, for a nominal sum, a half interest in his patent to Mr. I. L. Ellwood, of DeKalb, and a factory was erected in that city for the manufacture of the new wire. Machinery was designed with which the barbs were attached to a single wire and then a smooth wire twisted with it to a length of 150 feet; this length was then wound on a reel and the process continued until the reel was filled. Soon after- ward a machine was made which coiled the barbs upon one wire, twisted
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them together and wound the finished wire upon the reels ready for shipment, each machine having a capacity of twenty reels daily.
Such was the inventing and manufacturing side of it. But, as has been the case again and again in the history of machinery, a really excel- lent device may be lost to the world because sufficient aggressiveness has not been employed in its introduction to the public. The man selected by Mr. Glidden to show the merits of his barbwire was Mr. Henry B. Sanborn. Conservation, if not prejudice, worked against the first sale of this article, only two or three reels being sold at Rochelle, Illinois, and some small orders coming during the following months. In the spring of 1875 Mr. Sanborn and Mr. Warner both set out to introduce the wire into the Southwestern and Western States, where its field of greatest usefulness lay. In the meantime a half interest in the DeKalb plant was transferred to the well known wire manufacturers, Washburn and Moen
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Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, the contract with Sanborn and Warner being reaffirmed by the new partnership.
In September, 1875, Mr. Sanborn made his first invasion of Texas territory in the interest of the barb-wire industry. He soon found out that fencing material was much needed in this great cattle country, but the prejudice against the use of barb-wire seemed to be very strong. As a sample of the objection, one large cattle owner told Mr. Sanborn that the barb-wire fence would never do; that the cattle would run into it and cut themselves, thus causing endless trouble from the screw worm, which invariably attacks cattle in Texas when blood is drawn. But Mr. Sanborn was proof against all such discouraging sentiments, and he knew that once a wedge of sales entered the entire people would be in time brought over to the new fence. He had a carload of the new wire shipped to various points in the state, had Mr. Warner to come on and help him, and then took the field in the country for the purpose of introducing it to the actual consumers. At Gainesville he sold the first
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