250 BOARI> OF AGRICULTURE, 



is changed. Breeders are becoming landowners, and as landowners 

 are fencing their tracts in vast enclosed pastures. In Neuces 

 County, Texas, 80,000 acres are enclosed in one tract with Barb 

 Wire fence. In the Ozark region in Missouri i§ a sheep range 

 siniilarl}- fenced 30,000 acres in extent. On the famous IMaxwell 

 grant in New Mexico seven hundred thousand acres are bounded 

 and subdivided in the same way with over two hundred miles of 

 Barb Wire. 



The tendenc}- now throughout the vast interior region is in the 

 same direction of careful fencing, and it has one bearing that is not 

 merely the pleasure or the profit of the land owner. We have ,seen 

 and read much of infectious herds. B3' this new system, cattle are 

 cared for as they could not be on a free range. The healthy herd 

 can be kept apart, and the diseased animals or infected herds can 

 be segregated. 



The longest line of Barb Wire fence, and probably of any fence, 

 in the world, runs from the Indian Territory- across the Texas Pan- 

 handle, in length two hundred miles, to shut off" the loose drift of 

 cattle. All our cattle growers are interested in this matter of better 

 care and safeguard against infection in the great herds of these vast 

 regions. 



But further, the new cheap material for fencing is making 

 thousands of acres of cheap land in the older States valuable, land 

 that could not and would not pa}' for a more costl}' fence. It is the 

 statement of many farmers in Vermont that thev are to-day getting 

 fair returns for pasturage of land never before fenced, and so never 

 before a source of any revenue at all. 



To briefly recapitulate the points I have sought to make : 



The fence comes to us b}' inheritance of the English love of en- 

 closed home and farm life. 



It has brought its great burdens of cost, its multiform evils of 

 construction and waste. 



It has been for manj- 3'ears discussed, under a pressure, seeking 

 to do away with it. 



Nevertheless in all our States it stands sustained both by law 

 and custom and b}- custom more than b}' law. 



No pictures of the European open field culture have brought the 

 American farmer to fall in love with the open field s3-stem. 



The demand for a cheaper fence material — a fence material ever}'- 

 where available — has brought into use in the past eight years over 



