234 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



theless, the little men well know that they have but 

 small show to run their herds so long as the heavy out- 

 fits are in possession of the range. 



If the small man has a little patch of grass saved up 

 for his winter feed, some wandering band of sheep or 

 the cattle belonging to some great company comes 

 along and grazes it off, leaving his few head to winter 

 without any grass. For this reason there are few 

 small owners today who use the open ranges ex- 

 clusively. They found out to their entire satisfaction 

 back in the '80s that there was no use in a little man 

 trying to hold his own on the open range. Proof of 

 this fact is easily found by a study of the number of 

 sheep and cattle being grazed on the various National 

 Forests. Here the small men are greatly in the ma- 

 jority. 



In the beginning the larger men were almost the sole 

 occupants of the ranges in the forests. Under the pro- 

 tection afforded by the Forest Service system in hand- 

 ling the ranges, by means of which each man was given 

 a range and guaranteed exclusive and safe possession 

 of it, the little fellows have come to the front very 

 rapidly. On a Wyoming forest in the first year it was 

 created one man with 60,000 sheep owned 65 per cent of 

 the sheep on the forest. Five years later through re- 

 ductions made in his herd in order to take care of little 

 men he was running but 15,000, or about 7 per cent of 

 the total. Meantime, from a dozen men using the range 

 the number has grown to eighty. Is there any sane man 

 who, knowing the conditions, believes that these eighty 

 men would be there today, except for the Federal con- 

 trol of the ranges? Can it be conceived that the great 

 herds would have been voluntarily reduced to meet the 



