THE WASTEFUL WEST 



sal in its time that Western restaurants were obliged 

 to put up the sign, "No Buff Served Here." The 

 killing off of the buffalo entailed one of the greatest 

 industrial wastes ever known in the history of the 

 world. How many tons of meat were there thus 

 left unutilized? No one can tell. More than two 

 million tons, perhaps twenty million tons a hun- 

 dred million. Would that we had it today to feed 

 the starving slum folk fresh from Europe! There 

 is no verification possible in buffalo estimates. The 

 story is commonly accepted that a million hides 

 came down the Missouri River in 1883, the last year 

 of the Northern buffalo herd. These figures are 

 probably too large. One-half or one-third that num- 

 ber would be more accurate, according to fur deal- 

 ers of that epoch. Yet 1883 was only one year out 

 of more than sixty, and this million hides came from 

 only the upper portion of the range, that along the 

 newly-builded Northern Pacific Railroad. Out of 

 the sixty great years of the buffalo, forty were years 

 of unexampled waste. The famous American his- 

 torian, Francis Parkman, killed buffalo for no better 

 trophy than their tails, and boasted of it. Later 

 than Parkman came the butchers of the Old World, 

 noblemen who shot without hire and with no pur- 

 pose save that of killing. These, from the Grand 

 Duke Alexis down, did their share. Army officers 



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