THE WASTEFUL WEST 



leans may be praying for a square meal of beef once 

 more. 



The destruction of the buffalo was the tragedy of 

 the fur trade. It was not so much a blunder in 

 commerce as it was an accident of civilization. The 

 belt of the machinery of progress got loose when 

 the railroads came, and the engine "raced." There 

 was a time of flurry and unpreparedness when our 

 transportation for the first time ran ahead of us. 

 It was the Great Plains railroads that killed off the 

 buffalo. 



We wiped the West off the earth, if not off the 

 maps, long ago, and now we seek to water its grave 

 with national irrigation. The terms civilized and 

 savage are, however, but relative, and there is al- 

 ways some sort of balance struck between them. 

 Continually we make war upon the wilderness, its 

 people, its creatures; yet, having done so, we covet 

 again the wilderness, yearn for it, depend upon it, 

 and ape it even in our clothing. We may abolish the 

 wilderness from the earth and from the map, but we 

 cannot abolish it from our blood. It is, therefore, 

 a matter of course after all that, having eaten the 

 heart out of our cake, we shall manage to get along 

 with the fragments left around the edge. We may 

 pay a little more for the fragments than for all the 

 rest, but we can afford it. We are rich, rich! 



145 



