144 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



should be grouped as much as possible, and the pasture lands, 

 particularly those which were irrigated, should be owned and 

 used in common. / 



Congress at that time flatly rejected Major Powell's pro' 

 posals when they were presented in the form of legislation. 

 The majority of congressmen came from east of the Mississippi, 

 and the idea that a man would need 2,560 acres to make a 

 living seemed to them ridiculous. A system of boundaries based 

 on natural features seemed confusing. And as for the com' 

 munal possession of pasture land, Congress rejected that as 

 barefaced communism. It was useless for Major Powell to 

 point out that such a communal system had been used by the 

 Spanish Americans for years in New Mexico with considerable 

 success. 



THE CATTLE KINGDOM 



Sometime before Major Powell made his report a cattle 

 boom had started in the range country. In 1865, for instance, 

 Texas cattle could be bought for from $3 to $4 a head. These 

 same cattle could be sold for from $30 to $40 a head in northern 

 markets. As Walter Prescott Webb put it in his book, The 

 Great Plains, "It was easy for a Texan with a pencil and a 

 piece of paper to 'figure up' a fortune. If he could buy five 

 million cattle at $4 and sell them in the north for $40 each, 

 his gross profit would amount to the sum of $180,000,000 on 

 an investment of $20,000,000 plus the cost of transportation! 

 This exercise in high finance is, of course, fanciful, but it does 

 show what men did on a small scale. Five million cattle? No. 

 Three thousand? Yes. Profit, $108,000. . . . They [the Tex- 

 ans] took vigorous measures to connect the four-dollar cow 

 with a forty "dollar market." Mr. Webb goes on to say that in 

 fifteen years Texas sent more than 5,000,000 head of cattle 

 to the North. 8 



8 p. 216. 



