SHALL THE UNITED STATES LEASE ITS GRAZING 



LANDS? 



BY JOHN P. IRISH. 



When adventure, going Westward, Ho! had passed the 100th me- 

 ridian west of Greenwich, it had left behind the humid influence of the 

 Great Lakes, and entered a region that has its water supply a great 

 many miles away. Of the vast arid and semi- arid area, the United 

 States owns about six hundred millions of acres. Of that total it is 

 estimated that one hundred millions may be irrigated by supplement- 

 ing the natural reservoirs and storing the storm waters for gravity 

 distribution. Another hundred millions may include the forested and 

 semi -forested land, which should all be reserved and cherished as jeal 

 ously as Naboth guarded his vineyard. ' 



The remaining four hundred millions of acres are grazing lands. 

 In their virgin state these were covered by a vast variety of forage 

 plants, each affording pasture in its turn and season. They supplied 

 a succession of feed for live stock on the most valuable and extensive 

 grazing area in the world, not excepting the pampas of the Argen- 

 tines. But they were on the public domain, free to everybody, where 

 all live stock was a free commoner. The Government had dealt so 

 with the public lands west and north of the Ohio River to th Loup 

 fork of the Platte, where no dry season interrupted the growth and 

 renewal of the natural forage. Everybody had ranged his stock on 

 those moist prairies until they were conquered by the plough. Why, 

 then, should not everybody have the same privilege wherever the 

 public domain lay? Everybody enjoyed that privilege. But instead 

 of grazing only domestic stock, the great beef herds were created. It 

 was the most economical production of beef. Chicago built stock- 

 yards and slaughter-houses to receive it; Omaha and Kansas City fol- 

 lowed; and for years the ranges poured out a stream of cattle to meet 

 the pole-axe, supply the domestic market, and furnish a profitable ex- 

 port trade. 



Then the supply slackened. The census of 1880 showed a de- 

 crease in the number of cattle per capita of our population. That of 

 1900 exhibited an accelerated decline. The delivery of range cattle to 

 the slaughtering centres fell off sixty per cent, in six years, and the 

 price of beef on the butcher's block rose more than forty per cent. 

 Then men said that there must be something the matter; and the 

 United States hydrographers went out into the arid region where they 

 found that, although the Japan current was still supplying moisture, 



