THE FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE 



Sound will some day be the great western mouth of 

 America, one of the greatest trade and transit em- 

 poriums of the World, a healthy competitor of, and 

 worthy cooperator with, New York. 



America's greatest trade success lies in the Pacific 

 and beyond, likewise its greatest problem, its greatest 

 danger. America must know its own problems, get 

 acquainted with itself, see itself, know itself first, 

 adequately to protect and find itself. So too, America 

 must also follow and understand the movements of the 

 world tides, not just its own political eddies. 



The Great Epic Drama of the West, the Round-Up, 

 is but an atomic episode in the modern, forward-mov- 

 ing West of today, but a drop of the red blood that 

 surges through the great throbbing heart of America, 

 but it helps us to understand its pulsing. If there was 

 never another rounding-up of the range clans in Pendle- 

 ton, its Pageant has already been a rich contribution 

 to the Spirit of America. 



There is something in every healthy nature that re- 

 sponds to the spectacular and dangerous. When the 

 restraints of some artificialities of society are removed, 

 certain deep powerful, oft-times long-buried instincts, 

 irresistible and unfathomable, assert themselves. It 

 were better for the Nation if the blase, effete, lily-liv- 

 ered youths, which the complexities and hectic move- 

 ment of our modern life tends to develop, learned 

 through honorable physical contest the satisfaction of 

 a well-balanced body and character, the power of 

 self-control, the constructive force of positiveness and 

 that joy of spiritual uplift through a frank and sym- 

 pathetic contact with Nature and a certain healthy re- 

 version to type. 



In this book I have sought to incorporate enough of 



