CHAPTER XIV. 

 DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH. 



It is easy to swim with a tide that is flowing free. 

 Working up-stream is quite another story. Yet this 

 was the task now before those who fought to main- 

 tain the herds they had developed at such cost dur- 

 ing the golden days that had preceded. We are un- 

 fortunately prone, in this western country, to run 

 to extremes. The atmosphere of the prairies, the 

 mountains and the plains breeds optimism. Else 

 we would not have done and dared those deeds of 

 might that have characterized our wondrous growth. 

 We had a little too much steam on in our western 

 cattle breeding. The crash of '93 brought us up 

 to an era of liquidation in breeding stock which 

 had to be got through with sooner or later, and 

 while it left wrecks in its pathway it was the real 

 starting point of the great constructive era upon 

 which we now enter. 



Men of faith, men of strength, men of dogged 

 persistence were still behind the Hereford. The 

 names of the more prominent ones weathering the 

 financial gale of 1893 will still figure in our narra- 

 tive, and we wish in passing to pay tribute to that 

 patient, but for the most part inconspicuous, body 

 of farmer-breeders who from Maine to California 



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