HISTORY OF HERE FOR I) CATTLE 



519 



still admit that parties have been selling bogus, 

 impurely bred animals, and that the Herd 

 Books have made a record of these until it is 

 difficult to tell which are pure and which are 

 impure. 



We should not take up so much room in this 

 matter except for the high standing that Mr. 

 Rust has occupied in the live stock interest of 

 this country. No man knows so well the frauds 

 that have been committed in the Shorthorn in- 

 terest as does Mr. Rust. No man understands 

 better the great damage that has been done to 

 the breed through the bad practices and specu- 

 lative tendencies of those who have been lead- 

 ers in the Shorthorn movement for years past, 

 and it is true, we think, that no man has done 

 more to expose these frauds than Mr. Geo. W. 

 Rust, unless it is ourselves. And we will here 

 refer to what we said of Mr. Rust in the Febru- 

 ary number of the "Journal," page 77. In 

 speaking of the Shorthorn Herd Book he says: 

 "It affords no means of ascertaining any- 

 thing beyond the names of the various animals 

 in the successive crosses and the names of their 

 breeders, and these mere names repeated in a 

 meaningless way from volume to volume, six, 

 seven, ten or twenty crosses, all detailed with 

 careful perspicuity, long lists of names of bulls 

 and cows with no information as to whether 

 either had anything beyond their paper record 

 to show they were Shorthorns." 



Later he says: "I made the statement that 

 Avhile all public records were more or less de- 

 fective, the system of Shorthorn records, while 

 most important of all because of the number 

 and amount of capital invested in the breed, 

 was worst of all." 



We submit the foregoing facts to the public 

 and our readers. The entire article from which 

 we quoted is much more damaging to the Short- 

 horn interest than where we left it. While it 

 is true that the article was intended to discredit 

 the Herd Book, it still brought out most clearly, 

 and from the most authoritative source, the 

 frauds and speculative practices of those per- 

 sons who had been engaged in breeding and sell- 

 ing Shorthorns, and the movement which Mr. 

 Rust hoped would remedy these evils, instead of 

 purging itself, has adopted the very record 

 which he condemned. 



Mr. Rust when writing this correspondence, 

 was residing in Boulder, Colorado, where he 

 had unsurpassed opportunities to personally in- 

 spect the sorry state Shorthorns got into when 

 left to rustle for themselves on the open range. 

 Truly a more forlorn spectacle cannot exist in 

 the eyes of a cattleman than a herd of Short- 

 horns in winter on the range; too shiftless to 



range for a living and literally waiting for 

 death. 



Our quotations of Mr. Rust seemed to him 

 to make it imperative that he get something in 

 print derogatory to the Herefords to counteract 

 the light we had set him in, and the following 

 is republished from the "Breeders' Journal" for 

 June, 1884: 



Geo. W. Rust gives what he terms some 

 "Practical Experiences" as to the Best Plains 

 Cattle, and is somewhat personal in his re- 

 marks ; but we give the following extracts from 

 the article in question, which appeared in the 

 "Breeders' Gazette" of May 29th, 1884. The 

 article referred to commences by saying: 



"I always enjoy a talk with Mr. Carey 

 Culver, whom I call my neighbor, although he 

 resides twenty odd miles away, over on the Big 

 Thompson, wlio, with his brother-in-law, Mr. 

 Mahoney, a business partner, were among the 

 earliest introducers 

 of improved cattle 

 upon the plains, be- 

 cause he has had 

 an experience ante- 

 dating and cover- 

 ing more years 

 than anyone I 

 know about, con- 

 cerning the adapta- 

 bility of different 

 breeds of cattle for 

 use on the plains, 

 and he never fails 

 to tell me some- 

 thing which inter- 

 ests me. 



"He was at my 

 house recently and I had a more than usu- 

 ally interesting cattle talk with him, in 

 which he gave me a more connected ac- 

 count of his cattle operations and more of the 

 results of his experience and observation in 

 breeding cattle than he had ever felt inclined 

 to impart. I showed him a recent number of 

 Mr. T. L. Miller's Hereford , paper (the 

 'Breeders' Journal') in which that gentleman 

 states: 'We think Messrs. Culver & Mahoney 

 took Herefords first, but they felt that the price 

 was so high that they could not afford to buy, 

 and being able to buy Shorthorns and Scotch 

 cattle they took them, and this has been true, 

 we know, of some other firms.' 



"I expressed my sympathy to Mr. Culver 

 at the poverty which prevented him from buy- 

 ing such cattle as he felt he needed in his 

 business." 



We can imagine Mr. Rust meeting Mr. 



MURRAY BOOCOCK. 

 'Castalia," Keswick,- Va. 



