ANIMAL INDUSTRIES 223 



Thus cattle-growing became notably a hard busi- 

 ness in marked contrast to the ease of its beginning. 

 This condition., in connection with the low price of 

 wool, almost extinguished the sheep industry in 1880, 

 and had it not been for the money in beef which 

 came with increasing local population and the readi- 

 ness of wholesale butchers to invest capital in land 

 and to grow their own cattle for slaughtering, there 

 was at the time a good chance that California would 

 close her career as a pastoral country except in dis- 

 tricts devoted to dairying. One butchering firm 

 bought land until it held title to lands equal to the 

 area of Ehode Island and owned a hundred thousand 

 head of cattle which could be driven to San Francisco 

 over a distance of about three hundred miles, passing 

 each night on a ranch of its own. Others owned 

 land and cattle in less amount and the beef supply 

 of California cities continued to be a big business in 

 an American instead of in the Spanish way. 



It is interesting to note that the maintenance of 

 the cattle industry in California has always been 

 chiefly an urban contribution to rural development. 

 The first state fair was held in San Francisco in 1853, 

 but it was wholly an exhibition of plants and their 

 products, and was popularly criticized as incomplete. 

 The second state fair was also in San Francisco in 

 1854, and it was rounded out by a branch consisting 

 of a cattle show which was of course richer in popu- 

 lar Spanish equine exploits than in improved stock, 

 but involved a conception and impulse toward the 

 latter. The state fair of 1855 was in Sacramento 



