THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 67 



competition of the sheepman. Vast flocks appeared on the range, 

 burning across it like so much live fire, the sheep eating out the vege- 

 tation to its very roots. It became a common experience for a cattle- 

 man to be "sheeped," as he called it, and it was not surprising that 

 he looked coldly on the sheepmen and their flocks. On the other 

 hand, the sheepmen asserted, truly enough, that the land belonged 

 to the government, not to the cattleman; that it was free range; that 

 the sheep had as much right there as the cows. Result, six-shooters, 

 as usual. In some cases the cowboys fortified the water-holes, pre- 

 venting the sheep from drinking, and hundreds died terribly of thirst. 

 In other cases, more bold, they rushed in, shot down the shepherds, 

 and "rustled" the sheep to their death over some precipice, or 

 killed them by shooting. It was no man's land; therefore might 

 was right. But sometimes the range was eaten so bare that the 

 cattlemen lost interest and sold out to the sheepman', and let him 

 have his way. -I 



But today the new Westerner has come. Jack, the cowboy, has 

 had his fling: the time is near when he will shoot up a town or rope 

 a constable for the last time. And the man who follows him is quite 

 a different person not so picturesque by a long way, not so carelessly 

 free, a person whom Jack despises with all his big, warm, foolish heart, 

 and dreads with all his unpractical head. For Mr. Brown is from 

 Kansas or is it Wisconsin ? a practical, unpoetic man, who wears 

 suspenders and a derby hat, whose rear pocket bulges with no six- 

 shooter. He is wholly without respect for range boundaries set by 

 honorable custom; he looks up his rights in a calfskin lawbook and 

 sets down his expenditures in a small red book, so that he can tell at 

 the end of the year how much he has made or lost. One of his chief 

 weapons is the barbed-wire fence, which he strings ruthlessly along 

 the rivers or around his leased school land, where cattle once roamed 

 free. Kill him and be done with it, but the next day comes Mr. Smith 

 from Ohio, and with him Mr. John Doe, of Boston, doing the same 

 despicable things, as Jack sees them. Is there no end of them ? 

 And killing, unfortunately, grows unpopular; even dangerous. 



Yes, Smith has come, scattering homes with women in them; 

 tomorrow he will build a cheap little church, spireless but hopeful; he 

 will have his schoolhouse and his justice-court. Do not imagine for 

 a moment thai Smith is a philanthropist, or that, feeling shame for 

 the ruin of a splendid empire, he is setting himself with deliberate 

 *vatriotism to save it. By no means. Smith is as healthily selfish as 



