A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



• 



Conditions were at their worst in 1873, when Mr. 

 McCoy evidently turned in his copy. The wail of 

 despair in his concluding thought sums up the his- 

 tory of those awful preceding ten years. I quote him, 

 not only because of what has followed, but because 

 the evolution of Texas into a nursery for well-bred 

 beef cattle in the national supply offers a striking 

 illustration of the courage and never-know-when- 

 you-are-licked-persistence of the Texan, in the cattle 

 industry or any other industry. Texas is the first 

 state in cotton and cattle; the third in oil, with the 

 prospect of becoming first; the first in sulphur, and 

 wheat is coming fast, to say nothing of truck gar- 

 dening, poultry and butter — all distinct national 

 factors — and there are still millions of fertile acres 

 of virgin soil begging for the plow ; but I am getting 

 away from my story. Mr. McCoy, himself a pioneer 

 frontier trailer and cattle trader, says, in 1874: 



"Of the cattle coming from Texas two-thirds are 

 marketed when almost totally unfit for consumption, 

 thus entailing comparatively immense losses upon 

 the parties selling them. Rather than continue this 

 foolish, wasteful and ruinous practice, drovers had 

 infinitely better buy stock ranches in western Kansas 

 and Colorado and there keep them until their stock 

 is fat." 



It is not my thought to ridicule McCoy's conclu- 

 sion. He was logical and could not look forward 

 to the Texas of today, any more than the cattlemen 



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