A RANCHMAN^S RECOLLECTIONS 



ture had been working on the economies of baby 

 beef, giving it much encouragement; feeders were 

 experimenting with good results; the cornbelt was 

 becoming interested; pilgrimages were being made, 

 and mail inquiry was becoming enormous, but few 

 producers were willing to sell less than their drop. 

 We were probably the advance guard selling any 

 considerable number, one or more cars, as wanted. 

 This was made possible by concentration, classifica- 

 tion, and straight cut-offs, which has since been 

 changed, to the extent of selling in advance, and ship- 

 ping all of one class from one ranch, at the same time, 

 first grading to a standard and loading by a straight 

 cut-off. 



We soon found that our difficulty was in getting 

 feeders who wanted only one or two cars to come 

 down. This in turn evolved the mail order idea, 

 one which obtains to a much larger degree over the 

 whole range country than is generally known. There 

 were many headaches and some heartaches in the 

 pioneer work. I recall that John Camp, Harris- 

 town, III., a feeder himself, and acting as agent for 

 us, brought down a number of his neighbors. We 

 had concentrated 3,000 steer calves and 1,200 year- 

 ling steers in our pens. His men were slow, and 

 walked and walked, looking at the cattle in different 

 pens. Mr. Camp, E. P. Swenson and I sat on a 

 fence waiting for them to get through. The humor 

 of the work struck me, and I said: "John, I dreamed 



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