24 



be no great immediate improvement. At least ten years will be 

 required to restore the damage done by the insurrection. 



That Mexico is a growing factor affecting our own range-cat- 

 tle industry is shown by the number of cattle brought across the 

 Mexican line into the United States during recent years. For 

 example, the number of cattle imported from Mexico in 1905 was 

 22,000; in 1906, 24,000; in 1907, 27,000; in 1908, 64,000; in 

 1909, 126,000; in 1910, 1 88,000. x These cattle are grazed on 

 ranges thruout the West. They have been taken as far north as 

 Montana and even Canada but are held principally in the South- 

 west until marketable as killers or feeders. 



Conditions in the Canadian range country are well described 

 in a recent report by Hon. J. G. Rutherford, Veterinary Director 

 General and Live Stock Commissioner of Canada, from which the 

 following extracts are quoted : 



"As is well known, the Canadian west is now experiencing the same change 

 in cattle-raising methods as has already taken place in much of the country 

 south of the line, formerly devoted to ranching purposes. 



"The ranching industry in Canada is rapidly passing. In Saskatchewan 

 and Alberta the handwriting is already on the wall, and in these provinces it is 

 only a matter of time until even the districts still regarded as unfit for general 

 agriculture will, thru modern methods of dry farming or by means of irrigation, 

 be brought under cultivation. In the Peace River country ranching may per- 

 sist for a time, but there, as elsewhere on the continent, the settler will soon 

 be its undoing and the cowboy will disappear. 



"The incoming of settlers, many of them from the dry belt, has transformed 

 large areas of land, formerly considered only fit for ranching, into fertile farms 

 growing great crops of grain and fodder. While there is yet much territory un- 

 touched by the settler and on which the cattle still range as formerly, its area 

 is being yearly curtailed, and, as a natural consequence, the free, easy and 

 somewhat wasteful methods of the rancher are gradually giving place to those 

 of the farmer and feeder. That this change will, instead of lessening the out- 

 put, eventually result in a large increase in the cattle production of the trans- 

 formed districts, needs no demonstration. Under ranching conditions, twenty 

 acres is the usual allowance for each head of cattle, while the losses from ex- 

 posure, from lack of food and from wild animals constitute a heavy drain on the 

 herd. 



"The close farmers are, as yet, in the minority in the less thickly settled 

 portions of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is still much open grazing land 

 available and many settlers let their cattle run at large during the summer, thus, 

 for the present as it were, combining ranching with farming. As time goes on 

 and the land becomes more generally taken up, this condition will dissappear, as 

 it has already done in many districts in Manitoba, as well as in the newer west, 

 and the farmer will have to depend for his feed on the output of his own acres. 



"At the present date, while many of the larger ranches have closed out, the 

 cattle industry is by no means at an end. It is true that many cattlemen, seeing 

 the inevitable end of ranching, have been rapidly 'beefing' out their herds by 

 selling cows, spaying heifers and disposing of bulls, but this is only a link in 

 the chain connecting the old with the new and better condition of the industry. 

 The determination to 'beef out' has temporarily increased the output of cattle 

 of range quality, but, while this is going on, the incoming settlers are stocking 

 up, not to return to the old system of selling their cattle off the grass in the fall, 

 but to follow the more profitable method of finishing beef thruout the year for 

 the good markets, as is done in other progressive countries, where beef raising 

 is recognized as a legitimate and useful adjunct to mixed farming." 



i Commerce and Navigation of the U. S., 1910, p. 161. (Years ending June 

 30.) 



