OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 43 



THE PSALMIST OF HUSBANDRY 



12. The dean of American livestock journalists is Alvin 

 Howard Sanders, editor of The Breeder's Gazette. To Mr. San- 

 ders more than to any other man is due the literary standards 

 which have been set up in agricultural publications, and the dig' 

 nified development in a magazine of quality of the interests and 

 ideals of the progressive livestock farmer. Bred in the atmos- 

 phere of journalistic service, Mr. Sanders has carried forward 

 the great achievement of his father's life to realms of higher and 

 more varied usefulness. He has taken upon his shoulders the 

 burden of bridging the gap between the present generation of 

 American husbandry and the preceding one. In the growing 

 volumes of breed histories and biographical sketches of the live- 

 stock masters, he has conferred a service rivalled only by the 

 peerless Drui-d of last century England. 



Alvin H. Sanders was born Sept. 8, 1860, in Keokuk Co., 

 Iowa. He was reared on the farm, but received his education 

 in law at Northwestern University, graduating in 1881. Through- 

 out his college years a desk was set aside for him in the office of 

 the National Livestock Journal, where he began his apprentice- 

 ship at a weekly wage of ten dollars. Here he checked the proofs 

 of the many herd and sale catalogs printed by the Journal for 

 the leading western Shorthorn breeders. Most painstaking efforts 

 were necessary in order to prevent error in names or herd book 

 numbers. By careful attention to the duties here bestowed upon 

 him, Mr. Sanders acquired a voluminous information of the fash- 

 ionableness or unfashionableness of pedigrees. The grind of 

 such details naturally drove his preferences to the practice of 

 law, and during the years before graduation his career as lawyer 

 or newspaper man trembled in the balance. The straw that 

 turned his footsteps forever to journalism came unexpectedly 

 in 1881 with a failure on the part of the editor of the Journal to 

 review the recently compiled catalog of the herd of Hon. William 



