OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 43 
THE PSALMIST OF HUSBANDRY 
12. The dean of American livestock journalists is ALVIN 
Howarp 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 Druid of last century England. 
Atvin H. SanpERs 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 
