258 CATTLE-RAISING INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. [Dec. 1896. 



ranchers were exempt), and by the increased cost of the staff 

 required to control the herds. Accordingly the number of 

 animals in the earlier ranching States is found to have declined, 

 while further west (but still east of the Rocky Mountains) 

 there still remains a large area of free land, and the industry is 

 more profitable. The ranching business appears to have attained 

 its high-water mark about 1885 ; and as the regions became 

 more settled, the system gave way to less primitive and econo- 

 mical methods. At the present day, of the chief cattle States 

 lying west of the Mississippi, Kansas and Nebraska have passed 

 entirely out of the " free range " stage, and Colorado may be 

 classed in the same category ; a limited extent of range survives 

 in Texas, partly on the borders of New Mexico ; while the 

 ranching business is still in vigour in the more northerly States 

 of Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. In Missouri and 

 Iowa it lias never existed — at least, of recent times. The total 

 number of cattle in the two chief ranching States, Montana and 

 Wyoming, is under 2,000,000. 



It is important to take note of the extent of the decrease 

 shown in a limited number of Western States, in which the 

 cattle industry of the whole country is largely concentrated. 

 The following ten States — Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, 

 Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado — all with 

 the exception of Illinois and Indiana lying west of the Mississippi 

 —provide some 17 i millions oxen and other cattle, or considerably 

 more than half the total number returned for the 48 States and 

 Territories. Or, leaving out of consideration^ the Pacific Coast 

 States, which may be regarded, as far as the cattle industry is 

 concerned, as forming a region apart, the ten States named 

 above supply over ^ of the oxen and jother cattle in the whole 

 country east of the Rocky Mountains. 



This remarkable concentration of the industry in a small 

 number of Western States has become possible through the 

 agency of the great slaughtering and packing houses which have 

 grown up in Chicago, Kansas, and other western cities, and 

 have given the " dressed meat " trade its present enormous 

 importance. The bulk of the western cattle are bought from 

 the fatteners by these firms, butchered and dressed on an 

 immense scale, and at a great saving of expense. The dressed 

 beef is distributed through the country in refrigerator railway 

 cars, and sold to the consumer in local meat stores, which have 

 largely superseded the old-fashioned butchers' shops. The result 

 has been that the cattle-raising industry of all but the most 

 southerly of the Eastern States has been seriously affected by 

 the competition of the western stock-growers, who, though 

 their own expenses have been on the increase, still retain a great 

 advantage in that respect over their eastern competitors. 



In the ten States enumerated above, which have thus come to 

 represent to so large an extent the cattle industry east of the 

 Rocky Mountains, the estimated decrease of " oxen and other 

 cattle " since 1892 has been from 21,250,000 to 17,400,000, or 



