498 Ticentij Yeari Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
beyond the Mississippi. While there has been, according to 
the yearly estimates of the Department of Agriculture, a growth 
of 12 millions in the herds of the United States in the seven 
years since the census enumeration, at least 11^ of these new 
millions are to be found in the West. 
But the tales that have been reaching us from the Western 
ranges this summer have not by any means rung with the old 
boasts and congratulations and prophecies of ever-advancing 
production — so familiar in the earlier days. The ranchers one. 
and all have to tell of heavy losses and the havoc of a severe 
winter. These are not mere newspaper reports to which it 
is always difficult, even when they correctly report individual 
losses, to attach their exact representative value. Within the 
last few weeks the able Statistician of the Department of 
Agriculture at Washington, Mr. J. R. Dodge, amply confirms 
the prevalent reports. In writing to me under date August 
last, he says that the record of the winter reveals " unusual 
destruction of ranch cattle." In reference to the problem that 
puzzles us here — the low values apparently current in the face 
of these losses, he adds : " Though prices are yet low, a relative 
scarcity will assert itself, and prices will undoubtedly be higher. 
The ranges are overstocked. The cattle that escaped destruc- 
tion were weakened, and where the grasses have partially failed 
cattle are in poor condition. Ranchmen are discouraged, and 
some are giving up the business." 
He acknowledges, of course, that the tide will turn as soon as 
prices do advance, but he gives it as his own opinion that the 
free scramble for the monopoly of these pastures, which we here 
usually call ranching, has had its day, and the whole tendency 
of the future will be to modification in the direction of smaller 
holdings and better care for the live-stock. 
Recurring once more to the speech of the United States 
Commissioner for Agriculture in lb85, we find him humorously 
tracing even then, the travels and troubles of an Eastern capi- 
talist pushing hundreds of miles from a railroad in a<ixicty to 
find any " unoccupied portion of Uncle Sam's domain" whereon 
to found a new cattle-breeding enterprise, and yet at the moment 
when he hopes he has at last reached a section supplied with 
water, whereon the white man's foot has never trod, he stumbles 
upon a cattle ranch. 
Two years ago, then, Mr. Colman hinted that the available 
country was already occupied, that different companies were 
crowding rach other, and that "there was no room for a. new 
comer." And the experience of 1886 and 1887 has not belied 
his forecast, for we read of numerous instances in which cattle 
have been driven northward from the overstocked ranches of 
