100 Years Ago: December 1925

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: December 1925

 

This is the 131^st entry in my series of rewrites of National Geographic Magazines as the reach their 100^th Anniversary of Publication.

 

 

While this month’s cover lists two items on the cover, I am treating them as one, because they are.  The entire issue is a Field Guide for cows and cattle.  The first item listed, “The Taurine World” was written by Alvin Howard Sanders, D. Agr., LL. D.  He was the editor of “The Breeder’s Gazette,” and the author of “The Story of the Herefords,” “Shorthorn Cattle,” “A History of the Percheron Horse,” “At the Sign of the Stock Yard Inn,” etc.  This item is comprised of an introductory article and a list of names and descriptions of various types of bovines, including their range, habits, and uses.  It has an internal subtitle: “Cattle and Their Place in the Human Scheme – Wild Types and Modern Breeds in Many Lands.”  It contains seventy-six black-and-white photographs dispersed throughout the intro and the second half of the field guide list.  Twenty-one of those photos are full-page in size.  The second item listed is entitled “The Cattle of the World” and has Edward Herbert Miner in the byline.  It is not an article, but “20 Paintings in Oil Reproduced in Full Color” scattered throughout the first half of the field guide list.  Mr. Miller is the artist.

We were accustomed to think of cattle as merely the source of the milk and cream, the butter and cheese, the roasts and steaks, that entered so extensively into the human dietary, in all except the torrid zones of the earth.  Few of us stopped to consider, in connection with the part played by man’s most valuable friend in the animal kingdom, that the actual contribution of cattle to human needs by no means began and ended with the foods that made up so much of our commissary.  Once upon a time, thousands of cattle were raised and slaughtered on the pampas of Argentina, as well as the coastal plains of the Gulf of Mexico and seaboard California, solely for hides and horns!  In those then-remote parts, there was no market for either beef or milk because there was neither refrigeration nor adequate transportation.  In 1925, all that was changed; and yet, in the very heart of our richest agricultural States, where every consideration demanded a better beast, and in every central stockyard market place, cattle that yielded about as much leather, glue, tankage, bone meal, buttons, and toothbrush handles as they do of edible products.  That fact accounted in great measure for the existing development of the huge American packing-house industry.  Everything – good, bad, and indifferent – was grist that entered the packer’s mill.  Here and there, in roadside pastures, cattle that bore close resemblance to the color illustrations in these pages, and at the great cattle shows – East, West, North, and South – one would easily recognize the Shorthorn (the “Durham” of our fathers), the Hereford, the black, hornless Aberdeen-Angus, the Jersey, the Guernsey, the Holstein-Friesian, and other improved varieties.  It was acknowledged that the average cattle were of inferior quality, despite the efforts of the Government, the agriculture colleges, and other interests.

Forget for the moment, the food that cattle put upon our tables, let us consider other products which were being fabricated for our comfort and our arts and industries.  A cow had hide.  On that hide was hair.  There was even use for the “switch” swinging at the end of the tail.  And cows had ears.  Inside the ear, a fine hair grew.  This, the packer carefully clipped out, sorted into little bundles, and the product masqueraded as a “camel’s-hair” brush.  From the hide was made leather, out of which, the suitcase, the handbag, your pocketbook, your boots, and shoes were made.  Then, too, there was the gear with which the horses of the world were harnessed, and a good percentage of the belting which turned myriad wheels.  Horns and hoofs!  One held the product of the former in his hand whenever an umbrella or walking stick of a certain fashion was carried.  Combs, hairpins, barettes, buttons, and knife-handles were all made from horn, while pipestems, powder-puff tips, crochet needles, and Mah-Jongg tiles came from the bones of cattle.  When ground into meal, those same bones fed our lawns and pasture, and, when converted into charcoal, made a filter used in refining sugar.  Glue and soaps, candles, cosmetics, oleo-margarine, glycerin, tankage, blood-meal, and the trainloads of commercial fertilizer, likewise came in large measure from cattle.  In the stomachs of “veals” was found the curdling ferment known as rennet used by pharmacists and a prime necessity in cheese-making.  From a tiny gland upon the surface of the brain of cattle, we derived an extract, valued in medicinal preparations, known as “pineal substance.”  Unfortunately, there was in each animal but one pineal, of the size of a pea; so that it took 15,000 cattle to produce one pound of product.

Science had contrived to fashion a substantial list of manufactured articles from milk, of which casein was the chief nitrogenous element.  It was the “curd,” the first and principal use of which was for making the cheese so rich in nutrients; but that same casein was also an ingredient in the manufacture of telephone receivers, combs, fan handles, cigarette holders, and various other articles in daily use.  It was also an important constituent of the coating for the paper on which the National Geographic Magazine was printed, and which was in part responsible for the high quality of its illustrations.  The cow, the camel, the bison, the buffalo, the yak, the deer, the elk, the antelope, the sheep, and the goat all had the cud-chewing habit; and while so indulging themselves were apparently at peace with the world.  That habit was formed as soon as the young began eating roughage or solids of any kind, hay and grain being offered to calves after they were 10 days old.  The foods were first received unchewed into an anteroom, the rumen, which was not a true digestive organ.  A second receptacle, containing fluid, acted with the first, but only after the rumen was well stored with food and water did the cud-chewing begin.  It was the churning of the food by involuntary muscular action, together with action by the second stomach and lower part of the gullet, that caused the formation of the so-called “cud,” which was regurgitated when the animal was at rest.  After being chewed and mixed with saliva, a cud or bolus – containing, in case of cattle, about three or four ounces of food – was ready for digestion by the other stomachs.  The world’s cattle stocks were estimated at 500,000.000 head; but that figure included Asian, African figures, upon which no great reliance could be placed.  Domesticated buffalo entered to some extent in the East Indian estimates.

The U. S., with its total of around 65,000,000 head, led the world in point of aggregate valuation.  Great Britain stood supreme in the per capita valuation of her insular cattle possessions, because of the comparatively small number of substandard cattle upon her farms.  Argentina was rich in herds, and, thanks to refrigeration and American packers, exported largely to Old World markets.  Australia had also developed an important cattle-growing industry, and by resorting to improved English breeds had come into possession of herds that contributed, since refrigeration on British freighters, to the Smithfield (London) market.  While Great Britain originated most of the world’s best breeds of cattle of the beef-making types, her industry had outstripped her agriculture production, and her people consumed so much more beef per capital than any other European country, that more beef from foreign sources annually entered her seaports than those of any other nation.  In former years the U. S. shipped great numbers of live bullocks from the Corn Belt for slaughter at Deptford and Liverpool, but that trade was a thing of the past.  Modern refrigeration had enabled South American, Australian, and New Zealand ranchmen to cut heavily into the American exports of beef to Great Britain.  The cost of production of beef in the Southern Hemisphere was much below that of our own country.  Continental Europe was not a large consumer of beef, but lamb, poultry, hams, bacon, and dairy products entered extensively into the dietary of the people.  In America and Great Britain beef was a staple article on all bills of fare.  The U. S. not only had the great grazing grounds of the arid West, but the unmatched corn crop of the central valleys to make beef-making in America on a scale not approached elsewhere in the world.

Argentina grew the Indian corn, the greatest animal-fattening food known, and did so in moderate quantities, but would probably never equal the U. S. in production. Napoleon asserted that armies travel on their stomachs.  The troops of the Allies in the World War were the best-fed soldiers of whom history had record.  Refrigerated, cured, and tinned meats from the U. S. supplied the solids of the “mess” that sustained the forces of Britain, France, and the U. S. during that eventful contest of physical endurance.  The organization and enormous resources and facilities of American packing plants alone made it possible properly to supply the Allied troops on foreign soil.  The vast quantities of beef forwarded regularly by the U. S. during the extended period of hostilities demanded strenuous efforts upon the part of American cattle feeders to meet the sudden imperative demand; and the equally sudden disappearance of war-buying by the Allied governments was responsible for the financial distress that overtook the Corn Belt meat makers, range-men with large commitments, and the packers themselves, when the signing of the armistice precipitated wholesale liquidation in a war-inflated industry.  All had been operating upon the basis of high-production costs; lands had mounted to valuations resting upon the insecure foundation of steers, hogs, and sheep at around $20 per hundredweight, wheat at $2, and corn at $1.50 per bushel.  Farm labor, owing to the draft, was cut short and help was almost unobtainable.  The Far West cattle business would be years recovering from the passing of the tidal wave that first rushed prices up to abnormal heights, only to be followed by a recession to abysmal depths.  Slowly the readjustment was being brought about.

While beef among Anglo-Saxon peoples was synonymous with brawn, and therefore contributed heavily to the fighting strength of their arms, it was of equal potency in the case of Anglo-Saxon labor in mills, mines, forests, factories, and fields.  When to that we added the wealth of vitamins and vigor contributed by the dairy cow by the milk, cream, butter, cheese, and other products, we might begin to comprehend the part played by cattle in the upbuilding and sustenance of nations.  Unfortunately, the American public was indifferent as to the quality of beefs.  Consumers needed to learn that lean meat was always tough meat, and it was only made tender and full-flavored by the presence of plenty of fat.  We had the breeds and we had the feed, yet our people consumed vastly more poor beef than good.  That was not true in the case of butter.  The public would not stand for low-grade dairy products.  Consumers needed to insist upon better roasts, steaks, and chops.  The finest in the world were produced here in our country, and yet our feeders and breeders suffered losses constantly because the public put up with almost anything offered in the way of fresh meat.  Throughout immemorial ages there had existed between men and the Taurine tribes a most intimate relationship.  Naturalists listed cattle, buffaloes, and bisons as near relations in the Bos branch of the animal creation.  Hence the term of endearment frequently applied to the family cow.  She was “bossy.”  What we commonly called Buffalo was not a Buffalo at all.  His right name is bison, and he has a cousin known as the Yak.  The real Buffalo (commonly Water Buffalo) was domesticated in the tropic East, and was a useful beast of burden in the Philippines, India, and other hot regions of the Orient.

The Yak was a central Asian product, and in his domesticated state represented a cross of a wild Yak bull upon some type of domesticated cow.  There was a recognized ancient relationship between the Gaur, the great wild ox of Asia, the Yak, such East India humped bovines as the Gayal and the Banteng, the various buffaloes, the Bison, and our cattle proper.  If there was such a link between the Bisontine [sic] and the Taurine (cattle) groups, some authorities maintained it was probably the East Indian Gayal, or Jungle Ox, the native habitat of which was mountain forests east of Brahmaputra.  The Gayal were forest rangers, avoiding the plains and valleys.  They browsed on shrubs and tender shoots of trees and grasses.  They were brown, with white markings on the legs, bellies, and tail tips.  They were about the size of a common ox.  Aside from the Brahman breed of remote Indian origin, it was believed that all present-day types of cattle known in Europe and America were descendants of two aboriginal races, one large and commonly known as the Urus, and the other the so-called Celtic Shorthorn.  The former ranged throughout western Asia, northern Africa, and practically all of Europe.  It was said to have a hair coat, varying from black to dark brown in summer to gray in winter.  It had a white or gray stripe along its back.  The widely distributed wild Celtic Shorthorn was decidedly smaller than the Urus and had a shorter face, but a longer and broader forehead.  In color the Shorthorn were solid, shading from blackish brown to gray.  Our larger breeds of cattle were supposedly of Urus origin and the smaller of Celtic Shorthair derivation.  The nearest kin to the Urus in 1925 were the so-called Wild White cattle of Great Britain.  The Uri of the Continent were black or brown and that explained the fact the Wild White cattle of Britain often showed black markings.

In the regions were man probably first brought cattle under subjection, the types available were neither heavy-bodied flesh-bearers nor deep-milkers.  The quest for food and water called for activity and muscular development.  Still nature deemed it wise to provide some sort of storehouse in certain cases against a day of possible want.  Hence, it was argued, the hump of the Indian cattle and the camel, and the fat caudal appendage of certain sheep.  As to milk flow, none was needed beyond the requirements of the young.  When man first undertook the domestication of wild cattle, the animals only possessed those characteristics demanded by their own existence, without producing a surplus for any other purpose.  Man was, for a time at least, content to accept the wild types as he found them; and in the early nomadic ages he followed the herd about in its search for food, just as certain American Indians followed the Bison’s migration.  The cattle did the work; men lived off their labors.  There came a time, however, when the nomads began to have local habitation.  That called for an arrangement whereby the cattle could be maintained nearby, without being compelled, or permitted, to wander far afield.  Grasses for their use were conserved; forage necessarily provided.  Man began to supply the herd with that which previously the cattle had to seek, as best they could, for themselves.  Better keep and a more limited range made for improvement, since all animal responded to generous feeding.  That was the beginning of greater capacity for supplying human wants.  Then, it dawned upon the ancient herdsmen that it would be a good plan to try to control propagation in the interest of better conformation and increased production, and therein lied the genesis of modern stock breeding.

Greek and Roman mythology abounded in bovine recognition.  The Farnese Bull and other marbles, and the skulls still used in architecture and interior mural decorations, indicated that in art, as well as in religious and other ceremonial rites, kings, priests, and men of great affairs regarded cattle as a part of the national heritage to be exalted and preserved almost as a sacred trust.  The greatest sacrifice that could be made to propriate the powers was the offering of the most valuable member of the herd.  In Egypt the cow was sacred to Isis.  Gaily decorated cattle were favorite forms of gifts among Latins, and Virgil represented Queen Dido as presenting to the companions of Aeneas “twenty fine bulls,” among other gifts.  According to Aristotle, the dorsal-humped Zebus, the sacred cattle of India, were found in Syria before the Christian Era.  The Hindus, Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, ad Hebrews, all revealed affection for the herds inherited.  Cattle were not then, as in modern days, valued merely for what they could be made to yield.  They were made partners in the fetes and gala celebrations.  Crowned with wreaths, they were paraded as an integral part of triumphal pageants.  They were, however, partners in work as well as play.  The ox was extensively used at the yoke by the ancients, as he was to this day in various parts of the world.  The Hindus and Hebrews, by practice and precept, protected the ox from abuse by his owner.  Roman writers were especially insistent on humane treatment of the ox.  To destroy them wantonly was a punishable crime against the State.  In Biblical days worldly riches were measured largely in terms of herds and flocks.  The Roman word for “money” was derived from their word for “cattle.”  The Scriptures abounded in references to the reliance placed by the patriarchs upon their herds.

The modification of the forms and functions of the leading types of domesticated animals through human intervention to meet various needs and differing environments was not made the subject of intensive study for many centuries.  Some attention was given by the patriarchs of old to attempts at prenatal control of the character of progeny.  The Romans were students of breeding types and the problems related thereto.  That attention was paid in Vergil’s time to blood lines in the mating, and that the branding iron of our Western ranges was no new invention.  Improvement toward more generous milk production antedated efforts at adding to flesh-making proclivities.  Due to climate conditions, the south Asia and Mediterranean seacoast peoples had never been large consumers of beef.  Milk and yoke-service were the objects specially sought in their cattle-breeding operations.  Modern Taurine history, up to recent years, centered along the shores of the English Channel.  All the world’s widely-disseminated improved cattle types had been originated either in Great Britain, upon the continental mainland immediately opposite, or in the islands off the coasts of Normandy and Brittany.  With the single exception of the valuable contribution by the Swiss, we must credit to the British, Dutch, and French, the great herds that made up the pastoral wealth of Europe, the two Americas, and Australasia.  To the British we owed practically all the breeds that best enabled feeders to produce prime beef.  To the Netherlands and the Channel Islands must be assigned credit in the dairy world through the Friesian, Jersey, and Guernsey.  The Bretons and their cousins of old Normandy had not attained wide distribution of their useful cattle outside their own borders.  Our North American cattle we almost all of British, Dutch, Swiss, and Channel Island origin.

While milk was for ages the primary object sought, the present perfection of dairy form and capacity was, as in the case of the beef and dual-purpose types, a comparatively modern development.  In no department of the animal breeder’s art had achievement reached higher levels than had been recorded in the case of the Jersey, the Guernsey, the Holstein-Friesian, the Ayrshire, and the Brown Swiss Cattle.  Of those, the black-and-white Dutch and the Channel Island groups were the numerically the most important in the U. S.  The Ayrshire, Great Britain’s solitary contribution to the special dairy division, had, however, gained powerful support in recent years.  The English were not satisfied with milk alone.  John Bull was too carnivorous by nature to be content with anything but the choicest meats, and so he early set about the creation of the Shorthorn, the Hereford, the Aberdeen-Angus, and other breeds that cut rich beef in every part of the carcass.  It was not until Robert Bakewell, of Dishley, began his experiments in blood concentration as a means of definitely fixing desired characteristics that modern beef-cattle breeding received its first great impetus.  With the support of King George III, it filtered down through the nobility, the landed gentry, and the citizenship, to the farmer himself.  The Dishley experiments of 1755, were carried out on a type of cattle locally popular in Lancashire and adjacent counties, under the name of Longhorns.  His objective was to produce a type carrying more flesh (and especially in the most valuable parts of the carcass) than the breed at that date possessed.  He sought beef, not milk, and by closely mating of the progeny of animals selected because of their excellence in that direction, he accomplished his purpose.  He found that breeding from close affinities tended to reduce size and vigor, favoring fat secretion.

Bakewell’s contemporaries were quick to apply the new policy; and if it enabled a breeder to establish early maturity and heavy-fleshing propensities, by parity of reasoning it would enable breeders of milking stock easily to accentuate udder development.  In short, the principle was universal in its application, and was resorted to in almost every branch of animal breeding as a sure and swift means of establishing any desired characteristic.  All cattle measuring up to the modern idea as to what they ought to be were most assuredly not improved from the standpoint of the animals themselves.  Hence the first thing that Nature undertook to do for them, when man withdrew his supervision, was to begin restoring them to their ancient form.  The breeder of animals (or plants) directed the spark of life itself.  The possibilities of his art were almost infinite.  No trace had been found of the existence of native cattle in North or South America.  The Bison was the only bovine creature found by the Spaniards during their explorations, and it was not what they were looking for.  Coronado, reporting on his exploration of the Western U. S., said “The only roads are those of cows; the cows are as numerous as the fishes of the sea.”  Thus the American Bison first came into the pages of our national history, and in that connection the account added” “There are bads of Indians who travel around with the cows, and do not plant, but eat raw flesh and drink the blood of the cows they kill; dressing themselves with the skins, and making little tents also of the hides.”  Cows were still in the region explored by Coronado, but not the cows of his time.  They were not as numerous as they were in the Bison days, nor as in the recent past.  Behind those herds of Herefords there was a story unparalleled, a story spectacular and dramatic, brimming with adventure and romance.

The cowboys and the old-time Western “cattle king,” as once known on the range, had long since passed from view.  Great herds of Longhorn cattle moving slowly northward from the Rio Grande; the perils of the long trail; the wild stampedes; the branding and the roundup; the summers and winters; the bleached bones of cattle – all of those were constituents out of which the story was woven.  The Spanish Longhorns were first taken to Mexico in 1521, and were calves shipped from Santo Domingo, descended from cattle brought from Spain to the West Indies in the years immediately following the voyage of Columbus.  Those were succeeded by other shipments.  The early explorers of the country north of the Rio Grande took horses, cattle, and sheep into that region, and those were the first of their kind on out Southwestern range. That original cattle stocks multiplied rapidly in New Spain.  They invaded at an early date the fertile coastal plain, with its mild, even climate. Extending from the mouth of the Rio Grande up along the western shore of the Mexican Gulf, but it was not until 1810 that there were authentic records.  When Texas became one of the States, in 1845, and the government became more stable, the importation of first-class breeding stock, mainly Shorthorn from Missouri, Kentucky, and other cattle-growing States did much to improve the Longhorn.  The Longhorns were particularly adapted to the task of leading the great advance into the higher western latitudes and out upon the arid grazing grounds of the Staked Plain.  They possessed amazing energy and endurance and had what may be termed “cow sense.”  When bands of mixed cattle were common on the plains and deserts of the West, the Longhorns led the herds in their migrations.  They felt the “call of the wild,” had weather wisdom, and knew where to find grass and water.

The extension of U. S. authority over the Lone Star State and the discovery of gold in California in 1848 resulted in an influx of population and capital that soon stimulated the production of cattle throughout southern and north-central Texas, as well as beyond the Sierra Nevada.  The herds began to be valued for beef, as well as for hide, horns, and hoofs; and thus, the infant industry of cattle-raising in a commercial sense came into existence in the Southwest.  Richard King was so impressed by the grazing possibilities of the region between Brownsville and Corpus Christi that he obtained a tract of some 50,000 acres between the Rio Grande and Nueces River, which he stocked with horses and Longhorn cattle.  There, in 1854, the million-acre Santa Gertrudis Ranch was established, the first modern American ranch.  Mexican types of cattle and horses were purchased and roamed at will over the arid plain.  The cattle were slaughtered for their hides and tallow, which were hauled to Corpus Christi, the nearest port.  The raising of cattle for their hides was obviously wasteful, and before the Civil War, two plants were established in Rockport, Texas.  One canned fish and turtle meat, but added a desiccating department for making beef extract.  The other packed beef in salt and corned beef.  King was soon joined by Mifflin Kennedy, who also acquired large holdings.  Numerous attempts were made to improve the quality of their herds, but with little success.  Transportation was tedious and expensive, and Northern cattle brought South succumbed to a fever, which was not understood at the time.  The Longhorn thrived and multiplied, untouched by the mysterious plague, but the Northern cattle either died or were left mere wrecks of their former selves.  We now know that it was a tick that infested the lowlands that carried the illness.

The early Mormon immigrants to Utah were instrumental in fixing the cattle stocks of that region, for they took with them good milking cows, largely of Shorthorn blood.  Those animals had the habit of milk-giving too strongly pronounced to be ideal range stock.  They were, however, ideal mothers for the creation of grade Hereford herds.  On the Pacific coast, the situation was somewhat like Texas.  In the extreme south the Spanish stock still prevailed in its natural state, but a steady steam of settlers from the Middle West had driven many beasts of Shorthorn or Devon extraction across the Great Divide.  Thus, it came about that in both Oregon and California a start toward a higher standard had been made at a comparatively early period.  In all those instances the cross of Shorthorn on the Longhorn had increased the size, leveled the carcass, and improved the fleshing capacity of the cattle.  Texas had been well described as the hive from which swarmed the cattle that spread all over the region west of the Missouri River.  Far removed from the devastating effects of the Civil War, the Texas herds increased, and the demand for beef for both armies added to their value.  Then came the period of the trail herds to the north to reach the newly built transcontinental railroads.  So long as the Texas ranges were free and open to all comers, no general effort was made to improve the herds.  About 1889, when the fight for “free grass” was lost, the State, which owned all its lands, began to issue leases or to sell land in large tracts, which the owners could fence off with barbed-wire.  Farsighted pioneer Texas cattlemen, not one of them owning less than 20,000 head of cattle, then began to breed up their herds.  Breeding was greatly stimulated by the demand for steers to stock up the Northern ranges of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.

The progressive ranchman soon realized that it cost no more to raise a purebred than it did a “scrub;” the quitter, well-bred steers ate no more grass and trampled out far less than did their Longhorn brethren.  When the Texas cattlemen awoke to the need for better blood, there arose at once the question of Texas fever and its deadly tick.  As early as 1865 the records showed that some mysterious disease followed the introduction of cattle from that State into States to the north.  The trail cattle that found their way across the plains brought death to the local cattle.  Whenever the herds from Texas grazed across the Northern ranges local cattle died in large numbers.  The Texans stoutly denied the charge that their cattle brought the disease, alleging that their stocks were healthy, and that the losses were due to local conditions.  So heavy were those, however, that Northern stockmen took drastic measures to protect themselves.  Trail herds reaching the Kansas State line were met by armed men, who refused the Texans passage across their range.  Not until 1891 was the cause definitively located.  A tick found on nearly all the cattle from Texas east of the 100^th meridian, as well as those of other Southern States below a certain line, carried the germs which caused the spread of the fatal fever.  By a series of rotations in the use of pastures, the Government authorities began to clean up the Southern ranges with such success that the “tick line” had been pushed far below the northern boundary of Texas and other Southern States, and eventually the whole region would be free of that disease. Between the late 1870s and the 1900s, the range cattle business had a marvelous expansion in the Northwest.  During that period, it reached its zenith and entered a decline that culminated in the great financial debacle of 1923.

That development began with a heavy movement of Southern-bred “stockers” into Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming, filling the Great Plains to the point of overstocking.  Grass was free and the business for a time was profitable.  Capital was available in apparently unlimited amounts.  For a time, all went well.  Then came the greatest catastrophe the industry had yet encountered, the bad winter of 1886-87, which brought the whole great Northwest gambling structure tumbling to the ground.  It was a period of Arctic severity that all but wiped out many of the leading operators.  Texas had plenty of cattle in those days for rehabilitation purposes, and capital came to the relief of the cattlemen enabling them to restock.  The business again entered a brief period of prosperity.  The hearty white-faced Hereford had proved to be well adapted to the open range, and that blood to this day [in 1925] found greater favor on grazing grounds of the West than any other.  Just before the great disaster, the entire Northwest, to the Canadian line and beyond, was full of cattle, so full that the grasses of the region were dissipated due to the overstocking which led to the decline of the industry.  Pastures were destroyed and settlers invaded the range – dry farmers, who forced the big-herd owners to withdraw.  Cattlemen resisted the inevitable, but the handicap was insurmountable.  A few surviving big herds sought safety behind fences on Indian reservations, but even they were passing out of the scene.  That period saw the development of the fenced-pasture area on the Standing Rock and Cheyenne reservations in the Dakotas.  Annual replenishment of those pastures was continued until 1923, when increased expenses prevented the purchase of young cattle.  The industry in the Northwest was reverting to a business of home breeding.

Since the European war developments had been rapid.  Commercial cattle had all but disappeared from the Great Plains, except where security was enjoyed behind fences.  In the mountain regions the small herd had multiplied, and would probably feature the next chapter in the history of the industry.  It might mean fewer cattle in aggregate, but probably more beef, due to better breeding and care, and a shorter maturity cycle.  The new Western cattle industry would not be on a purely speculative basis, as was the old.  Early maturity as a factor in profitable beef-making had attained its greatest strides during the past 25 years.  The “behemoth bullock” was standard in the early days; in 1925, the pony steer had displaced it.  In 1900, there were 3- and 4-year-olf fat cattle displayed at Chicago; in 1925, there were yearlings and a few 2-year-olds displayed.  In 1869, many of the cattle displayed at Chicago weighed up to 2,000 pounds.  The entire trend of beef-cattle production in the West had for 25 years been in the direction of “baby beef.”  The great movement of Southern cattle to the Northwest was over.  Southwestern range-bred calves of choice stock were being shipped in increasing numbers into Corn Belt feedlots for a rapid finish to meet the demand for fat, light-weight carcasses.  The day of the aged grass-fed bullock had apparently passed forever.  The first important shipment of cattle to New England was in 1624, from Devonshire and adjacent counties, by the Governor.  Also, some large yellow cattle from Denmark were introduced into New Hampshire, and 100 head of oxen of that type were driven into Boston, in 1638, for sale at 25 pounds per head.  The Connecticut River valley was an early site of stock-breeding, and it was near Springfield, Massachusetts, that William Pynchon began, in 1655, as a drover.

Stall feeding, it was believed, originated in America with Pynchon’s operations.  The original market place in Boston stood where the State House stood in 1925.  In 1742, it was removed to Faneuil Hall.  The Dutch brought Holland cattle into New Amsterdam and grazed them for slaughtering purposes.  Prior to 1676, the killing was done in the city, below Wall Street, and on the Brooklyn shore.  By 1694 some 4,000 head were being slaughtered per year.  In Pennsylvania the cattle industry was firmly established prior to the War of Independence, and Philadelphia became the leading seaboard market.  Both Quaker and German took kindly to cattle feeding, and a lucrative trade with the West Indies was developed.  In 1783, Messrs. Goff & Miller imported some Shorthorn cattle into Virginia that laid the foundation for the business of making beef from Indian corn and blue grass in the U. S.  Descendants of those cattle accompanied the emigration from the Old Dominion over the Blue Ridge into the rich pastures of the Ohio Valley.  It was not long before well-fatted droves of fine bullocks were being driven across the mountains to the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets, returning handsome profits to pioneers of Kentucky and southern Ohio.  In 1817, Col. Lewis Sanders, of Kentucky, imported Shorthorns from the best herds in the Teeswater Valley.  They proved prolific, their descendants providing much of the material in later years for the extraordinary expansion in cattle breeding throughout the Middle West.  Kentuckians migrating into Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri took bulls of that blood into the heart of the Corn Belt.  Subsequent valuable importations were made into New York.  Additional shipments into Massachusetts brought in.  Powelton, near Philadelphia, imported, between 1822 and 1831, many Shorthorns.

A group of Ohio farmers sent one of their members to England, in 1834, to bring out more breeding stock, and many valuable animals were safely transferred from Yorkshire to American pastures.  Similar cooperative organizations of farmers were set up in Ohio and Kentucky in the next quarter century, and many better cattle were made available in the central valleys of the Middle West.  All the various improved breeds fit perfectly into their respective spheres.  The place of the Shorthorn in bovine history was clearly defined.  Outside continental Europe, it was unequaled in service to both North and South America, by improving breeds toward beef-making or milk production.  There would always be scrub cattle found in the great spaces not suited for beef or dairy production.  There was a demand for dual-purpose breeds.  Under European conditions, that field was occupied by such Continental types as the Normandy, Simmental, Friesian, and various grades and crosses.  The Holstein-Friesians, Jerseys, Guernsey, Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, Devons, and Red Polls were conspicuous in every leading dairy State.  Thousands of these had been transferred during the past four decades from Old World pastures to American farms, to the vast betterment of the national supple of dairy products.  In 1923 some 25,000,000 dairy cows converted crops consumed into $2,500,000,000 at the farm.  The manufacture of butter, cheese, condensed milk, milk powder, and ice cream, together with fluid milk for city consumption added $1,500,000,000 more to the retail market value.  The farm value of dairy products equaled the combined value of the cotton, wheat, and potatoes grown that same year.  In the rehabilitation of Northwestern agriculture, the claims of the milk breeds were finding widespread recognition, and the demand was greater than the supply.

The recent perfection of the giant “thermos bottle,” the glass-lined tank place on trucks, and still larger sizes in trains, was introducing a new influence tending to redistribute the source of milk supply for the cities, lessening the advantage of nearby products, with a growing tendency to equalize the difference in prices.  A great majority of the dairy cows were in the northeastern quarter of the nation.  While the center of human population was in southwestern Indian, the center of cow population was considerably east and north of that point.  A national survey of the cow population at the close of the World War disclosed that cows kept to supply cities with milk owned near rails to those cities, while those supplying the cheese factories, creameries, condensers, and milk-powder plants, were in the great central and northwestern parts of the U. S. and increasingly in all States.  The leading States in cow population were Wisconsin, 1,800,000; New York, 1,500,000; Minnesota, 1,000,000; Iowa, 900,000; Ohio, a few less; followed by Pennsylvania, Texas, and Michigan.  The U. S. Government, through the Bureau of Animal Industry, safeguarded the health of our herds, not only by enforcing restriction of cattle imports from countries where contagious diseases prevailed, but also by inspecting packing-house operations, and coped with all outbreaks of bovine plagues.  The formation of boys’ and girls’ calf clubs in the various States had gone forward vigorously in recent years, and with far-reaching results in spreading the gospel of the value of good blood.  The practice of selling surplus purebred pedigree stock or dispersing entire herds by resort to auction sales had become an established procedure, and such events attracted the attention of all who desired to acquire breeding animals.

The object of all breeders and owners of well-bred cattle was the banishment of unimproved, unprofitable scrub that was everywhere in evidence.  In coping with the problems of farming in our country, increasing attention must be devoted to well-bred cattle.  They were not, as many erroneously imagined, mere “playthings” for wealthy owners of landed estates.  Those who maintained fine herds mainly for the pleasure derived from animal breeding were rendering the country a substantial service; herds thus maintained were our most important nurseries of seed stock, which ultimately found its way into the fertile fields of everyday, practical farm operations.  Improved breeds, as already shown, were in the highest degree artificial, as compared with their remote progenitors, and if they were thrown back upon their own resources, they would either perish or revert, in a short order of time, to unimproved ancestral types.  An intelligent individual interest in their continued maintenance was, therefore, the patriotic duty of every citizen, whatever their occupation, was to support in the well-being of those who live upon the land.

 

As mentioned before, following the introductory article, the field guide contains a series of entries listing cattle types.  Each entry has a name, a description, and a Plate number of a color illustration (if one available). 

A list of the Names of each field guide entries, with Plate number if applicable, is as follows:

• “The Gaur (Bos gaurus)” – Plate I
• “The Banteng (Bos (Bilos) sondaicus)” – Plate II
• “The Yak (Bos (Poephagus) grunniens)” – Plate III
• “Brahman (Zebu) Cattle (Bod indicus)” – Plate IV
• “Podolian Cattle”
• The Indian (Water) Buffalo (Bos bubalus)” – Plate V
• “Catalo”
• “Wild White (or Park) Cattle” – Plate VI
• “The Shorthorn” – Plate VII
• “Polled Shorthorns”
• “Brown Swiss” – Plate VIII
• “Simmental”
• “Fribourg”
• “Norman Types”
• “Brittanys”
• “Nivernais”
• “Limousin”
• “Dutch Belted” – Plate IX
• “Holstein-Friesian” – Plate X
• “Minor Dutch Types”

• “Denmark and Dairying”
• “Belgian Breeds”
• “Scandinavian Races”
• “Southern European Stock”
• “The Hereford” – Plate XI
• “Polled Herefords”
• “The Jersey” – Plate XII
• “The Guernsey” – Plate XIII
• “The English Longhorn”
• “Devons” – Plate XIV
• “West Highlanders” – Plate XV
• “French Canadian”
• “Red Polls” – Plate XVI
• “Sussex”
• “Kerries and Dexters”
• “The Red Africander” – Plate XVII
• “The Ayrshires” – Plate XVIII
• “Aberdeen-Angus” – Plate XIX
• “The Galloways”
• “The Texas Longhorn” – Plate XX

 

As mentioned above the “Twenty Pages of Illustrations in Full Color” listed on the cover as a second article entitled “The Cattle of the World” are a collection of “20 Paintings in Oil Reproduced in Full Color” appearing on twenty plates number I through XX in Roman numerals.  These plates are scattered throughout the field guide and are referenced by the introductory article as well as the field guide list itself.  Edward Herbert Miner is listed on the byline.  He is the artist who painted these twenty works.

A list of the Plate titles and their corresponding plate and page numbers is as follows:

• “Gaur (Bos gaurus), The Native Wild Ox of East India” – Plate I (639)
• “Banteng (Bos sondaicus), The Native Wild Ox of the Malay Peninsula” – Plate II (642)
• “Yak (Bos grunniens), The Native Wild Ox of Tibet” – Plate III (643)
• “Brahmans (Zebus) (Bos indicus) Natives of India” – Plate IV (646)
• “Water Buffalo (Bos bubalus), A Native of India” – Plate V (647)
• “The Wild White (or Park) Cattle of Great Britain, Supposedly of Bos urus Origin: to the Left, Chillingham Bull; Right, Cadzow Cow and Calf” – Plate VI (650)
• “Shorthorns, an Improved Breed of English Origin, Valuable Both as Dairy and Beef Cattle” – Plate VII (651)
• “Brown Swiss Cow, An Improved Dairy Type of Alpine Origin” – Plate VIII (654)
• “Dutch Belted Cows, an Improved Dairy Type of Netherlands Origin” – Plate IX (655)
• “Holstein-Friesians, an Improved Dairy Type of Netherlands Origin” – Plate X (658)
• “Herefords, an Improved Beef Breed of English Origin” – Plate XI (659)
• “Jersey Cows, an Improved Dairy Type of Channel Island Origin” – Plate XII (662)
• “Guernsey Cows, an Improved Dairy Type of Channel Island Origin” – Plate XIII (663)
• “Devon Cow, an Improved Beef and Dairy Breed of English Origin” – Plate XIV (666)
• “West Highlanders, Small Mountain Beef Breed of Scottish Origin” – Plate XV (667)
• “Red Polled Norfolk Bull, an Improved Breed of English Origin Esteemed Both for Beef and for Dairy Purposes” – Plate XVI (670)
• “Red Africander Bull, of South African Cape Origin, a Beef Animal” – Plate XVII (671)
• “Ayrshire Cows, an Improved Dairy Type of Scottish Origin” – Plate XVIII (674)
• “Aberdeen-Angus, an Improved Black Polled (or Hornless) Beef Breed of Scottish Origin” – Plate XIX (675)
• “Texas Longhorn, of Spanish Origin” – Plate XX (678)

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Scott T. Shier]

This issue spawned the book "Cattle of the World"   : - ) 

Congrats on "year 11"