A ranchman's recollections; an autobiography in which unfamiliar facts bearing upon the origin of the cattle industry in the Southwest and of the American packing business are stated, and characteristic incidents recorded

Front matter

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Sketch by Frank Tenney Johnson

Author's Preface

THE only excuse I can offer for the publication in book form of the series of sketches which under the title, "Recollections of a Ranchman," appeared in The Breeder's Gazette, Chicago, from July 15, 1920, to and including the Holiday Number of that year, is found in letters from people whom I know and many whom I do not know, and from librarians and educational Institutions, suggesting that the matter should be republished in this form.

I confess that while the opinions of my immediate friends are dear to me, yet they may be indulgent and that the kind words written from the forks of the creek by people whom I do not know have been a greater boon to me. This is particularly true of old-timers on the range who have commented on the cowboy dialect used in some of the sketches as being correct, or, as one or two have written, "You have got the cowboy down fine."

It is solace to a writer to have his written word ring true to "men who know." Their expressions of appreciation have gone straight to my heart.

It has been a source of pleasure to look backward over the cattle Industry as It has come into my life, and to recall some of the wonderful men whom It has been my privilege to know. This prelude would

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not be complete without an expression of my gratitude to Alvin H. Sanders and DeWitt C. Wing of The Breeder's Gazette, for their patience, care and thoroughness in editing my manuscript, and their helpful suggestions as to topics.

If by chance an indulgent reader shall find anything of historic value in these sketches, or if the book shall prove helpful to any of the young men who are coming along in the cattle industry, my cup will be full.

Very truly,

Frank S. Hastings, Manager of the S. M. S. Ranch, Stamford, Texas.

June I, 1 92 1.

Contents

PAGES

Publisher's Preface vii

Author's Preface ix-x

Chapter I The Early Days

IT IS a far cry from the S. M. S. Ranch in 1920 to the five-board fence on my father's little farm, near Leavenworth, Kans., where I sat fifty years ago (in 1870) watching the first herd of Texas cattle that I had ever seen. They were driven into an adjoining pasture, and as I look back through the vista of men, methods and events that have filled that gap in the evolution of the cattle industry I am reminded that The Breeder's Gazette in asking me to review that period from a personal standpoint may not have realized how full of it I am, or how much space would be required to tell the story, which must necessarily be rambling. I shall not attempt to write history in chronological order. As Henry Watterson, in some wonderful stories of men and events, in his "Looking Backward" series, wrote of characters and events of interest rather than orderly history, so I wish I might use the general title of his recollections, because my own will be simply the memories of "looking backward," and yet I shall try to reach the time when the past steps upon the threshold of the present.

Harking back to the boy of 10 years on the board fence, I recall that the cattle were from the

King Ranch, and had been shipped from Abilene, Kans., which was then the great objective of Texas trail herds, and the first great shipping point in the west. It was late in the fall of 1870. The herd was of mixed cows and steers. The steers in the main were disposed of by December and the cows wintered. Their pasture had been my playground. The "Ole Swimming Hole" was there; it was also my wild duck preserve, in fall and spring, as well as my fish pond. Black walnuts lined the stream and hazelnuts abounded on the rolling ground; they, too, were my treasures. My winter rabbit trapping and quail shooting were there. I used the scrub oak thickets for a screen from which to shoot prairie chickens as they came over in the fall on their way southward.

The longhorns seemed an intrusion. They had a wild-eyed way of keeping one covered. I was inclined to resent their advent, but my mother said that they would not bother me if I attended to my own business and let them alone. Perhaps that was intended as much for a life admonition as to remove my misgivings. It worked out all right, and I was soon persona grata to go and come. I have often thought of her admonition, with Its practical demonstration ; it has helped me over some hard spots since.

In the following spring the Texas cows began to bring calves. The town butchers wanted them, and the cattle-owners wanted the cows dry and grass-fat. The calves were sold at $2.50 per head, the butchers to come and get them, as wanted. Their first trip, made in an ordinary butcher's wagon, with no horse to rope from, encountered maternity from the jump.

My father had a first-model Smith & Wesson bluebarreled six-shooter. He had furnished me with cartridges for unlimited practice. I have not carried or fired a revolver in forty years, but at that time I could pepper my shots pretty well about the ace at fifty feet. I hired out to the butchers, and had good success shooting the calves in the forehead from the wagon. I was allowed 10 cents per head, which was probably a better return, in proportion, than the cattle-owners, received from their investments.

In the summer tragedy came. The winter had been very mild; ticks carried over; a dairy herd which had been culled and selected for years was turned into the pasture with the Texas cows, and suffered a 90 per cent mortality. The whole country became excited, thinking it an epidemic which would spread; stories of Texas fever were brought in vaguely from other states; a great many domestic cattle in Dickinson County, Kans., near Abilene, died; New York State issued a quarantine against Texas cattle; the Governor of Illinois called a convention at Springfield, 111., which was attended by delegates from most of the northern states and two from Canada ; Texas fever and quarantines were discussed. Only three theories, with any following, were presented. The first was a theory advanced by scientists which argued that Texas fever resulted from a small egg or sporule, deposited upon the blades of grass in Texas. The blades, being eaten by the cattle, enabled the sporule to find its way into the blood and grow to be well-defined, under the microscope, resulting in disorganization of the blood and a fever of deadly character. The second theory was that Spanish or Texas fever came from such causes as fever aboard emigrant ships, privation, hard usage, and insufficient feed, water and rest. The third theory was ticks, which, dropped from Texas animals, were eaten by domestic animals, with fatal results.

Texas was without representation at the meeting, from which prejudice was spread with more or less justification over the whole United States against Texas cattle, setting the industry back many years. About this time the nucleus of the now great packing Industry began to form, but for the moment I shall only write of it as It came into my own life.

One Joseph Whittaker of Cincinnati gave a 99- year lease on some valuable vacant property for city park purposes. He received a yearly Income which looked big then, and, with cattle and hogs at low value, furnished a good working capital, protected by a handsome annual Income. He came to Leavenworth, Kans., formed a partnership with Matthew Ryan, and built a substantial small packinghouse for the slaughter of hogs and cattle on the bank of the Missouri River, which stream formed a cheap sewer as well as cheap ice supply. They specialized on hogs during the winter months, and cattle during the cattle season; that is, from mid-summer to December, doing a limited fresh meat business, and running largely to barreled beef and dried beef hams.

A lot of negro women and children could always be seen coming from the packinghouse, carrying fresh livers, hearts and kidneys, which were given away. In modern technical parlance these organs were the "pluck," which is now a material item in modern packinghouse salvage. In looking back I do not understand why it was not thrown into tankage, which they were then making, nor why they did not use in the main everything else in the offal.

Whittaker bought a half-section of land near my father's place. It was a rather light-soiled tract. He began hauling tankage to scatter over it. That was my first sense of the packer drive to eliminate waste. It was literally a sense, because the first intimation came through the nostrils and the second through the ears from the expressions of outraged neighbors, who sought the courts and tried to have it declared a nuisance, but most of them lived to see an almost sterile farm develop into one of the best producers in the country, I do not know whether they ran the blood into tankage then or not, but have a vague memory that it went into the sewer. What has followed in the wake of the primitive initial move In animal fertilizer production and use, in comparison with what is being accomplished now, and the greater saving from using what originally went Into tankage, will come In for later comment.

Whittaker's boys were my playmates and chums. On Saturdays we often went to the packinghouse. On one of these visits an incident occurred which has been vital in relation to some of my subsequent studies in breeding. They were killing quite a string of aged Texas steers, using a sharp lance, and striking behind the horns. We saw them lance a big fellow, with the usual result: a quick fall, the trap door opened, and he was dragged to the skinning beds. When the knife was at his throat he jumped, with one bound, to his feet, saw daylight through a door at the rear, jum.ped a story and a half to the ground, swam the Missouri River to a sandbar onequarter of a mile distant, shook himself and turned his head to the shore, at bay. In later years Texas steers running amuck in the Kansas City bottoms charged cable cars, head on.

I am sure that the wonderful vitality of the primitive Longhorn, backed by self-reliance and the hustling qualities of the Hereford, blended with the old Spanish blood, has served as a kind of iron basis for the well-bred bovine stocks In Texas today. This vital seed, as represented by Its modern beef type, transplanted to the north, stands the rigors of winter better than native cattle. In my own work here in Texas I found that the S. M. S. herd had a wonderful basis. There were many weeds in it, however, and I cut for conformation, leaving lots of 1,000- pound cows, with some brindle or often straight duns, long after I had cut out a lot of cat-hammed, flat-ribbed animals with clean flesh marks and color.

Cortez may have treated the Mexican race badly, but he gave to America or, more exactly speaking, to the Texas prairies, a heritage in vital cow brutes which has done almost as much as pure breeding for the American cattle Industry. That heritage furnished the vitality In which to fix the beef-making Instinct. I have never lost sight of It in the S. M. S. herd. While our fraction long ago was reduced to •999 pure, we have kept our eyes on the strong, "good-doers," and watched the winter feed grounds, like hawks watching chickens, for weak constitutions, and the spring pick-up for the laggards, and kissed them goodbye.

We owe the primitive Texas cow a debt. She had much to do In making possible the record that well-bred Texas cattle are registering in the markets, as regards both prices and poundage.

If the foregoing may take the caption "Fifty Years Ago," perhaps what follows could be headed "Light Begins to Dawn."

The early days of range cattle production may only be considered as a tragedy, in the light of what has followed — a thought which can probably be applied with truth to the frontier in making a path for civilization and progress — but the story, rich in terrors and privations, of the gold-seeker and the trail from the Missouri 'River to the Golden Gate, has a sequel in the story of the men who have made the Texas of today.

From Charles Jones, an associate in my packinghouse days, and now at the head of the Freeport, Tex., Sulphur Co., I have obtained a book which induced him to become a cowpuncher in 1877. It is out of print and priceless, and I go to the safe to see if it is still there, just as one puts one's hand on one's pocketbook in a crowd. It was written by "Joe" G. McCoy, and bears the title "Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest." It was published in 1874, just at a time when the dark hour was on the Texas industry. The state was under quarantine, and there was no known remedy or protection against Spanish or Texas fever. The book contains interesting data. Its most Interesting chapters deal with attempts to find an eastern market for cattle, first by trail, even into Illinois, and in 1868 to Abilene, Kans., when shipping pens had been established on the Union Pacific Railroad and buyers assembled during the season for purchases distributed by rail everywhere east.

Conditions were at their worst in 1873, when Mr. McCoy evidently turned in his copy. The wail of despair in his concluding thought sums up the history of those awful preceding ten years. I quote him, not only because of what has followed, but because the evolution of Texas into a nursery for well-bred beef cattle in the national supply offers a striking illustration of the courage and never-know-whenyou-are-licked-persistence of the Texan, in the cattle industry or any other industry. Texas is the first state in cotton and cattle; the third in oil, with the prospect of becoming first; the first in sulphur, and wheat is coming fast, to say nothing of truck gardening, poultry and butter — all distinct national factors — and there are still millions of fertile acres of virgin soil begging for the plow; but I am getting away from my story. Mr. McCoy, himself a pioneer frontier trailer and cattle trader, says, in 1874:

"Of the cattle coming from Texas two-thirds are marketed when almost totally unfit for consumption, thus entailing comparatively immense losses upon the parties selling them. Rather than continue this foolish, wasteful and ruinous practice, drovers had infinitely better buy stock ranches in western Kansas and Colorado and there keep them until their stock is fat."

It is not my thought to ridicule McCoy's conclusion. He was logical and could not look forward to the Texas of today, any more than the cattlemen of those times could look forward to agricultural development and solidify their land holdings when the alternate section was school land under lease and it seemed cheaper to lease than to buy.

The nester was not dreamed of then. The range was open, and the wire fence was still in the back of John Gates' head. There were a few notable exceptions. S. M. Swenson was one of them, and we find on his maps this notation, made before the Civil War: "Do not sell this tract; it has water on it, and is good agricultural land." Men who had that foresight have reaped deserved rewards.

The northwestern movements had not begun to any appreciable extent, but except in so far as the Spanish fever scare limited trails to Kansas railroad connections, a ray of light had appeared at Kansas City, and there was another day dawning for the beef Industry, That light was the packinghouse plus refrigeration. First came the packinghouse, with its immense capacity for barreled beef and pickled dried beef hams, with a limited natural ice refrigeration. Barreled beef was almost as great a staple as barreled pork, and it had an immense consumption in lumber camps and sailing vessels, besides a large aggregate domestic consumption.

Plankington and Armour owned packinghouses in Milwaukee and Chicago, but with that great foresight which seemed to make the future an open book, and made a fortune for him in pork after the

Civil War, Philip D. Armour became convinced that he needed a location nearer the source of beef production. Accordingly in 1870 he located a packinghouse in Kansas City, devoted largely to the slaughter of beef, although the hog was an important factor in the business. The Kansas City stockyards were simply a holding-place. Crude cuts of the yards in the McCoy book show them to be made like goodsized railroad feed and rest pens of the present day, probably about twice the size of those at Parsons, Kans.

Some trading was done in the yards, but in the main packinghouse buyers went out to Abilene, taking real money with them, and making their purchases as trail herds came in. G. W. Tourtelotte, familiarly known as "Charlie" Tourtelotte, later superintendent of the Kansas City plant for twenty years, was Armour's pioneer buyer. I wish that space permitted my going into details concerning the reminiscences that I have heard him relate. He was a man of unusual balance, likable, competent and dependable. He did not believe, even in those early days, when it was so much in vogue, in mixing "booze" and business. From others I have learned that his great asset with the men whom he came in contact with in those early days was his absolute fairness. He established for his company that most valuable of all business assets: "A good concern to do business with."

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"Charlie" was a born handler of men, always taking the human equation into consideration, and, during his superintendency, probably had as few labor complications as any superintendent in any industry in America. His men idolized him. During a strike, which came very quickly after the plant was visited by labor organizers, I recall that men were hard to hold in line, and persisted in telling the agitators that they would do anything "Charlie" Tourtelotte said was right. I recall that Samuel Gompers came promptly and effected a settlement. The strike was with the firemen, and lasted only a short time ; but with its inception notices were sent out all over the country urging a boycott of the products of the Armour Packing Co., which had not then consolidated with Armour & Co. of Chicago, with Philip D. Armour as a large stockholder.

Corrective notices were of course sent. At that time the western mining districts were strongly organized. Butte, Mont., the most notable, was the leading district, and at that place there were 52 organizations, operating through a central council, and a notice of the lifting of the boycott had not reached that body. Everything was peaceful at Butte. In the Coeur d'Alene country, with headquarters at Wallace, Idaho, practically the same condition as to organization existed; but in that country things were very bad. Mine-owners were being killed, and troops were sent there.

At this point I shall digress for a moment to illustrate the workings of the boycott system in restraint of trade, and how far-reaching, after local troubles had been adjusted, the system sometimes unintentionally carried serious injury, and relate some personal reminiscences which are amusing in the telling, but were very real then.

I had charge of the western brokers, and usually spent two months every spring in the west. Our immense trade there was blocked by the failure to have the boycott raised. Our brokers were wiring us about it. I was sent out to investigate. I found that the boycott had not been raised because the notice of Its having been lifted had not been placed before the central body, the secretary of which told me that it would be necessary to locate the particular union which presented it. His record did not show that union, so I had to make the rounds, of the 52 secretaries until I located my man. I ferreted out two or three of the leaders. They treated me very courteously, and helped me locate the various secretaries. Butte was a three-shift town, most of whose population consisted of miners; it was probably the liveliest town in America at that time. It had no day or night. Members of one shift or another were always more or less on the streets. It was said that "It is day all day in the daytime, and there is no night at Butte."

I began selling meats, subject to lifting the boycott, and spent a week, most of the 24 hours each day, as the shifts were out, trying to locate my man. Most of them dropped into Demer & Hicky's saloon, and I spent most of my time there playing whist with some of the good fellows who would point out some of my 52 varieties as they came in, but always the wrong man. Finally I got down to five, and located them in certain mines. I was doing a land office business selling carloads, but they were needing the goods and punching me up for shipment, which we did not dare make until my man was found. The central body had its monthly meeting the next night. I went out to one of the mines where one of my five men worked. It really was not a mine but a hole in the ground about 500 feet deep, with a bucket instead of a cage in which to bring the ore up, and the bucket, by the way, was a whisky barrel, with a steel-pointed bottom. My man was there, but down below. The engineer was a fine fellow, but he evidently wanted to have some fun, so he said, "You can go down and see him." I asked if the man could not come up for a few minutes, and said that I would pay his wages for the day. The engineer said, "You are not afraid to go down, are you?" I replied, "No," but I lied, and could feel myself slipping off the barrel, yet I knew that I must have the miner's respect. He gave me some slicker clothes and delegated one of his helpers to accompany me.

We stood with our feet on the rim of the barrel, our hands on the cable, and as the drop began I looked up at the daylight above, and said, "Goodbye, old girl. If I never see you again."

Below the level of the mine there was a sump, and the engineer, not through with his fun, dropped us to the water line before my guide could signal him to stop. I found my man, got my release, and when I reached the top was so glad to see any one but the engineer that I rushed over and kissed a handsome setter dog. That night the central body met and released us, but the miners told the story, and had about as much fun over It as boys on a ranch have when some one Is thrown but not hurt.

I shall not here enter Into a description of very much the same procedure in the Coeur d'Alene country, except to say that I was accompanied by a merchant from Missoula, Mont., who had a branch at Wallace, Idaho. We went Into a little restaurant In the mining district for lunch. There was a local strike on, and almost everyone had "tanked up." Our waiter had achieved a particularly comprehensive "jag." Some one pointed me out as the man who was trying to lift the Armour boycott. We ordered boiled eggs. The waiter called back, "Boll two dozen," and then addressing us directly, said, "When any of ye damned capitalists come out here to run this country we'll feed ye well, but, by God, ye'll eat what's set before ye."

My friend turned to me and said, "What are you going to do?"

"I am going to eat mine," I answered.

In the meantime I suggested to the waiter that we all go in at the next door and have a drink with the "capitalists." In the end the waiter found my man for me.

There is hardly a day in my life when something in connection with my old packinghouse training does not help me over a difficulty. A duty to perform meant in those days "sticktoitiveness," quick wits, keeping one's temper, attending to one's own business, and work. That is how men have been trained to encircle the globe with American live stock products.

Chapter II Early Packing And Refrigeration

LJ. CALLAHAN in his reminiscences shows , that Armour slaughtered the first beef, from a packing standpoint, in Kansas City in 1869, using the Nofsinger House, but in 1870 the company killed in its own plant, and by the fall of 1871 thought it remarkable to be killing 100 cattle in a ten-hour day. McCoy records 68,000 cattle killed in 1871 and 1872 in Kansas City, Armour killing one-half, the other one-half by others whom he does not mention; also that in 1873 26,800 were killed, the volume being reduced by the panic of that year. Callahan says that in 1869 some cattle were slaughtered in Houston, Tex., by Hancock & Cragin and some at Junction City, Kans., by Patterson & Co.

In 1869 Philip D. Armour sent P. C. Cole to Texas with a view to selecting a killing point, but after careful investigation Mr. Cole reported that it was too early to go to Texas, and, placing his finger on the map at Kansas City, said, "This is the logical point." Mr. Cole was more or less "with the Armour Kansas City plant and was associated with Geo. W. Tourtelotte in the early range buying.

McCoy records that in 1873 the Missouri, Kansas

& Texas Railroad was completed to Denison, Tex., where pens for 2,000 cattle were built; also that the Atlantic and Texas Refrigerator Car Co. had constructed 100 new cars, adapted to shipping fresh beef and local capacity for killing 500 cattle per day. I have been unable to ascertain the fate of the Denison enterprise, but hope to before my story is finished. The reference to cars can hardly mean refrigerators, since all records seem to point to 1875 and 1876, with Chicago taking the initiative.

Callahan records 1876 as the year in which the first killing was done in Kansas City for local butcher trade. He also comments on beef hams as going In large quantity in tierces to William Windsor, Liverpool, England, contracted for in advance, and to Jacob Dold, Buffalo, N. Y., who later established a large plant In Kansas City. Procter & Gamble of Cincinnati bought the tallow, Buffalo, N. Y., took the hides, and a Massachusetts concern the horns. Callahan makes another comment which explains In a way why the packing business moved rapidly between 1870 and 1880. He says: "It was usually considered that if a packer either owned or could rent a packinghouse, and had money enough to accumulate a suitable stock of cooperage, salt and saltpeter, and had a fair line with a good bank, he was ready to run the business."

The first record of refrigeration, still using natural Ice, Is given by Joseph Nicholson of Chicago as having been built in 1875 by him, the idea being taken from a small domestic icebox, known as the Fischer box. A royalty of 6 cents per square foot was paid for the use of the idea. A year later Mr. Nicholson felt that he could improve the Fischer box, and built an entirely different one, using his own ideas with success. Another interesting fact recalled by Mr. Nicholson is that prior to the refrigerator car, fresh meat, mainly pork, was shipped in barrels, with a link of stovepipe filled with packed ice in the center and meat packed about it, but it was never sent further than Aurora or Galesburg in Illinois. Pork tenderloins were then considered a by-product, and sold for 6 cents a pound. The lowest temperature obtained from this class of refrigeration was 34°.

The Bankers' Magazine for January, 19 19, carries a story of the house of Swift & Co., which says: "Mr. Swift in 1876 perfected a refrigerator car that would carry dressed beef to eastern markets in prime condition. He built his own refrigerator cars because the railroads refused to build them. The same is true of Armour & Co., and others with well-defined refrigerator car service in 1878, by which time the prejudice against refrigerated meats had been overcome by the splendid quality of prime beef in prime condition available for every table in cities."

The history of refrigerator cars is especially interesting at this time, when bills in Congress are seeking to take them away from the packers, and yet it is a fair deduction that without private initiative the beef industry must have dragged on for years without markets. In 1881 I was with a produce house in Denver. Hundreds of cars of apples and potatoes were shipped in the winter from the Missouri River, there being stoves in the cars. It is a fair deduction, too, that the development of meat refrigerator cars brought the same service for produce, fish and fruit, most of it under private Initiative, years before it would have come from the slow process of railroad development.

It is not my thought to follow the development of the Kansas City market for cattle through any tedious process of dates and figures, but rather to sketch epochs of vital bearing.