law was the only one available for use on the cattle-range. In
practice it was violated thousands of times--in fact, of
necessity violated by any cattle man who wished to acquire
sufficient range to run a considerable herd. Our great timber
kings, our great cattle kings, made their fortunes out of their
open contempt for the homestead law, which was designed to give
all the people an even chance for a home and a farm. It made, and
lost, America.

Swiftly enough, here and there along all the great waterways of
the northern range, ranchers and their men filed claims on the
water fronts. The dry land thus lay tributary to them. For the
most part the open lands were held practically under squatter
right; the first cowman in any valley usually had his rights
respected, at least for a time. These were the days of the open
range. Fences had not come, nor had farms been staked out.

From the South now appeared that tremendous and elemental
force--most revolutionary of all the great changes we have noted
in the swiftly changing West--the bringing in of thousands of
horned kine along the northbound trails. The trails were hurrying
from the Rio Grande to the upper plains of Texas and northward,
along the north and south line of the Frontier--that land which
now we have been seeking less to define and to mark precisely
than fundamentally to understand.

The Indian wars had much to do with the cow trade. The Indians
were crowded upon the reservations, and they had to be fed, and
fed on beef. Corrupt Indian agents made fortunes, and the Beef
Ring at Washington, one of the most despicable lobbies which ever