CHAPTER III

PASSING OF THE FEDERAL

PASTURE*

NO group of men in the Fifty-seventh N° Congress dealt with more vital mat

ters than the House Committee on Public Lands. These gentlemen made an effort to solve the question of protecting and improving the great government pastures, that these might grow more beef and mutton, and that suitable parts might in time be put to agricultural use. The problem involves conflicting interests, yet some action. upon it is imperative. It is a national one, having to do with the price of meat in every American home.

Probably 400,000,000 acres of the public domain are at present fit only for pasturage. This does not mean that the soil lacks fertility, which most of it does not, but that the region is partially arid, the average rain* Reprinted, by permission, from the American Review of Reviews for January, 1903.

fall being so distributed through the year, that while it suffices for range purposes, it is in some seasons not quite sufficient for farming. Much of this territory can be made fit for farms and homes, but there are in the United States many hundred thousands of acres which will always be better adapted to grazing than to farming.

That the life-supporting power of the government pastures is rapidly declining there can be no doubt. The high price of beef is not due entirely to the rapacity of packers. Public pasture is dying out. Areas which half a century ago grew vast herds of buffalo, antelope, and deer, and subsequently even more immense troops of cattle, are now almost a waste. Still ampler domains are approaching the same fate.

The range has been abused. Too many cattle and sheep have been kept upon it. For years "free grass" was to be had everywhere. Old settlers declare that when they first saw prairies which now appear barren as Sahara, grass there was from 1 to 3 feet high-this not only near water, but on the

sides and tops of hills, and not alone in favored seasons, but generally.

Such luxuriance was not aboriginal. It developed with and after the extinction of the wild herbivora. But these, when most numerous, never cropped the prairie as is now done. Indians and the great carnivora seem to have nicely dressed the balance between herbage and herbivor so as to keep the prairie perpetually clad and whole. The "tragedy of the range" opened only with civilization.

A cowman, locating anywhere, assumed "range rights" to all he could see. When a second came there was, as a rule, a peaceful division, reminding of Abraham and Lot, water and grass being abundant for both. In like manner the two shared with number three, the three with four, and so on. The sheepman and the "nester"-the man with a hoe-had not yet appeared. Occupants were hardly ever owners. The fees of the ranges belonged to the government, or to railways, schools, or private individuals, but neither the owners nor their