ions he found that he could not pay out on
the land. Perhaps he brought two or three thousand dollars with him. It
usually was the industrial mistake of the land-boomer to take from
this intending settler practically all of his capital at the start.
Naturally, when the new farmers were starved out and in one way or
another had made other plans, the country itself went to pieces. That
part of it was wisest which did not kill the goose of the golden
egg. But be these things as they may be and as they were, the whole
readjustment in agricultural values over the once measureless and
valueless cow country was a stupendous and staggering thing.

Now appeared yet another agency of change. The high dry lands of many
of the Rocky Mountain States had long been regarded covetously by an
industry even more cordially disliked by the cattleman than the industry
of farming. The sheepman began to raise his head and to plan certain
things for himself in turn. Once the herder of sheep was a meek and
lowly man, content to slink away when ordered. The writer himself in the
dry Southwest once knew a flock of six thousand sheep to be rounded up
and killed by the cattlemen of a range into which they had intruded.
The herders went with the sheep. All over the range the feud between the
sheepmen and the cowmen was bitter and implacable. The issues in those
quarrels rarely got into the courts but were fought out on the ground.
The old Wyoming deadline of the cowmen against intruding bands of
Green River sheep made a considerable amount of history which was never
recorded.

The sheepmen at length began to succeed in their plans. Themselves not
paying many taxes, not supporting the civilization of the country, not
building the schools or roads or bridges, they none the less claimed the
earth and the fullness thereof.

After the establishment of the great forest reserves, the sheepmen
coveted the range thus included. It has been the governmental policy to
sell range privileges in the forest reserves for sheep, on a per capita
basis. Like privileges have been extended to cattlemen in certain of the
reserves. Always the contact and the contest between the two industries
of sheep and cows have remained. Of course the issue even in this
ancient contest is foregone--as the cowman has had to raise his cows
under fence, so ultimately must the sheepman also buy his range in fee
and raise his product under fence.

The wandering bands of sheep belong now