Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1886 — A National Cattle Trail. [ARTICLE]

A National Cattle Trail.

I have said that the annual drive from Texas will probably be from 750,000 to l,000,0iX) cattle. A large proportion of these will be stock cattle—cows, heifers, and young steers. Where are these cattle to be held until lit for market? At the Cattle Growers’ Convention, held m St. Louis, Nwv.;. ; u« r, 1884, the Texas cattle-growers w r ere unanimous in advocating the creation of a national cattle trail, siv p-* ’ 1 tv3 Hfk pr? extending from Texas to mr boundary. The Northern gnzHT.t opposed the proposed trail on the ground that the Texas cattle were*infected with a disease known in the business as the Spanish fever. They asserted -and truthfully, —that the driving of through Texan cattle along the trail would infect their herds. The Spanish fever does not injure Texas cattle; but all native cattle—that is, all Northern stock, no matter w T hat their blood—catch the disease by grazing on the ground over which through Texas cattle have passed, and they generally die. Here were two parties disputing about a fact that both knew to be a fact, both cunningly endeavoring to conceal their real hopes and fears. There are Territorial and State laws in force in the West that forbid the driving of through Texas cattle on to many ranges. A national law enacted for the purpose of providing a cattle trail would override these local laws, which many lawyers pronounce unconstitutional, and open the Northern grazing ground to the Texas cattle. The Southern stock-growers want the trail created so that they can drive young steers that are strong enough to endure the severe winters of the Northwest through to the bunch and buffalo grass pastures of Wyoming and Montana in one season, and so avert overstocking their home range, which is secure from invasion of Northern herds, as no native cattle can be driven on to the grazing ground of Texas and live. The Spanish fever stalks abroad thero. The Northern men assert and re-assert that the opening of the trail would endanger their herds. They ignore the fact that the first heavy frost kills the Spanish fever, and ends all danger. They endeavor to conceal their real reason for opposing the opening of the trail, which is the danger of overstocking the Northern grazing ground if the Texas men are allowed to drive their surplus young steers thero. They dread having from 200,000 to 800,000 young steers annually driven North to feed on a range that they all realize will, under the present land laws, be speedily overstocked, and eventually destroyed, and destroyed by the greed of the cattle men. Underlying all talk of renting the public lands, or of buying them, and of any and all schemes concerning the disposition to be made of the public domain that emanate from the cattlegrowers, is the determined purpose to secure the land, and to place it under the control of the cattle-growing associations, and then limit the number of cattle that shall be allowed to graze on it. The spectre that is ever present to the Northern cattle-growers is overstocking. All talk of their desire to conserve the public domain is false. They desire to secure absolute possession of the range; and if they succeed, they will as surely stop agricultural settlers from entering the arid belt to acquire low-lying farms along the streams as if they owned the land in fee-simple. —Frank Wilkeson, in Harper's Magazine for April.

It is claimed that E. W. Dexter, of the town of Liberty, near New London, is the soldier mentioned in Grant’s memoirs who surrounded and captured a half-dozen Mexicans on a roof at Chapultepec, at the storming and capture of that place during the Mexican war. Grant did not know the name of the soldier, but Mr. Dexter, while applying for a pension in 1880, told Mr. Patchen the incident. The wound on which he based his application was received on the roof, after the capture, while waving the flag he had taken.