The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1886-03-19
THE BRAVE COWBOY.
A True Picture of His Hard and
Thankless Life.

The cowboy as Knight of Labor is
a problem of the labor question that is
to come up for consideration in the
councils of the wage-worker in the
near future. John II. Sullivan, known
on the plains and cattle ranges as
Broncho John, is now studying the
workings of labor organizations in diff
ferent Eastern cities and their relations
to working-men as a class, for the pur-
pose Of enlightening his isolated fell
low workers of the trails and ranches
on the subject, Sullivan is a cowboy.
He is an Intelligent, handsome young
fellow, with a peculiarly mild cut yet
keen blue eye. Slight in frame and
modest in demeanor, he appears any
thing but cowboy as the cowboy is
uniformly pictured. He donned the
Sombrero and spurs when he was
twelve years old, and has followed
every cattle trail from the Gulf of
Mexico to the mountains of Washing
ton Territory in the fifteen years that
LAS near as can say, at a rough
guess" said Sullivan to a San re-
porter, "there are between eight and
ten thousand cowboys in the ranges of
the embarrassing region. No class of
men work harder. None are so poor
ly paid for their services. The tyranny
and injustice that they are compelled
to submit to ut the hands of their en-
ployers is as great, if not greater, than
that to which any other class of laboK-
ers are subjected. No people have
ever been so grossly misrepresented
and maGgned. There is as much differ
ence between the genuine cowboy and
the disreputable blusterer and bull
dozer, that writers for the press have
made the cowboy out to be, as there is
between the honest, Woodworking me-
chanie of this or any other city and the
staggering rowdy, loafer or bully that
jostles him in the street. -
"Men generally choose a life of
crime because they can make more
money and make it easier than they
can by honest labor. Imagine a road
agent who, by bold stroke, may Sc
cure fortune in half an hour, trailir O
a herd of cattle across country for
twenty-five dollars a month!
LAS to the condition of the COWBOYS
as working-men, say, after what l
have observed in the East, that they
have no organization back of them to
demand fair treatment at the hands of
employers. But, while they are not
organized for mutual protection, their
employers have one of the strongest
and most systematic, and at the same
time despotic, unions that was ever
formed to awe and dictate to labor.
This is the Ranchers' Society, to which
every cattle baron of the country be-
longs. On the books of this society are
the names, in alphabetical order, of
every cowboy on the ranges, from Tex
as to Washington Territory. The aver
age pay of the cowboy is twenty-five
dollars a month, and chat is putting it
well up. He is obliged to find his en-
tire outfit, except his horses. These
belong to the ranchers.
but then there is another way the
cowboy is fitted out. If he hasn't
money enough to buy his own, TIE
Tancher VIII rig him up. The cowboy
is furnished with the necessary arti-
Giles, and the rancher charges him a
good round price for them, and keeps
fifteen dollars a month out of his wages
to pay on them. If he has good luck
he will have his outfit paid for at the
end of the season, but he will discover
that large part of it will have to be
renewed before he goes on the range
the next year.
1.-THE average pay of a cowboy, tax
ing the work as it runs, on the north
and south ranges, will not exceed
twenty-five dollars month. A great
many of the cowboys have families of
their own, or perhaps parents or other
relatives, to support. By no possible
stroke of fortune can a cowboy have
more than six months work in the
year on the ranges. The average is