Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-07-05

The stock growing industry has about
reached a point where. in the interest of
the pocketbook, as well as that of common
decency, it must in most places be carried
on with more conservatism, says Los
Animas. Col, correspondent of the New
York Sun. As long as nobody suffered
materially in purse it mattered little to the
men heavily engaged in the industry
whether the most outrageous cruelties
were inflicted upon the dumb creatures in
their keeping or not; but now that the
mortality among the stock is becoming so
great by reason of exposure in winter and
scant feed in summer as seriously to affect
profits, it is seen that if the business is to
be prosecuted hereafter it must be done
under more favorable circumstances.
Nobody can estimate the amount OF
agony which has been inflicted on the
cattle in the West in the last ten or fifteen
wears as result of the mistaken notions
that all that was necessary to bring in
rich returns was to turn cattle loose on
the ranges and leave them to shift for
themselves. Ii five, ten, fifteen, or even
thirty per cent of them died in the SHOWS
of hunger and cold. or we're frozen stiff in
their tracks, it was easy enough to send
out reports to the contrary. and the skele-
| ton strewn plains are not often under the
eye oil anyone who will take the trouble to
| describe what he has seen. The cruelty
to animals in the East, to suppress which
| there are societies in all large cities, seems
so insignificant in comparison with the
wholesale barbarity practiced in the West
in order that few men may become rich
that it is strange that no national move
ment has ever been started for its suppress
sion.
Travellers on many of the railroads in
| the West and Southwest at this season OF
the year will see from the car windows
hosts OF whitening skeletons, in some
cases great piles of them They are the
remains OF cattle which few months ago
found their way to the railroad track as
the only place within their reach that ever
manifested signs of life, and there they
stood furnishing until death put an end
TO their sufferings. The greed of man
was responsible for all this. Trusting to
luck for food and water, thousands of
these poor brutes have been turned out
every year by their owners to experience
the most pitiiul suffering and death, while
those who have survived have been scarce
more fortunate. Last winter when the Kan
sas Pacific raileoad was blocked with snow
and great steel ploughs were attached to
the locomotives. it was frequently found
impossible to "bunt" out the cuts, because
beneath this mass of snow were scores of
cattle that had huddled together in these
places in the hope of mitigating in a small
degree, the fierceness of the blast. Some
of these ploughs after one or two en-
counters with such distractions of dead
cattle, ice and snow. looked as though
they had been run through slaughter
house.
| just now there are more than 100, ZOO
head of cattle en- route to the North from
Texas on the old Dodge trail. The suffer-
ings Of these animals from the drought
have been most agonizing. The whole
earth is parched. and a. everybody trusts to
luck in summer for water, a. is the rule in
winter for food, the failure of the natural
supply has produced hardship that almost
rivals that Of the bleak northern ranges in