Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1900-02-22
BARBED WIRE IN THE WEST.
What the Introduction of Wire Fences
Has Meant to Man and Beast.

| In the Century magazine E. HOugh,
author of The Story of the Cowboy,
tells of the introduction of that -four
fold abominationH> which marked out
! the path of civilization in the far
west:
A few years ago a villager down in
! Illinois bent a bit of iron about a
strand of fence wire, and noticed that
his cattle avoided it. Out of this idea
grew a system of fencing which has
preserved our pine forests a few de-
cades longer, but which brought to an
end many decades earlier the glorious
| free days of the open and unfenced
west. The great cattle ranges, over
| which rOamed one of the most indie
pendent populations ever seen on
earth, could never have been fenced
| by rails, or stone walls, or boards of
pine. 1t was difficult enough for the
| spider like genius of advancing civil
zation to keep them fenced with the
ever renewed web of the fatal wire
against which the wild men of the
early days rebelled so strenuously
Yet mile by mile, thousands of miles
after thousands of miles, the cheap
and easily spun web crawled out
across the west and held it hard and
firm. You can never uncoil the dead
ly web, neither can you replace the
victim which it strangled
Little more than a dozen years ago
the writer was with a party hunting
foI hl1ff n q 1J-n, tpn n.t IF
the Panhandle of Texas, where we
knew of little herd still remaining
Of those great animals, even then con-
3idered virtually extinct. 1t was a
weary and desolate land, where be-
tween water hole and water hole lay
sixty or seventy miles of absolute
desert. Not a tree broke the endless
monotony of the plains. The soil
was like flint. The sky had for months
been guiltlesS of a drop of rain. 1t
was a region so utterly unsuited for
the habitatiOn of mankind that these
last few representatives of a passing
race of great American animals had
chosen it as their final place Of refuge,
thinking that perhaps there they
would never again hear the sound of
rifleshOt or see again the face of man.
Yet one morning, as we faced the sun
of another waterless day, we came up
on line OF strong wire fence, coming
from where no man could tell, and
running IN one unbroken line to the
limits of our vision. 1t was
no deluSIon, no miracle, no wonder of |
the wild mirage. 1t was an accursed |
fact. 1t had no right there, on that /
free land, where even the wind had |
swept for ages unfettered by so much |
as a leaf or stem of struggling tree. |
As we maryeled and muttered at this !
thing. we saw, in the red light OF the
east. little moving band of great
forms which we knew to be those of
the buffalo They saw US also, and /
with the instinct of a generation OF 7
swept away at once their /
flight Across their line lay this four
told abpmination, this corded barrier:
mis- new thing this infamy never be- /.
fore dreamed Of on these free plains.
close punched, the buffalo struck it Il
With the force of a heavy locomotive, il
md crushed through and over it as 1t
hOugh they passed so many straws- i
All. there was a thing dramatic, ad- !
out there on that far-away I
lesert. II was the old west rending
he net of the retiarius, casting aside
he strands set for its undOing, and
landing on unhindered, free, Seeing
he beauty of this spectacle, our best I
oper, a cow-puncher born on the old /
ange, rose in his stirrups and took off ?