Rosebud County news. [volume] (Forsyth, Mont.) 1901-1906, 1903-05-28
SOUTH DAKOTA sTocKMAN ON
FREE RANGE QUESTION.
PASSING OF RANCE NOT AN EVIL
Settler With Fenced Land the Coming
Producer Of Future Beef Supply.

AS the encroachment of settlers more
and more reduces the free range to
which the cattlemen have been accus-
toned the more conservative of the
latter are beginning to realize that
that which they formerly regarded as
an unmitigated evil is not wholly with
out compensating amount of good and
are accepting the changing condition
with better grace.
Among the oldest stockmen in what
is now South Dakota is P. F. Mcclure
OF Pierre. He settled there during the
territorial days and was one of the
pioneer merchants of the town that
eventually became the capital of the
new state that was created out of the
southern half Of the territory of Dakota.
Almost from the first day of his arrival
there he has been identified with the
cattle industry and is reputed to have
grown wealthy from it. Recently he
was at Sioux City and his attention
was called to dispatch from Fort
Pierre, on the west bank of the Mis-
souri,, which stated that the first of
large influx of settlers had arrived
there for the purpose of making their
homes in Stanley county, which has
hitherto been given over to grazing
exclusively. In reply he said:
II have been up in that country long
enough to have seen the rise and deve1-
opment of the great stock industries
west of the Missouri river and have
been identi fed with that industry
since | first went to Hughes county.
l have watched it's progress from the
standpoint of a business man, and it
must be said that during the series of
years it has proved a profitable indus
try for those who are engaged in it, as
we'll as the banker and tradesman,
whose interest, though less direct, is
by no means less important. The
stock business has been the backbone
of business in the western and north
western part of the state for decade
and has reached the fulness of its de-
velopment in the last few years.
II am among the number who at
first resented the encroachments made
by the settlers and small stockmen
upon the large interests which num-
bered live stock by the thousands, and
whose acres of range were not num-
bered at all. 1 thought that l could
see in the advent of the settler men,
ace to the free range which was the
only condition known west of the river.
l have seen the Tree range abolished
east of the river, and during the past
two years have seen encroachments
made upon it west of the Missouri, as
the champion of the large stock inter-
ests as against the smaller industry
represented by the man who owns a
small tract and leases another and
confines his stock to the range to which
he has the first and undoubted right.
"Under the free range system the
waste is beyond computation. Some
of the territory is fed to the grass roots,
while that isolated from water districts
is practically untouched, or fed suffi-
ciently to preclude the possibility of
securing hay crop with which to feed
the stock in winter. The hazard and
the loss under the free range system is
something which could not be borne in
a locality where the lands had a mark
etable value, and it is a fact that as
the lands attain market value the
unrestricted free range becomes
thing of the past. I am no longer op-
posed to the breaking up of the free
range system, but welcome it as a
condition which had to come, and it
has not come too soon.
1.-The small stockman will fence his
pasture land and he will also fence his
hay land and he will be able to feed
his pasture land to its limit, but will
rot impoverish it, while his hay land
will produce each year to its capacity,
and the result will be that where now
the cattle are left on the plains in the
winter they will be protected and fed,
and better cattle will reach the market,