Williams news., 1903-12-12


 shown the g J James E. Bark interview, copied in the last issue from the Arizona Republican and when asked for an interview on the\s subject, said: MT. Bark is certainly Nshe champion anti-sheep agitator of the west. He seems to have fought the sheep industry so long and so hard that he is ready to believe and quote as true every wild rumor and is unable to state real facts involved in the question. Everybody knows Arizona has for the past five years gone through period of unpreced- ented drought, broken only by the abundant snow and rain of the past twelve months. The agitator can always hear street rumors on which to base congregations when conve- nient. The fact is there never has been 100000 sheep driven to Salt River valley any one season and will not be this season. It is true our sheep men have bought a few dry sheep in New Mexico to take the place of the lambs and mutton sheep of Arizona because the range feed this season was so abundant everywhere that everything was rolling fat and turned off as nut ton, until we could not supply the demand of our home market. Talk about sheep destroying the ranges and leaving nothing behind is pure nonsense. The sheep that went south last year could not consume one-tenth part of the feed on the ranges occupied by them and when the weeds and filaria began to dry up so they had to have water which could not be had on the desert, or most of the ranges occupied by sheep, they came north leaving fi- laria and other feed as high as their knees. This feed went to waste. In fact nine-tenths of the feed on the southern ranges consumed by sheep could not be harvested by cattle or any other kind of stock :; because it is inaccessible to water and only lasts for short time, when it is abundant, then gone.
 There is no reason for trouble be- tween sheepmen and cattlemen or ranchers, and except from few agitators and men who want the whole country for their exclusive use, whether they use it or not, you never hear of such trouble.
 True, there are differences among stockmen on the range ..nd else where, but in the districts grazed by sheep such trouble is oftener be- tween cattlemen than cattle and sheepmen. Scarcely twelve months ago two cattlemen shot each other to pieces in northern Arizona over range differences. What a sweet morsel this lamentable incident would have made for our agitators had one of these parties been a sheep man.
 Sheep did not drive cattlemen out of the business in northern and central Arizona. I was interested in a number of brands of cattle in this district some years ago, every one of which lost money, from two causes, climatic uncertainties and the activity of the numerous rust lers. We had no trouble with our neighboring. sheepmen, and they were in no way responsible for our failure to make money and our finally shipping our cattle out of the country. The same reasons have driven cattle out of all north ern and central Arizona except in favored localities.
 Over-grazing by sheep or cattle will injure the range but not more by one class of stock than the other
 The watersheds occupied by 90 per cent of the sheep of Arizona are not tributary to the proposed Tonto Basin reservoir or most of the ca nals and ditches of Salt River val