New-York tribune., 1905-02-26

The ravages of winter among the Western
herds are more deadly now than in the days Of
the Great Trail before the digging of the irri-
CATION ditch. In those times the great ranges
were not yet cut up by small farmers, who have
since crowded in, bringing with them channels
| of water and transforming the waste land into
fields of alfalfa melons and fruit trees In those
days the ranges offered uninterrupted course
over which the cattle might travel from the
summer pasturages of the North to the warmer
! and more fertile South in the winter BY mi
| grating south at the approach of cold weather
| the herds thus escaped, for the most part, the
| blizZards and found ample food the wear
! around.
Some idea of the way the Western ranges
| being subdivded is afforded by ride over the
Santa Fe system through Kansas, Colorado
| Oklahoma, Northern Texas and New Mexico
| Here on every hand settlers developing
! tensive irrigation systems, in which the waste
rains of the freshet season are stored up in
enormous reservoirs to keep the land green in
the cloudless summer. Five such reservoirs are
in the Arkansas River Valley of Colorado, hav-
ing total capacity of $4,000 900 cubic feet
or enough to cover the entire Borough of Man
haitian with water twenty-five feet deep drain
ing watershed of 1900 square miles, equal
to the combined States of Massachusetts and
| Connecticut, and distributing the supply by
means of seven canals, 315 miles long, over an
area of 100000 acres The largest of these ca
nails is 116 miles long
Although by means of the irrigation ditch the
| cattlemen would now be able to raise alfalfa or
other crops and thus prevent the oldtime cruel
| ties of the business, few have done So Most of
| them let the herds shift for themselves The
| animals cannot seek the South in the winter
time they forced to tramp over and over
| the same soil until their hOofS have l,iI1ad
grass roots and transformed the green fields into
a barren waste.
In a hard winter when the sparse stubble is
| covered with seet and snow the cattle NOPE
| pathetically up and down in search of sus-
tenance which too often they fail to find. Cattle,
unlike horses, will not paw away the snow to
get at the grass beneath; they simply thrust their
| muzzles into the icy covering and lick feebly at
the frozen stubble. The more hardy become
hardly more than skeletons, their bones near
| their hides that it would seem that the winter
wind might strike to their very marrow. Others
perish in the storms, and the bodies of the dead
scattered about the plain in the springtime.
when the in which they were buried is
melting. still constitute familiar spectacle in
the cattle regions of the West. According to e.
K. Whitehead, secretary of the Colorado
Humane Society, thirty million cattle the
plains of western America suffer every winter
these from three million to five million die.
To prevent such cruelty the humane societies
have long been fighting, bat in only one State
has the fight thus far resulted in any
of success. In Colorado anti-cruelty laws have
been enacted which are enforced through the
active cooperation of the Humane Society of
that State Montana has followed COOrado's
lead, and last year passed similar statutes which
thus far however have been only dead letter
because of lack of enforcement. In Arizona and
New-MeXco no action whatever has been taken,
and of the twenty three States and Territories
west of the Mississippi there nine entirely
without laws for the protection of children and
dumb animals. In order therefore, to break up
the old cruel system everywhere, bill has been
introduced at Washington providing for n IIu-
manitarian Board, which will work for the pas
sage of ant-Cruety laws in the cattle States
and establish societies which will see that they
are enforced