, 1905-11-23
RANCHMEN FULLY ALIVE
Agricultural Prosperity of Wyom
ing is Not Confined to Sheep
AIone---this Year Promises
to Be Banner Year.

The editor of one of our leading state
papers asks the question, What are
the sheepmeu going to do with their
money!" The agricultural prosperity
this year is not confined to sheep a u
nor to one section of the United States,
and it would seem that there is danger
of the rural classes becoming so pros
porous that a demand may be made for
an investigation into their business
methods. From all appearance this
will be a banner year. The crop es-
Inmates of the Agricultural Depart
ment place the production of corn high
er than any previous year, and the sec
rotary of agriculture has jostled the
public mind by the statement that the
produce of agriculture for two years
in the United States has been worth
more than all the gold discovered by
the whole world since the time of Col
umbus. That can that the annual
agricultural production of this country
now reaches a total value OF almost six
billions of dollars.
Nor are the ranchmen of our new
west, with its rapidly increasing devel-
opment, failing to get their share.
The present season has been IL favor
able one, ard prices this fall are higher
along this lire than they were a year
ago. Wyoming ranchmen are secur-
ing large crops. The exhibits at the
county and state fairs have never been
finer in general perfection, size, quail
ity and amount. On our high plateau
lands the soils and seasons, along with
better methods of farming, have award
ed the h~usbandmen with larger quaint
ity of hay, grain, potatoes and other
things than they expected. MIR. Bell
has Il crop OF oats from seventy acres
of land estimated at one hundred BUSH
els TO the acre. Mr.. Hoge, who has
had his grain threshed, secured seven
ty bushels of oats per acre, and reports
indicate that many other ranchers are
doing as well. On the experimental
station farm have been produced good
crops, perhaps a little better than the
average on the whole, though better
previous years. The alfalfa. peas,
oats, barley, rye, spelt, wheat, flax,
potatoes and garden crops would con-
vince the most skeptical that a practi-
cal agriculture has actually become
permanently established for our high
est altitude %plateaus.
Prices have been high for any kind
of produce. Cattle prices have remain
ed low, and hogs have declined a little,
but the outlook for the future is bright.
Sheep have everything their W way.
On top of the high spring prices for
wool the market grows stronger and
some contracts as high as 30 cents have
been reported. Feeder lambs have
brought as high as S4.3O per head on
the range, and $6.65 per hundred on
the eastern markets, and there is re-
ported a scarcity for the feed pens.
With a bumper corn crop, the feeder
has had to pay more for his corn than
previous to start his early fall feeding.
Oats are high and the prices of other
classes of feed stuffs are corresponding
ly stiff. Potatoes on the Greeley mar
ket started in at 80 cents, with a strong
upward trend, so dollar spuds are pre-
dicted before the holidays. This
means a cen per pound from the start
in Il large part of Wyoming, and we
may have to pay extra for our potatoes
at restaurants before another crop.
Apples, which were a drug on the mar
ket n year ago, are bringing fancy
prices this fall. Good horses are
worth almost as much as automobiles,
and so on through the list of things the
farmer has to sell. And the money our
ranchmen receive is being invested in
improvements, in better stock, better
ranches, better homes and better more
difficult education, which will provide
permanence for this prosperity.
Who shall have the temerity to
prophesy what all this means for
Wyoming with her new lands for set
Element, the new reclamation projects
opening thousands Of irrigated farms
and the the other thousands of acres
suitable for dry farming? The i'm
mediate future aunot fail tc bring
phenomenal development, great in
crease in population and enormously
add to our permanent wealth. No 9TH
err part of the country offers such open
ippc or Snoh ip6ucaneptl