The Republican journal., 1907-08-15
Kansas Farms Pay Better.
RANCHMEN NOW KEEP THEIR EYES
ON THE MARKET.

l SAA3ASAv
ON TIE MARKET.
Kansas in harvest time is vast check
erboard, level as floor, with its fields
laid out in square, cleancut lines; first
the yellow of the wheat, then the purple
of the alfalfa, heavy with bloom, after
that the deep rich green of the corn,
almost ready to break into tassel and
finally the lighter green of the pasture
land, just touched with brown from the
summer heat. There are no three cor
nered fields in Kansas, there are no ten
acre lots. Everything is done on the
quarter section basis and q field that
measures less is contemptuously term
ed patch.
Afternoon tea and field bulletin boards
are innovations in ordinary ranch life,
but they are only Indications of changes
that have come over the whole rural in
dustry in the West, changes that would
cause the big moustached ranchman of
twenty years ago to grow purple with
horror. A ranchman in Kansas to-day
may not have dozen head of cattle on
and perhaps next year he will have
thousands of head.
The Kansas ranchman of to-day fol-
lows the market as closely as does a
| Wall street operator. His telephone
tells him daily the closing market price
of the various commodities he has to
sell.
He studies the markets and the con-
ditions governing them, and he is pre-
pared to use his knowledge to advan-
tage. Twenty years ago the Kansas
ranchman raised long horned steers
and the farmer raised corn. To-day
both raise whatever promises the larg-
est and surest profit.
The cattle ranch in Kansas is as ex-
tinct as the dinosaur," said Col. j. L.
johnson of Reno county. There are
a few weak limitations left out in the
short grass country, but they are no
more ranches such as we used to know
twenty years ago than is Central Park.
"Just to call them ranches is enough
to make an old timer turn over in his
grave, Then it was an insult to be
called farmer. Now We come right
up and answer to the name.
| 1--WE used to be proud to tell how
many acres we owned and how many
head of cattle we grazed. Now these
figures mean nothing at all. What
counts is how much an acre the land
pays, and if it will pay more in wheat
| VI dI1dlAa, VI IL win leu uulCS Dlluk d
bigger price than corn fed cattle, then
wheat or mules it is, and never thought
| for the traditions we were brought up
| on.
! about eight years ago the great prai-
ries completed the transition from cat
| tie raising to cattle feeding. From
raising leggy, long horned cattle that
wouldn't know an ear of corn if they
saw it and that lived the year round on
native grasses, eked out by little sor-
| ghum fodder when the snow was deep,
we went into the business of producing
beef.
1--WE found that the land used for gra-
: zing would raise the best corn on earth
; and that this corn fed to cattle just
| about doubled our returns. This dis
covery was the first step in the break
| ing up of the big ranches, and has led to
SO many others as to constitute practi-
cally revolution in the industry
"The famous Dewey ranch, the larg-
! est in Kansas and the scene of a feud,
| is being divided and sold as farms.
| The Rockefeller ranch in a neighboring
county is also being sold piecemeal, and
! the Forsha ranch in Reno county, while
| keeping its boundaries unbToken, is be-
! ing worked on colonization scheme
that makes it more of farm than a
ranch in the old time meaning of the
word.
at is the high valuation of the land
J that is responsible for its decline as a
! cattle feeding plant. Land that would
raise so cent corn was too valuable to
pasture a $40 steer, and land that would
raise 80 cent wheat was too good to
raise 50 cent corn.
'On the other hand, feeding plant
on ranch could be used for one pur-
pose as we'll as another, and when hogs
were high and conditions were such
that they promised to 60 higher what
was the use of spending time feeding
cattle, the price of which was steadily
going downward.
Three years ago the Forsha ranch
was fully stocked with cattle, which
were fed in the most scientific manner
and prepared to bring the very top
price on the market. The market
wavered, and within twenty-four hours
the Forsha manager had every hoof on
the place on the way to Kansas City.
! He struck the market at its highest
point and it has never been so high
since.
/ "The Dext year the ranch fairly
swarmed with hogs and the big fields
stretching OH 10 Lne horizon were all
planted in corn for the fall fattening.
Hogs were high that year, and SO was
corn, and the Forsha hogs, fattened on
corn grown there, tipped the market.
Last year mules promised the larg-
| est return and the ranch was stocked
to its full capacity with mules. They
were properly fed and cared for and
were rushed to market just when every
other man at the stockyards was trying
to buy mules.
'The same system is carried out in
the farming operations on these big
places. Their operations are carried
oil OIL big enough scale SO that how
ever the market goes they can't miss it.
'If wheat is low they store it away
and sell corn, and if both corn and
wheat are too low for fair profit into
the bin 60 both and the alfalfa and
prairie hay crops are looked to for i'm
mediate profits. .
kansas is not the only State where
cattle raising has been revolutionized.
High priced cotton is crowding out cat
tie in Texas; once the great producing
country, and thousands of acres that
used to be given over to grazing are
now given over to agriculture. Mexico
is now the great cattle producing coun-
try, and even there the farming fever
| is spreading.