The Bon Homme County independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1904-1913, 1908-10-08
HOW The BRAND
INSPECTORS WORK
Their Vigilance and knowledge
Of Brands Have Put Cattle
Rustler Out Of Business.

Brand inspection at the stock yards is
a. fine art: eventually with the fencing
up OF the open range II may become a
lost art, but for IS years past the COM
plicated system has been essential to the
profitable carrying on or the western beef
making industry, says the Breeders Ga
zette. It is the only system ever invented
theft. The brand inspector became in the
early 'SOs the Nemesis of hat picturesque
criminal of the plains, the cattle ~rustler.
TO discharge@the functions or a brand
inspector at any of the great live stock
markets requires good ~horsemanship, a
rugged constitutions and above all a re-
tentive memory 1t Is the multiplicity of
the brands that is calculated to drive an
ordinary man to distraction; and yet armed
with nothing but a thorough knowledge
Of every curfously designed ,cryptogram
that ever dlsfigured a bovine back, a
brand inspector literally wades through a
sea OF cattle daily, ~designates stray cat
tie by the hundred and by mere word OF
mouth insures payment to their owners OF
the exact purchase prices as though the
cattle had been consigned In the regular
way.
Frank Brainerd. the veteran Of the wyo-
ming and South Dakota association at
Chicago, was once asked how he fitted
himself for his task. 81 learned the
brands from the steers backs he re-.
piled. you couldn't do It by studying a
brand book a hundred years"
n yet there are brand books, ponder
bus tones. wherein IL recorded an outline
BIZ every ownership device ever registered.
Brand inspection at the stock yards as
u Is developed today dates back to 1883
when the Wyoming association inaug-
hrated Il. At that time rustling was cost
ing cattlemen running stock on the open
range an incompatible sum annually.
Rustlers ran of cattle In brazen fashion,
shipping then to Chicago and other mar
kets and coolly pocketing the proceeds. In
tSSS the Wyoming association assigned
Henry Strouder and Frank Brainerd to the
TASK OF preventing the sale of rustled cat
HE In this manner Their early inspection
efforts were confined to trains while the
cattle were in transit, but the evolution OF
the system carried It to the stock yards.
discovered TO their disnlay that
they could gather and ship beef, but that
the proceeds were promptly RENTED by
the inspectors to the owners they had
robbed. Fertile In resource they at
tempted to sell their booty to feeders in
the corn belt, but this plan was promptly
frustrated by an all-the-year-round in
spection. Every market day OF the year
lat the great markets vigilance unceasing
Az SANA W Ai9RNSNNAo vi NiS n
colorado, Wyoming. South Dakota, Mon
,tana n other associations. This neces-
riding alleys in all weathers. A
branded animal stolen and marked by the
feed lot route has no more chance of
ievading the eagle eye of the inspector
than one rustled a few days since. The
system has no vulnerable point. 4
Checkmated elsewhere the cattle thief
displayed his ingenuity by doctoring
brands. Acids, scissors and other means
were used and this method produced re-
suits for a brief period, but the skilled
inspector Is seldom deceived by a doc
tored brand now. Not ~infrequently sus-
,pected cattle are slaughtered and the hide
subjected TO microscopic reading before the
identity of the original brand thus doc
tored can be determined. So perfect has
the system become that the cattleman is
from criminal aggression. He
may suffer the loss OF a few cattle con-
verted into beef on the range, but as a
commercial proposition rustling Is a dead
industry. "