Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1908-03-21
The Transformation of the Inland
Empire.
Communicated

luxuriant growth of bunch grass,
passed into the hands of the stock man.
For years their title was little more
than their red predecessors had held.
1t had, however, the added virtue of
furnishing to civilization the broncho,
the semitender steer with long horns
and racing proportions, course wool
and fair mutton of the range. These
knights of the range each required
large tracts of thousands Of acres in
order to make their business profitable.
The wild range of their operations
gave them little insight into the real
details and merits of the land they
occupied, though it has little effect
upon one of them to tell him so.
Their strifes with one another for
vantage ground and to hold their
vague, wild, unrecorded title, in many
instances were settled by bloody bat
ties resulting in death, and had a
tendency to embitter them toward the
rest of mankind. AS a natural result
they received the homesteader, the
next class of people to take pposses-
81 on, with anything but open arms.
They saw no room for the homesteader,
and no merits in his enterprise.
They convinced themselves that the
homesteaders could not make good use
of the lands, but as the homesteader
and rancher continued to come into
the state and take up more stable and
permanent title, the stockman's anti
pathy for him grew. The superior num-
Der of the homesteaders and the right
eousness of their title. was all that
prevented them in many instances from
being received with open violence.
That the old fashioned stock man
still resents the encroachment of the
rancher was aptly illustrated in the
Palace hotel in Pullman lately. Some
college students were talking optimis-
tically of the agricultural possibilities
of Washington, when a burly idnivid-
ual at the other end of the table began
taking part in the conversation anC
decrying Washing toms agriculture
possibilities. That fellow, who proved
to be one of the old we'll known stock
men, went off with his prejudice still
more intensified. He, like many OF
his class, has become so warped by
prejudice that he cannot see the con-
elusive facts, such as that Whitman
county used to furnish about range
enough for two stock men, and tha
for the last thirty years it has beer
settling up with wheat farmers, many
of whom have made fortunes from
growing wheat, until that country nov
sustains a population of about 81, 00C
contented, prosperous inhabitants
But the stock mans case in this dis
trict has long since been settled.
There is now a new question being
presented and to be settled all over the
state. The thrifty farmers, the shrewC
spectators and the timber men have
acquired many large holdings of land
In many instances these large holdings
are being cut up into the town lots OF
small irrigated tracts and sold at gooC
prices, but the holders are not all lett
ing go as fast as the people would have
them. In one section of the state
some of the citizens were recently
complaining of this fact. and asserted
that the majority of the people realized
that their development is retarded II
that locality by the tenacity with
which the large owners hold on to theil
property. They told of one man who
boasts of the fact that he can go five
miles in either direction and not ster
off his land. OF course his neighbor'
know that each 40 acres of his farm
is capable of supporting family ano
that the country would advance anC
develop much more rapidly if he would
sell to those who are ready to move In
He can now sell for $50 to SIS per acre
the land that cost at from the price Of