Omaha daily bee., 1909-09-26

more useful forms of vegetable life. The
farmer came. and wrought another change
in the cattle growing industry. Corn grew
where grasses had flourished, and the corn
fed steer began to furnish to the world the
daintiest viands that ever delighted the palate
Of an eplcure. Roast beef OF Old England"
is now manufactured on the farms OF Ne
brsska. The broad open prairie no longer
exists. Farms have taken the place of the
cattle range and the general character of the
breeding industry has Undergone the change
resulting from the changed conditions of the
country. But the steer still spends his youth
on grass in the open. and his maturer years
or, perhaps. IL would be more accurate to
say months, are passed in the feed lot, where
he gets his regular ~rstions, often prepared
with the nicely Of a physicians prescription,
that he may be quickly and symmetrically
rounded into shape for the butchers display.
Nebraska annually raises millions Of tons of
hay and alfalfa and hundreds of millions of
i bushels of corn, and this goes to market in
the form Of fat cattle and hogs. The cowboy
still rides the range, after a fashion, for his
plain is no longer "sky-bordered and horizon
staked." as a famous western orator once
described it. but is confined by well defined
limitations, set off by barbed wire fences,
and his herding is of the most perfunctory
sort. He is not the cowboy of the border
tale, but merely a factor in the strictly COM
mercial life OF the cattle raiser.
And the development Of the cattle-raising
industry into the cattle feeding industry,
brought with it the development of the cattle
killing and packing industry. At the time
the cowboy swung his course free across the
plains, and could ride from the northern to
the southern border of the cattle country,
from the British line to the Rio Grande, and
never see a fence; the packing industry was
such a puny affair that the present giants
have ceased to think Of it. 1t didn't even
meet the demands of its times, but it had
in it the germ of the great institution on
which the world and his wife have come to
depend for their daily beefsteak or roast.
The closely specialized organization that is
at once the wonder and despair of the world
outside of the United States, and which has
to deal with the supplying Of meats for all
mankind, is the outgrowth of the years that
have watched the dwindling of the open range
and the establishment of the newer and more
satisfactory method of producing beef. The
stockman today watches his herds as closely
q IL lhEu6E WdJCuSS lib llSluSB anu 1.-THE
with the same jealousy. 1t is a harvest of
dollars and cents he grows in the shape of
sleek, heavy-sided animals, whose slow feet
could no more race a cow-pony across the
open range than they could fly. Some sym
pathetic souls have wasted a river Of tears
over the fact that the American bison no
longer disports his bulk across the plains
where once he roamed in millions. undisturbed
in his browsing and his ruination, forgetting
that each year these same turn out more we'll
bred cattle than the wild herds amounted to.
The cowboy has followed the bison. but the
utilitarian stockraiser is filling the mission
of both on a basis that meets the require
ments of civilization. Neither of the departed
factors could do this.
From the farm to the stockyards, and the
abattoir, thence to the table of the man who
eats 1t, the way of a beefsteak today is one
prepared with scientific exactitude, as GER
tain as the rising and the setting of the sun,
and as devoid OF romance as a cherub of
corns. But the change has been for the bet
ter, and humanity reaps the benefit.