Omaha daily bee., 1918-10-21
Where Is the" Woolly West9''
Christian Science Monitor.

1t might be difficult to say just why the ex-
preston, the woolly west, was ever applied TO
the American west, or what the term was in
tended to imply. 1t is possible that Its more
widespread application began with the publ
cation of A. Welcker's THE Woolly West" in
wild and woolly," however, came to stay. How
familiar and general its usage became may Incl
dentally be gathered from an article which APP
peared in New York newspaper in l9U9 when
the journal congratulated itself upon the happy
circumstance that "the wild and woolly indvld-
ual of the early mining camps whose business
it was to terrorize the editor by demanding re-
traction, was no longer in evidence.
The quality of "woolliness" as applied to the
west, however, is perhaps dependent upon the
way in which one is disposed to take it. In the
sense of the west being, as 1t were, one vast
sheep ranch, it is obviously misnomer. One
hardly ever sees a sheep along the beaten
tracks whilst the sheepskin overals or chaps
of the cowboy are now far less common than
plicable, in these days of the changing west, to
the striking effect which the ubiquitous sage
brush has upon the Imagination. Let the sage
brush growth be viewed, say, from the vantage
point of a Wyoming trail, where the beholder
is separated by many leagues from human habi-
tations and the whole earth roundabout will
probably convey the impression of woolliness.
aspects of the west
The real wild and woolly" west is above all
place OF human equallties which rarely seeks
to record its successes in outward dress or
style; which has neither its operas nor its thea
tiers; neither its parks nor its gardens nor its
clubs; and in many instances it is without its
churches. Amid its immense solitudes lonely
ranch or a hut may, and usually does, look
strangely out of place, and conveys the impress
sion of having been lifted bodily from among
the clustered habitations of men and dropped
amid the fawns, grays and greens of wondrous
Never Never Land.
More difficult to account for, perhaps, is the
peculiar reluctance of certain westerners to &C
knowledge that they are denizens of the "woolly
west" Perhaps, because the west has visibly
shrunk year after year, and the frontiers. have
steadily retired toward the setting sun, there
of the east; but be that as it may, one has not
to penetrate far beyond Kansas City, St. Joseph
or Omaha before he will be sure to meet those
who still keep up the fiction of their being
"east," who will tell one, perhaps, that the west
is no more, or that it has slipped back into the
Pacific, or that one may find it in Alaska or
possibly in China, but that anyway it is not in
that particular individuals latitude or longitude
And there is much about the west of today to
lend color to the contention. If one were to
look for the "woolly west" with the grasses of
the prairie, the footprints of the buffalo, the
whoop of the American Indian, the pathos and
tragedy of the trail, the dissoluteness of the
mining town. the awlessness of the gunner and
the life OF the pioneer, then one might search
for it in vain. Yet there is, none the less,
west that is wild and wooly" by virtue Of the
comparative emptiness which the passing of
these elements and conditions of the past has
produced
In contrast with the signal change which has
come over the west is the ineradicabe belief,
cherished by boyhood everywhere, in the SUR
viva and permanence of the old-fashioned west.
1t has lived in boyhood's dreams like the tales
of the Arabian Nights and the adventures of
the Crusoes and the Last of the Mohicans. 1t
seems impossible to convince the boy that there
wild Indians roaming the plains, no herds
of butfaloes, no lonely trappers, no daring ex-
plorers, no herds of antelopes no wild horses
no prairie schooners and home seeking pioneers,
and that there are few specimens of the noble
cowboy. 1t is even difficult to convince him
that there is better and far greater west,
west which Is legacy from the past which has
leavened the whole east and endowed it with
wider horizon a more redundant energy, a
greater mission, unique type of civilization.
That west today is calling to whole nations to
help to fill its ample tracts with men, to merge
their interests, to mold their patrotisms and
settling on the broad and liberal spaces of the
"woolly west" seal that bond of interrelation-
ship of the races which is one of the great les
sons of the present war.