The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-07-20
OLD FAR WEST
 CATTLE BRANDS
 MAINTAIN STYLE

While r1aintive bards lament the passing of the picturesque western civilization, cattle brands, the hall marks of the industry around which most of the romance of the West is woven, instead of succumbing before the advance of an effete civilization, are rapidly increasing. In the brand department at the state capitol there are now over thirty-fve thousand separate and distinct cattle brands on record, and the number is in creasing at a rate of five hundred to six hundred a month.
 Nor do the brands that strike the fancy of the "cowmen' today show any background of modern parlor training. A twentieth century cattle man recently selected the outline of a woman's corset for his brand to out do his father, who many years ago had chosen an opened umbrella as the distinguishing mark for his herd. No Two Alike.
 And of the thirty-five thousand brands, in themselves remarkable testimonia1t to the ingenuity of the West, there are no two alike, nor are there any two brands which would seem to possess the slightest possi- bility of being interchanged or copied.
 '~The tremendous amount of detail work and the elaborate system of checking is astounding.
 "For example, said w. c. Baker, state brand expert, take the brand E4. How many brands are there | which can be quickly converted into the E4 mark?' "Oh, perhaps six," was the answer of one uninitiated. I In less than two minutes MT. Baker l had indicated more than fifty brands which a rustler could easily change and make into an E.
 | In accordance with the system Of | the state brand department, invented | by MT. Baker and later adopted by every western state, each brand is 1 indexed by design and by name of | the owner. Before a new brand can ! be issued it is necessary to ascertain | whether any brand which permits of l conversion into the brand applied for | is in use on the same range or in 1 the same part of the state.
 Every Eight Years. Some proposed brands have to be l checked against as many as 200 de- | signs, which they resemble or into
 which they can be converted. In or | der to prevent the accumulation of a | too bulky collection the legislature, at | intervals of about eight years, taxes | all brands, and those for which the
 taxes are not paid are considered to
 be "dead' and are discarded. l Of the tremendous number of
 brands at present in use, all but a
 very few consist of less than three let
 ters of figures, and most of them are | composed of only one. If pro
 posed brand is intended to cover the l greater part of the side of the ami | nal, the state child and animal pro- | lection laws come into play, and the | design is reduced accordingly.
 Even Hairpins Arc Used. i That the ever increasing demand | for brand designs Is taxing the
 originality of the cattlemen is indi- l cated by the fact that recent brands
 registered include figures of ducks,
 fish, bugs, skulls, hatchets, pipes,
 spectacles, hairpins, stockings, and
 for the man who was completely at a loss for a suitable figure there is re- | corded the brand :? 2"
 Each brand is woven into the his
 tory of the ranch to which it be- | longs, and there is every indication
 that the cattleman of today possesses
 the same sense of humor and the
 same sense of fitness as his predecs- sor who plays such an important role in the written romance of the West.
 Kept on File at Markets.
 At every big market where cattle converge from the various ranges
 and others are brought to be shipped out for fattening, for instance Denver, Kansas City and Omaha, all the registered brands of every range
 in the West are kept on file. Experts
 in the stockyards are always on the
 lookout for tempered brands and
 more than one cattle thief has gotten
 safely out of the range with his loot
 only to be caught as he tried to dis
 pose of it.
 Many buyers of eastern cattle have
 to ship them long distances by raj
 and then drive them across country
 sometimes a hundred miles or more
 to the home range. Those men gen orally brand their cattle before they
 start from the market, and there is
 always a small army of ex-cowboys around every big stockyard who are glad of the chance to remind them selves of roundup days on the range They do the branding. The irons arl l made as needed and either left at tht stockyard for subsequent use or car ried away for range work.-Denvel 5 Times.