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which could not transport itself to market was not of much value; consequently not much attention was given to the breeding of the short-legged, barrel-shaped hog of the present day. The cattle, likewise, were built more for traveling than for meat. The oxen of that period, which were preferred to horses for heavy farm work, were well adapted to that purpose.

When the advance waves of settlement reached the great prairies of the West, the grazing industry entered a new phase. Those natural meadows of vast extent furnished a much more abundant pasturage than had the great forest which extended almost unbroken from the Atlantic coast to western Ohio in the central part of the country, and to the Mississippi River and beyond on the north and south. Goats and asses had never figured largely among the domestic animals of this country, but horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs had multiplied rapidly. On these Western prairies, the former home of countless herds of buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope, all of which were grazing animals, cattle and sheep were very economically produced, and would have been enormously profitable had not the prices of beef, mutton, and wool fallen so low as barely to cover the low cost of production. Dwellers in Eastern cities enjoyed abnormally cheap meat and continued to do so until the very end of the nineteenth century; since that time meat prices have been gradually approaching a normal level again.

The Texas cattle trail. After the close of the Civil War the grazing industry entered still another phase. Vast herds of cattle, brought by the early Spanish settlers, had long roamed the plains of Mexico and Texas. After Texas entered the United States, the grazing industry developed rapidly under the energetic management of American cattlemen. Texas cattle began to enter the markets of the North and East. The Civil War put a stop to this for a time. At the close of the war the Texas ranges were swarming with cattle. They soon began to move northward in search of more pasture as well as of better markets. This drift northward followed, in the main, the western

edge of the settlements, and the route came to be known as the Texas Cattle Trail. As settlements extended westward the trail necessarily moved westward also.

By this time the northern ranges were all west of the Mississippi River and were soon confined to the Great Plains. Farming on these plains was slow in development, because of the insufficient rainfall. Therefore the tide of westward settlement was so retarded as to permit a considerable development of what came to be called cattle ranching. The grazing

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Distribution of Sheep in the United States

industry was given more time in which to develop systematically. It was less transitory than it had been on the rapidly moving frontier of earlier times. It still survives over considerable areas of the arid West, that is, west of the one hundred and second meridian, though it is gradually becoming more restricted through the gradual settlement of the better lands by farmers. Nearly half the beef cattle and more than half the sheep of the United States are grown on these ranges, though many of the animals raised there are afterwards fattened in what is known as the corn belt; that is, the country in which

Indian corn is the leading crop. This belt extends from Ohio westward beyond the Missouri River, roughly to the ninetyeighth meridian. Considerable numbers of horses are also grown on these ranges, but most of them are grown on the farms farther east. Goats also have increased on some of the southwestern ranges, though they have never played a very important rôle in our national economy.

Lumbering. Next to grass the most valuable natural product of the soil is timber. It might occupy first place if the value of

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Distribution of Cattle in the United States

the native timber standing at a given time were compared with the value of the native grass standing at the same time. The proper basis of comparison, however, is the annual growth of the two products on soil equally good for either. Though this is sometimes called the age of steel, wood is still an important and almost indispensable material.

The first settlers on our Atlantic seaboard found a dense and apparently limitless forest extending from the coast westward. It was not until well into the nineteenth century that the advance guard of the army of western migration began to

emerge from this forest onto the great prairies of the West. Timber was so abundant as scarcely to be considered an economic good. Certainly the settlers had little occasion to economize it. The best of it they used rather lavishly; the rest they destroyed in order that they might use the land for things which they needed more than they needed timber. Along the northern tier of states the great forest extended as far west as Minnesota. In the middle strip the prairies began in parts of northern Indiana. Farther south the forest followed the Ohio valley to the Mississippi, and extended beyond through central and southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana into portions of eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Other forests were found in the high mountains of the West, but the finest of all were found in the region of Puget Sound in our extreme Northwest.

After the first onslaught of the settlers, who were bent on getting rid of the timber in order to clear the land for cultivation, lumbering became a regular business in every part of our forested area. Its greatest development was in lands which were not the most valuable for agricultural purposes. Along our northern border, where the climate was somewhat severe, and where the soil was rather light and sandy, the timber was not destroyed in order to clear the land, because better lands were available farther south. When the timber of this northern strip came to have a commercial value, it became the scene of lumbering on a large scale. Large companies were formed, thousands of men were employed, and great fortunes were made. Lumbering in this region, particularly along the Great Lakes and the upper tributaries of the Mississippi River, that is, in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where water transportation was cheap, developed rapidly during the latter half of the nineteenth century and then declined rapidly. A similar development took place in the southern states. Here the greatest activity was along the southern coast, just outside of the cotton belt; that is, on land which was not cleared primarily for the purpose of growing cotton, but where the

timber was left standing until it had acquired a commercial value through the increased demand and the improvement of transportation facilities. The most valuable timber tree of this belt was the yellow pine, as the white pine had been of the northern belt. Lumbering, however, has by no means been confined to these two belts. Much timber of various kinds and qualities is cut every year in every state in the Union, though naturally it is less in the prairie states than in the states which were originally forested. In the older states some of the timber lands have been cut over several times since the first settlement and will doubtless yield many harvests in the future. But the greater part of our original virgin forest has been destroyed. Such cut-over lands as are not suitable for other purposes, or not needed immediately for agriculture, will undoubtedly be allowed to reforest themselves or be reforested by scientific methods, but it is safe to say that the days of cheap and abundant timber in this country are past. From this time forward careful conservation will be necessary in order to safeguard an adequate supply.

The magnitude of the lumber industry of the United States for the years 1899-1913 is shown by the following table: 1

NUMBER OF ACTIVE MILLS REPORTING AND QUANTITY OF LUMBER, 1899-1913

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1 Bulletin No. 232, United States Department of Agriculture. Washington,

1915.

2 In 1913 the number of active mills included only those cutting lumber, while the figures for the other years include mills cutting laths and shingles as well as lumber.

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