The Story of Wool

by Sara Ware Bassett

"As you remember, sir, we must have permits to graze on the range. You have paid enough money to the government to realize that."

"Yes, indeed. And I never grudge the money, either."

"What are permits, Sandy?" put in Donald eagerly.

"Well, laddie, long ago people who raised horses and sheep wandered over all the mountainsides with their herds, and fed them wherever grass was plenty. It was free land. Anybody could graze there. It was a fine thing for a man with thousands of sheep not to have to pay a cent for their food, wasn't it?"

"Of course."

"You would have thought there would have been enough for everybody to feed their stock peaceably, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, indeed!"

"Well now, it didn't work out so at all. The sheepmen and the cattlemen came to actual war. The cattlemen declared that their herds would not graze where the sheep had been because of some queer odor the sheep left behind them; they argued, moreover, that sheep gnawed the grass off so close to the roots that they destroyed the crop and left barren land. The sheepmen, on the other hand, complained because the cattle—loving to stand in the water—waded into the water-holes and spoiled them. Each faction tried to crowd the other off the range. Dreadful things happened. Vaqueros, or cowboys, would dash on horseback right into the midst of a flock and scatter the sheep in every direction. Often many of the sheep fled into the hills and their owners never could find them again. Or sometimes the cowboys would drive the sheep ahead of them over high precipices. Cattlemen, being on horseback, had a great scorn for sheep-herders, who were obliged to trail their flocks on foot. The feud between the two varieties of stock-raisers became worse and worse."

Donald listened breathlessly.

"More men took up stock-raising as time went on, and in consequence more herds were turned onto the range. Soon the results began to show. The young trees of the forest lands were trampled down, or nibbled and destroyed; water-holes, which the settlers had used as their water supply, began to be polluted; homesteaders, who had built houses and settled in the sheep-raising districts, were driven off the range and had no place where they could be sure of feeding their flocks. The worst evil, though, was that one band of sheep after another would feed in the same spot. The first flock would nip off the top of the grass; the next flock had to eat it closer in order to get food enough; and when the last flocks came they burrowed into the earth with their sharp noses and dug the grass up by the roots. Whole stretches of land that had once been green and beautiful were left bare so that nothing would grow on them for years and years. Cattle do not eat the turf so close as that, and I do not wonder that the vaqueros complained, do you?"