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The End of the Chisholm Trail

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

David Galenson
David Galenson
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The Long Drive has captured the popular imagination to an extent almost unmatched by other events in American history. The Chisholm Trail, the Red River, Abilene, and Dodge City are only a few of the names that owe their immortalization to the cattle drives of the two decades after the Civil War; such legendary figures as Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson owe their glorification to the cattle towns of Kansas, which grew up as markets for the millions of Texas Longhorns driven on the hoof as much as a thousand miles from their native ranges. Few today are unaware of the grim gunfighters who once faced each other at high noon on the dusty streets of Dodge City, or of the hardy cowboys who herded Longhorn steers over endless trails fraught with peril.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 350 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1974

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References

I would like to thank Paul David and Peter McClelland for suggestions, constructive criticism, and encouragement at all stages of preparation of this paper. Additionally, Zvi Griliches, Nathan Rosenberg, and an anonymous referee made helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

1 An annual series of the number or cattle driven is given by Osgood, Ernest Staples, The Day of the Cattleman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929), p. 32Google Scholar. The calculation in the text is based on Osgood's total and the series of the estimated number of cattle slaughtered annually in the U.S. (beginning in 1869) in Frederick Strauss and Bean, Louis H., Gross Farm Income and the Indices of Farm Production and Prices in the United States, 1869–1937, Technical Bulletin No. 703, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington: U.S.G.P.O., 1940), p. 110.Google Scholar

2 In chronological order: (1) Freeman, James W., ed., Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, prepared by authority of the National Live Stock Association, 1905 (New York: reprinted by the Antiquarian Press, Ltd., 1959), pp. 538–39Google Scholar; (2) Faulkner, Harold Underwood, American Economic History, Revised Edition, (New York: Harper and.Brothers Publishers, 1931), p. 430Google Scholar; (3) Cauley, T. J., “Early Business Methods in the Texas Cattle Industry,” Journal of Economic and Business History, IV (May 1932), 480Google Scholar; (4) Pelzer, Louis, The Cattlemen's Frontier: A record of the trans-Mississippi cattle industry from oxen trains to pooling companies, 1850–1890, (Glendale, Cal.: The Arthur H. Clark Company,. 1934), pp. 68–9Google Scholar; (5) Gard, Wayne, The Chisholm Trail, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), p. 259Google Scholar; (6) Drago, Harry Sinclair, Great American Cattle Trails (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1965), pp. 180Google Scholar, 192; (7) Dykstra, Robert, The Cattle Towns (New York: Atheneum, 1970), pp. 348–49.Google Scholar

3 Gard, The Chisholm Trail, pp. 65–66.

4 Gerschenkron, Alexander, “Agrarian Policies and Industrialization: Russia 1861–1917,” in Habakkuk, H.J. and Postan, M., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1965), Vol. VI, Part II, p. 706.Google Scholar

5 Gard, The Chisholm Trail, pp. 193–94; Freeman, Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, p. 538.

6 The character of the drive had certainly changed by 1879. In 1885, W. H. Miller, secretary of the Kansas City Board of Trade, wrote that “During the past six or seven years nearly all of the drive has been made up of stock cattle for ranges north of Texas.” Quoted in Nimmo, Joseph Jr, Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1885), p. 189.Google Scholar

7 Nimmo, Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, p. 13.

8 Dale, Edward Everett, The Range Cattle Industry: Ranching on the Great Plains from 1865 to 1925 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), p. 90.Google Scholar

9 United States Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of the United States: 1880 (Washington D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1883), Vol. III, p. 975.Google Scholar

10 Nimmo,’ Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, p. 159. Captain John Lytle, a Texas drover, wrote that during the late 1870's and 1880's, “the cost of sending cattle over the trail [to Kansas] was about $1.25 per head; the cost of railway is about $4.00 a head;” Quoted in Freeman, Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, p. 660. Osgood wrote that “freight charges were three times as great as the expense of a drive,” about $3.00 to $1.00 per head; The Day of the Cattleman, p. 91.

11 The reason for this (that Texas, or splenic, fever was transmitted by ticks the southern cattle carried, and that most of the ticks were lost during the several months of the drive) was not known at the time, but it was common knowledge among cattlemen by 1885 that Longhorns that had been driven north posed less of a threat to northern herds than those shipped by rail. Nimmo, Report, pp. 26, 38.

12 Ibid., p. 38.

13 These are the average weights for Longhorn, Texas steers given by the Tenth Census of the United States: 1880, Vol. III, p. 977.Google Scholar

14 It should be noted that this statement contains an implicit assumption. Strictly speaking, the decision rule based on a comparison of the market and present value ratios tells the rancher only what to do with his yearling steers (i.e., to hold them or sell them). What he should do with his fours depends on a separate set of (profitability) calculations.

The use of a discounted weight ratio is justified, here only if a market was available to Texas ranchers that provided a completely elastic demand for cattle by weight. In Kansas, cattle were not sold by weight; however in Chicago they were, so both the standard and discounted weight ratios implicitly represent the Chicago price ratio. This restricts the validity of the discounted weight ratio to the years in which direct shipping to the Chicago market was a readily available alternative for Texas ranchers. As noted above, direct shipping began in the mid-1870's; but the scale of shipments is not known; the data in Table 1 indicate that shipments comparable in size to the drives were made at least as early as 1881, so here the discounted weight ratio will be considered strictly applicable only for the period after 1880.

15 This analysis assumes free grazing, which was the situation in Texas at this time (the analysis could also be modified for constant marginal cost grazing). The production function for steers could be altered by access to better grazing. George Loving, a contemporary expert on Texas cattle, wrote in 1885 that “A Nebraska-Texan, by which I mean a steer produced in Texas, but moved to Nebraska (one or two years old), on the Chicago market at four years old, should average from 1,100 to 1,300 pounds. At the same age, if matured in the Panhandle or northwest part of Texas, would weigh from 1,000 to 1,100 pounds; if matured in the eastern or southern part of the State, would weigh from 850 to 950 pounds.” Quoted in Nimmo, Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, p. 106. Thus in the later years of the Long Drive production reasons accounted for the driving of young southern cattle to stock the ranges of the north.

16 Additionally, it should be remembered that our present value calculations are implicitly based on static expectations of the price structure, which would not have been the case for the rancher at the time, since the years after 1882 were generally a period of falling northern beef prices. This means that our calculated present value ratio of ones to fours is essentially a lower bound for these years from the rancher's viewpoint, for the value of fours was directly determined by the price of beef in the north. The conclusion that ranchers were increasingly reluctant to sell yearling steers in 1885 is reinforced, for the Texas market price ratio of ones to fours in that year was 44 percent, considerably below the lower bound rancher's present value of 49 percent.

17 Cox, James, Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas and Adjacent Territory (New York: reprinted Aquarian Press, Ltd., 1959), p. 126.Google Scholar

18 Galenson, David, “An Economic History of the Long Drive, 1866–1885,” (Senior Honors Thesis, Harvard University, 1973), pp. 88–90Google Scholar, 93–94.

19 Drovers' rates of return are calculated in Galenson, , “An Economic History of the Long Drive, 1866–1885,” pp. 74–131.Google Scholar

20 Nimmo, Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, p. 35.

21 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

22 Ibid., pp. 36–7.

23 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1902), V, p. clviGoogle Scholar. This situation resulted from the curious condition that cattle reproduced faster in Texas than elsewhere. Nimmo, Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, pp. 21, 106, 111–12. However, as noted above, if raised in the north, the better grazing conditions made the mature cattle weigh several hundred pounds more than if they were raised in Texas. Ibid., p. 106.

24 -Cox, Historical and Biographical Record, pp. 72–4.