Putting Cowboys — and Their Industry — in True Historical Context

Cowboys eating tomatoes, by Erwin E. Smith, Bonham, Texas (Library of Congress)

(NYTimes) ... Supply and demand have seldom meshed more neatly. The Southwest had cattle and little else; the Northeast had fast-growing cities awash in new wealth and new appetites. Join the two — bring Western cattle to Eastern dinner tables — and a man could grow rich! Millionaires and would-be millionaires raced to get in the game. Rockefellers knocked elbows with Vanderbilts and Whitneys; dukes bumped up against earls and barons. Even the famously cynical P. T. Barnum plunked down his cash.

Early on, they watched in wide-eyed exultation. Cattle on their way to market were money on the hoof, and there were hooves galore. A decade after the Civil War, the hordes of cattle in transit would constitute “the largest forced migration of animals in human history.” Continued