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One of the last of the old Concord stage coaches. Motor stages are now taking

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their place.

Is the Old West Passing?

By Waldo R. Smith

VERY few months we read in some magazine a more or less poetic lament over "the passing of the Old West." It makes very good reading, and as great changes have certainly taken place in some parts of the West during the last twenty-five years, perhaps the idea that "the Old West is passing" has some foundation in reality.

But when one has "been there," and fully understands the nature and extent of those changes, he is inclined to doubt whether the distinctively the distinctively Western types and the conditions that produced them are "passing" as rap

idly as some would have him believe. The average Easterner thinks of the West as a country inhabited almost entirely by cowboys and more or less wild Indians. After a time, perhaps, he goes West, and finds that Denver, for example, situated in the heart of the Western country, is a good sized city, surrounded by well cultivated farms. During his stay he does not so much as glimpse an Indian or cowboy. Then, determined to see something of the wild West of which he has heard, he goes on-to Cheyenne, or Great Falls, or some other city, and finds the same conditions existing. Im

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mediately he decides that something is wrong; and as the days go by and he sees only commonplace individuals, dressed in the conventional garb of the East, he is convinced that "the Old West is passing"-and some go so far as to assert that it has already passed. Then, if he is a writer, or a near-writer, the aforesaid poetic lament follows.

If, however, our tourist panting for the thrills of the wild West had gone fifty, or even twenty-five miles out, into the cattle range, it is possible that he would have obtained another opinion.

It is difficult for the Eastern man to appreciate the vast size and infinite. diversity of the country indicated by the term "the West." He knows from his school geography that Rhode Island might easily be mislaid in one corner of Texas; but when he finds several areas the size of Rhode Island which have all the civilized appearance of that little State, scattered about a country of which Texas is only a small part, he at once jumps to the conclusion that the entire country is the same.

Even when he attends one of the

annual celebrations, such as the Cheyenne "Frontier Days" or the Pendleton "Roundup," his opinion remains unchanged; for he argues with himself that this is only an exhibition to commemorate the "old days;" and since the population of Cheyenne or Pendleton knows scarcely more of cowpunchers or Indians than he does himself, he is firmly seated in his belief. Yet these exhibitions should, by their very existence, furnish sufficient evidence to refute this widespread fallacy. Riding bucking horses is not an art which may be learned by correspondence. Neither is the ability to "rope, throw and tie" a steer in a minute and a half acquired by "pushing a plow." But this fact the general public fails to realize, as it does the equally true one that, as one cowpuncher friend of the writer expressed it, "there's all kinds of country west of the little old Missouri."

Forty years ago, almost the only industries west of the Big Muddy were cattle raising and mining. The Indians were just beginning to feel the press of white invasion, and to resent the restrictions placed upon them: so they were more or less turbulent. Con

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sequently, the traveler was impressed with these phases of Western life because they were the only ones then existing. To-day the Indians, almost to a man, are prosperous ranchmen or farmers, and the coming of the railroad has nearly obliterated the type of old-fashioned "cow-town." There are many industries besides cattle raising and mining being carried on in the West to-day; but this does not necessarily mean the total extinction of the cattleman and the miner, any more than the abandonment of many farms in the New England States means the total extinction of the farmer in that section. The cowpuncher, Indian and miner do not occupy the entire Western stage-that is all.

One cannot hope to see cowboys or Indians ride down the principal street of Cheyenne, except on extraordinary occasions. The appearance of either in their full regalia is enough to bring scores of gaping spectators from the homes and stores. And the visitor to a ranch or a reservation cannot hope to witness a continual dress parade.

Fifty miles out of Cheyenne, however, lies some pretty wild country; and in Western Nebraska, which has

a stock law, and is therefore mostly fenced range, I have driven for twentyfive miles without encountering a fence or seeing a house or a human being.

It is true that sheep have devastated many square miles of good cattle range; that numerous towns have sprung up in the West within the last decade; and that barbed wire has made sad inroads upon the old "free range"-in places. But enough of the Old West still exists between the Missouri and the Cascades to satisfy the most enthusiastic tenderfoot, be he a tourist from New York or a drug clerk from Great Falls.

And it is in this great stretch of grassland, separated from the towns by a broad belt of farms around each town, that we must travel if we wish to see the Old West-not as it was, but as it still exists. There the traveler will find his cowpunchers, very probably differing greatly from those of his fiction bred imagination, but cowpunchers, nevertheless. I venture to assert that no such characters as the average cowboy of fiction ever lived. either in the Old West or elsewhere. And if he visits a reservation on occasions like the "give-away" or

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Cowpunchers of the Jew's-harp brand with their outfit, Western Nebraska.

"Fair Week" on Pine Ridge, South Dakota, he will see plenty of Indians -in full war clothes, at that.

The very nature of the country makes its complete occupation by the farmer impossible. There is a great deal of misunderstanding in regard to this. Numerous real estate sharks, "Homeseekers' Syndicates," and the like, have pictured the "vast, untenanted acres of the West" as an ideal and glorious opportunity for the small farmer.

The plain truth is, that outside of such garden spots as the Bitter Root Valley and a few scattered districts among or near the mountains, where dams may be built and irrigation practiced, the cattle country, from the Cascades to the Missouri, can never be adapted to agriculture, except along the streams.

Even where irrigation is practicable on a large scale, the various projects are owned by big syndicates, who charge the farmer such exorbitant water rates, in addition to the price of his land, that no one except the wellto-do can afford to go in for this kind of farming. And even though the pro

jects were government owned, the cost of their upkeep is necessarily so high that irrigation can never become profitable for the average impecunious farmer who is struggling to get a

start.

"Dry farming" has also been unduly boomed. It sounds nice on paper to tell just how many potatoes John Jones raised per acre by dry farming, butany Western homesteader who has tried it will tell you that dry farming is likely to be extremely dry. It works out well enough in the fertile river bottoms, but the trouble is that the country is not all river bottoms. And the uplands are totally unfit for agriculture, real estate agents and others interested in the "development of the country" to the contrary notwithstanding.

There was once in Kansas a stretch of prairie on which the buffalo grass grew thick enough and lush enough to cut for hay. It was ideal stock country. A lot of dry farmers moved in, bent on making the desert blossom as the rose, and plowed up the sod. They struck a gravelly subsoil, on which to use an apt expression, it was impossi

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