There's Gold in Them Hoofs

The 1870s and 1880s - the age of the cattle baron.  Profits were unlimited, ranches were as large as eastern states...it was a wildly optimistic time.  Everyone expected to get rich overnight.  Steer prices went higher and higher while the world's appetite (pre McDonalds) for beef soared.

Wild stories traveled back East.  The story of a servant girl on the plains whose boss, being short of cash, paid her in cows.  With an original herd of 15 cows, they were permitted to graze and multiply on her bosses' range.  In 10 years, her original pay was worth $25,000.

The cattlemen's magazine, Breeder's Gazette, promised its readers unimaginable riches: "a full grown steer will bring between $45-$60 at market with the initial cost of just $5.  With hardly any expense to the owner, a thousand of these can be kept as cheaply as one and an investment of just $5,000 can be turned into $45,000 in just four years."

Joint stock companies were formed from Wall Street to Scotland to buy out and combine ranches, bring in new breed of cattle, and recruit managers and cowboys to run them.  Alexander Hamilton Swan managed to persuade a group of Scottish investors to buy out 5/6 of his holdings for $2.4 million while he and a partner retained the remaining stock with Swan as general manager of Swan Land and Cattle Company, LTD.  One Wyoming beef herd turned into a vast beef empire.

Swan had no equal in breeding or promotion.  By the mid-1880s, his company had 120,000 head, among them 500 prize Hereford imported from England to improve the stock.  His personal fortune was estimated at $2-3 million.  However, Swan was a risk taker and eventually he went into debt too far and in 1887, bad weather and low prices put his whole company out of business.  He died a bankrupt and forgotten man.  The changing wings of fortune!

Next time...The sweet, rich life of cattle barons
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 6, 1890, at Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe.