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AT THE SIGN OF
THE STOCK YARD INN

THE SAME BEING A TRUE ACCOUNT OF
HOW CERTAIN GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF
THE PAST HAVE BEEN COMMEMORATED
AND CLEVERLY LINKED WITH THE PRESENT;
TOGETHER WITH SUNDRY RECOLLEC-
TIONS INSPIRED BY THE PORTRAITS
AT THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

By ALVIN HOWARD SANDERS, D. AGR.,LL.D.

EDITOR "THE BREEDER'S GAZETTE."
AUTHOR OF "SHORTHORN CATTLE"
AND "THE STORY OF THE HEREFORDS"

Slock.

WV-:,

CHICAGO

BREEDERS GAZETTE PRINT

1915

BY SANDERS PUBLISHING CO.

^-yJ"

J-

^N.^

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I— The Saddle and Sirloin Club 5-7

II— An International Triumph 8-10

III— The Grasp of a Friendly Hand 1 1-20

IV— The Lighting of a Torch 21-26

V— Dreams Come True 27-32

VI— The Trophies of Miltiades 33-39

VII— A Sanctum Sanctorum 40-45

VIII— Aladdin's Lamp 46-50

IX— Durham Divinities 51-59

X— The Grassy Lanes of Hurworth 60-66

XI— From Sire to Sons 67-73

XII— A Master of Arts 74-88

XIII— Romance of the Dukes and Duchesses 89-107

XIV— The First Farmer of England 108-1 14

XV— Northern Lights 1 15-125

XVI— Creators of Pastoral Wealth 126-137

XVII— "The Herdsman of Aberdeenshire" 138-143

XVIII— When Success Came to Sittyton 144-154

XIX— A Baronial Hall 155-160

XX— Beginnings of Illinois Cattle-Breeding 161-170

XXI— "Set Ye Up a Standard in the Land" 171-186

XXII— The Sunny Slopes of Linwood 187-200

XXIII-Aftermath 201-208

XXIV— A Knight of the Golden Days 209-220

XXV— The Inspiration of the Inn 221-224

XXVI— History in the Making 225-238

XXVII— Some Purely American Achievements 239-246

XXVIII— The Laird of Netherhall 247-250

XXIX— A Lover of the Land 251-256

XXX-Fiat Lux 257-262

XXXI— The Call of a Distant Past 263-285

XXXII— Some Steps in Live-Stock Journalism 286-294

XXXIII— Where Production and Distribution Meet 295-304

XXIV— "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?" 305-3 1 6

XXXV— A Wayside Shrine 317-319

XXXVI-Falling Leaves 320-322

333972

To the members of the
Saddle and Sirloin Glub
and kindred spirits of
every land, this volume
is dedicated by

The Author

THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

To those who are interested directly or indirectly
in the Nation's greatest industry the Saddle and
Sirloin Club has, from its very inception, appealed
with compelling force. To those who are familiar
with the history of modern husbandry and with the
development of the leading types of improved domes-
tic animals found in Great Britain and America, the
Club is simply fascinating. To those who find in its
quiet precincts a restful place of refuge in the heart
of a more or less forbidding environment it is a source
of endless satisfaction. In all directions round about
there is naught but drear monotony and commonplace,
a wilderness of bricks and yards and passageways,
and over all there hangs persistently the pall of
smoke emitted by the craters of ceaseless and co-
lossal commercial activities.

To those who glory in the triumphs of the
master minds of the animal breeding world it is a joy
forever. Members and guests alike feel instinctively
the touch of its refining atmosphere. Even those
who know nothing of the history of the Club and
have no acquaintance with the names or deeds com-
memorated by the portraits hanging upon its walls
cannot fail to sense at once the presence of a

AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

psychologic influence distinctly inspiring in its char-
acter and operation.

Thousands hurry by it day by day, yet know it
not. Many enjoy its creature comforts, but few there
be who catch its real significance. The vast majority
of those who pass its portals know merely this: it
serves as a convenient rendezvous for all those whose
interests center within the busiest square mile of
territory in all this world; a place where men contest
fiercely and continuously for the prizes of successful
competition; where power meets power and the race
is only to the strong.

You may be amazed at the overwhelming demon-
strations of modern industrial efficiency seen in
Packingtown. You may note that the Exposition
Building's northern wall forms one side of the peace-
ful courtyard of the beautiful Stock Yard Inn. You
may stop for luncheon at the Glub, and may manifest
a languid interest in its pictures. Some may be able
to grasp the true relationship of all these things, one
with the other; but unless you have some familiarity
with the story, unless your memory can take you back
to a day when there was no Inn, no International
Show, no Glub, and above all unless one has at least
a speaking acquaintance with the more notable
Saddle and Sirloin portraits, one will miss entirely

THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

that which means so much to a rapidly-passing gen-
eration.

You who have heard day after day and night after
night the applause of splendid audiences as the final
proofs cf man's mastery of the mysteries of animal
procreation and development have been presented in
the great amphitheatre; you who have adjourned
from the ringside to the taproom of the Inn, or
sought the cozy corners of the Club to discuss the
wonders of the shows; you who toil daily within the
Yards — may appreciate fully the privileges you enjoy,
and again you may not.

I stood one day before the pictures of Tom Booth
and Robert Alexander recalling visions bright and
vistas fair of Warlaby and Woodburn. Some strangers
passed that way, apparently pleased and interested.
Obviously, however, they could not see the pictures
I was contemplating. In another room I stopped.
Linwood and Oaklawn were pulling at my heart-
strings. Triumphs and tragedies unforgettable were
passing in review on every hand, all unseen by those
who were wandering aimlessly through the galleries.
That night an impulse seized me. Was it possible
to communicate to others even a faint reflection of
the treasures of this place of dreams? Was it within
the power of anyone to convey to the members of

AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

this unique organization and their many guests, any

adequate explanation of the reason why we find

there so much to admire and even reverence? Gould

words be found that might serve even in slight degree

to give outward expression to what is inwardly felt

by many of those who frequent lovingly the Saddle

AND Sirloin Glub? And my fancy at the moment

took this turn:

Stranger within our gates, whoe'er thou art,
Within these silent walls ye may commune
With lofty spirits of a mighty past,
Rich in achievements wrought in fruitful fields
And benefactions rendered human kind.

Here have we builded us an inner shrine
Wherein the wrangling of the busy market place
Obtrudeth not; whereto, in quiet hours we come
To cast aside each selfish sordid thought
And pledge ourselves to high ideals anew.

So now, dear reader, if you would follow me in an
effort at sketching broadly some of the stories that
cluster around the Saddle and Sirloin Glub, I bid
ye summon to your aid at once that intangible attri-
bute of the human intellect, that essence of the soul
perhaps — by whatever name it may be called — that
lifts man high above the level of the brute creation:
the power that can irradiate with living light dim
places and dumb walls or hang a halo round the
apparently commonplace. It comes not quickly at

THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

one's beck and call. Indeed, by some it is invoked
in vain. With most of us, however, it is susceptible
of successful cultivation. It is the subtle product of
an abiding love for the higher and more elevating
things of life, and finds fruition only in a knowledge
of them. It comes, of course, in fullest measure to
those favored of the gods who habitually seek and
find "sermons in stones and good in everything."

AN INTERNATIONAL TRIUMPH

All day long the cumulative work of generations
of men had been on exhibition. Valued at well beyond
the million mark, the latest creations of the art of
arts had been admired and studied by a seething
mass of humanity, to which city and country alike
had generously contributed. With the lure of living,
breathing, physical perfection strong in all their
hearts, they had followed with unflagging enthusiasm
the endless competitions and parades. Never had
such appreciation been manifested in such a presen-
tation. Never had the display of models been so
splendid. Old countrymen familiar with the English
Royal, the Scottish National and London's Smithfield
frankly expressed amazement at the degree of per-
fection, the quality and fidelity to type displayed.

Ambassadors of foreign powers diplomatically dis-
cussed the results achieved in America as contrasted
with those obtained abroad. The Secretary of Agri-
culture exchanged felicitations with the official repre-
sentatives of neighboring nations. Governors of many
states rejoiced in the visible evidences of the rural
riches of our Western Commonwealths. Wall Street
men rubbed elbows with magnates of the western
range, or talked of Glydes and Shropshires. Everybody

AN INTERNATIONAL TRIUMPH

met or wanted to meet the English judge who had
crossed the seas to apportion championship rosettes.
Guests from the Orient and the Argentine concealed
not their surprise and keen delight at the superb
character and overwhelming extent of the exhibits.

Presidents of universities, directors of agricultural
experiment stations, landlords and tenants, feeders,
farmers, students, packers, commission merchants,
buyers and salesmen of high and low degree, men,
and women too, from widely separated sections of
our country, followed with an interest unrestrained
the hard-fought battles of the ring. Rival college
delegations shouted loud defiance back and forth
across the field until all were hoarse. The thrill of
combat was in the blood. The enthusiasm was elec-
tric. The very air was charged. But at length the
strenuous day was done.

Massively magnificent and splendidly impressive
incarnations of animate power in heavy harness thun-
dered out of the great arena to the crash of brass
and drums and the plaudits of the multitude. The
assembled thousands rose en masse, and cheer upon
cheer resounded throughout the amphitheatre. The
last act of a stirring, realistic drama had been suc-
cessfully staged. The throngs were quickly swallowed
up in the crowded city street, and presently the

10 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

brilliant scene had faded like the insubstantial pageant
of a dream.

At the Saddle and Sirloin Club a half hour
later the big events of a satisfying day were being
discussed by loitering groups of men engrossed in
the interpretation of the real significance of these
tremendous demonstrations. The International Live
Stock Exposition, greatest of all competitions of its
kind the world has ever seen, had gripped the nation.
From gilded coigns of vantage on the walls choice
spirits of another age looked down in mute approval;
and thereby hangs this tale.

Ill

THE GRASP OF A FRIENDLY HAND

Contrary to general understanding the estab-
lishment of the International Live Stock Exposition
was not the first move made by the present man-
agement of the Chicago Union Stock Yards in the
interest of progressive animal husbandry in the Mid-
west states. The comparatively inferior character
of the bulk of the cattle receipts at central markets
quickly attracted attention. The one effective blow
to 'be struck at this obvious weakness in cornbelt
production was the elimination of the scrub or native
sire, and the substitution of purebreds.

Arthur G. Leonard is nothing if not direct in his
instincts and methods. He had easily diagnosed the
disease, and the remedy to be applied was indicated
so plainly that anybody could write the prescription.
With characteristic celerity he had soon evolved a
comprehensive plan for distributing well-bred bulls
on terms that would insure their being placed at once
in service in various farming communities. The idea
was of course similar to that upon which James J.
Hill has acted in Great Northern territory. Prom-
inent railway managers were approached and inter-
ested in the project. This was before the era when
baiting the transportation companies became such a

12 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

popular and expensive national pastime, and the lines
were able at that date to extend a cut rate for the
handling of these missionary bulls. Before the plan
was matured, however, its sponsor became convinced
that while his remedy for the deplorable condition
existing — the scarcity of good cattle — was the only
one, he was in error as to who should apply it. It
did not take long to convert him to the proposition
that the breeders of the country were ready, willing,
anxious and able to furnish these bulls direct to all
customers at living prices; that anything like a broad
distribution at the expense largely of the Union
Stock Yard Company, and the transportation lines,
would really be cutting the ground out from under
the feet of the very persons who most of all needed
the strong arm of a powerful ally in the fight they
were making for more and better cattle on the farms.
And so the bull business was forthwith abandoned
for reasons which in this case appeared to be wholly
sound.

"Where there is a will there is a way." The dis-
position to do something was present all right. It
was merely a question of the form the energy would
assume, and the country had not long to wait.
"The show's the thing." That was the answer. And
lo! the International Live Stock Exposition!

THE GRASP OF A FRIENDLY HAND 13

We must acknowledge at the outset our deep
indebtedness to Great Britain for a majority of the
most valuable varieties of improved domestic animals
that have proved so useful and profitable in the
development of our live stock industries; and in this
same connection concede the fact that to Britain's
historic colonial possession, our neighbor of the north,
the Dominion of Canada, we are beholden for much
that has been helpful and inspiring to our own
people, both in the matter of men and materials
in the upbuilding of our herds, studs and flocks. To
Ontario especially we have turned time and again
when seeking to call our own farmers to the colors
of animal breeding as practiced so successfully for
so many generations by our Scotch and English
cousins. In that province have been implanted and
preserved by men of British ancestry that same
abiding faith in, and fondness for, good horses, sheep
and cattle that have made England the birthplace
and nursery of so much that the world enjoys in
the way of highly developed animal life.

Our Canadian brethren have for a great many
years maintained at the Ontario capital one of the
best managed agricultural exhibitions on either con-
tinent. It is admirably conducted, is patronized and
stoutly supported by the best men in Dominion and

1-4 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Provincial business and official life, and is an edu-
cational institution of highest value, famous for its
"get together" luncheons and banquets at which a
spirit of mutual good will and public enterprise is
fostered with extraordinary annual success. It was
while in. attendance at one of these Toronto shows
some years ago that a group of men including
Robert B. Ogilvie, William E. Skinner, Mortimer
Levering and G. Howard Davison conceived the
idea of creating a great national show at Chicago,
to be managed by and for the stock-breeding and
producing interests of North America, and under-
written financially by the Stock Yard Company. The
scheme was laid before Mr. Leonard, who recog-
nized at once the splendid vista opened. Here was
the ideal method of putting the great resources and
potential facilities of the Stock Yard property be-
hind the live stock industry in a practical and super-
latively effective manner.

John A. Spoor, at that time President of the
company, is an able and conservative man. His
company was in the stock yard business first of all;
but he was in full sympathy with everything that
promised to promote American live stock interests,
so long as it did not interfere with the just measure
of his official responsibility to those whose invest-

THE GRASP OF A FRIENDLY HAND 15

ments were intrusted directly to his charge. He
had implicit confidence in the good faith and judg-
ment of his manager, Mr. Leonard. The big under-
taking in short received his tentative approval, and
later his unequivocal and hearty commendation.

The initial convention called to commit the breed-
ing interests of the country to the support of the
projected International assembled in the hall of the
Live Stock Exchange in November, 1899. The
writer of these notes can bear personal testimony
to the enthusiasm that prevailed upon that mem-
orable occasion, because the most agreeable duty
of serving that meeting in the capacity of Chair-
man fell to our lot; and later — since this now per-
force takes on more or less of the character of
personal recollections with an unavoidable tinge of
autobiography — we had the privilege of presiding for
the first ten years of the show's existence at the
meetings of its Board of Directors. Looking back
at this distance I cannot refrain from paying high
compliment to the unselfish devotion of the men
who originally planned the rules, regulations and
classifications of this great national institution, and at
great personal sacrifice attended the meetings and
superintended the launching of so great an enter-
prise. In the course of some thirty years of identi-

16 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

fication with the interests centered in this show,
the writer has sustained various official relations
with many representative men; but retrospection far
extended brings to mind no pleasanter associations
than those connected with the upbuilding of the
International Live Stock Exposition.

Let not those who view the show now after a
lapse of fifteen years imagine that it blossomed into
full flower in a night. Quite the contrary. Tem-
porary and decidedly cramped accommodations for
both man and beast were at first all that could be
offered. But the disposition to help was there, and
slowly but surely it won for itself liberal treatment
at the hands of the Stock Yard Company and in-
creasing patronage from the public.

It was only a question of time when a great
permanent building would be erected primarily for
the benefit of the International. This of course
involved the occupancy of a large tract of enor-
mously valuable real estate and the erection of a
huge fireproof structure specially adapted to ex-
hibition purposes. Once more Mr. Spoor was ap-
proached with the proposition to risk a large sum
of money in a collateral enterprise, and again he
demonstrated his faith in the soundness of Mr.
Leonard's judgment, and in the future of animal

THE GRASP OF A FRIENDLY HAND 17

husbandry. He was already carrying the heavy
financial responsibility directly entailed by these an-
nual shows. Not only had prizes and all running
expenses to be met, but there was ever hanging
over head the matter of possible and unknown lia-
bilities in the event of accident or some untoward
disaster supervening.

All that was suggested by President Spoor was
that those chiefly concerned in the establishment
of the big show on a permanent footing come for-
ward with a guarantee fund of $50,000 to be
subscribed by life members of a breeders' organiza-
tion to be known as the International Live Stock
Exposition Association; the fund to be placed on
deposit, and both principal and interest allowed to
accumulate until such time as its use in whole or
in part might be determined in some manner mutu-
ally satisfactory. This amount was promptly sub-
scribed and paid in, the contract for the big structure
on Halsted Street was let, and in 1905 the "house-
warming" was duly celebrated. The contributors to
the fund which thus insured the permanency of the
International deserve to be held in grateful remem-
brance. Those who came forward in this manner
at that time demonstrated their interest in sub-
stantial fashion, and they should not be forgotten

18 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

by those who are now profiting, nor by those who
will hereafter benefit by their act. Needless to add,
it was not the $50,000 itself that the Stock Yard
Company desired, but rather the establishment of
an underlying personal stake in the success of the
undertaking and the assurance of continued active
support which the raising of the fund at that crisis
represented.

William E. Skinner, who served so successfully
during many trying years as General Manager of the
show, came to the States from Canada early enough
in life to imbibe from his adopted country a good
share of that optimism and largeness of vision that
seems given to many who have been caught in the
whirlwind progress of these United States towards
unparalleled material accomplishments. Moreover,
he hauled up in the boundless booming West, where
familiarity for many years with the towering Rockies
and the uncharted range instilled into his alert and
retentive mind vivid conceptions of heights and
depths and breadths immeasurable. He brought to
the work of helping the International upon its feet
not only the oxygen of the western plains and
prairies, but a personal acquaintance with the stock-
men of the trans-Mississippi country as wide as it
was cordial and intimate. Put Skinner off at any

THE GRASP OF A FRIENDLY HAND 19

station west of Omaha, and he would probably call
by his first name the first man he met, be he hack-
driver, cow-puncher, ranch or railway superintendent,
range owner, governor, congressman or a Senator
of the United States, and the familiarity instead of
being resented would bring the hearty greetings of
good-fellowship growing out of mutual experiences
or aspirations.

As manager of the International, Mr. Skinner
gained the confidence of those whose support was
most essential to success. While his paths in more
recent years have run in other directions, he will
ever be credited by those who worked at his side
in the old International days as one of the most
potent of all factors in the evolution of the greatest
of all modern live stock shows.

However, this is not to be a history of the In-
ternational. That institution, worthy as it is of a
volume in itself, is but one of several outward
evidences of the forward movement of the recent
past in our live stock progress. The show is a
material evidence of great forces effectively wielded
in a practical direction. Behind the conception of
the Saddle and Sirloin Glub and the erection of
the Inn, is a recognition of the power of sentiment
in its relation to work-a-day business affairs that is

20 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

as unusual as it is intrinsically valuable, and it is to
this, more particularly, that we would now address
ourselves.

THE LIGHTING OF A TORCH

The initial successes of the International brought
forward many problems pressing for solution. Among
others this : How were the men who must be relied
upon to make the Exposition, and how were the
distinguished guests which such an institution was
beginning to attract from all over the world, to be
properly entertained and welcomed ? The antiquated
hostlery, the Transit House, dingy and out of date,
was impossible in that connection. Still it was there.
It had served for a full generation, and must still be
utilized. Then came the beginning of a solution.

It all happened one afternoon in June, 1903.
Mr. Leonard, Mr. Ogilvie and the writer of these
rambling notes were passengers aboard a Chicago &
Northwestern Railway train bound for the most
beautiful of our inland capitals — the city of Madison,
Wis. To be more explicit, we were on our way to
pay a visit to the agricultural college of the great
university, which from its semi -Venetian throne of
beauty dominates a panorama of surpassing loveli-
ness. Dean Henry was to be our host, and as the train
raced northward through pastures green and fer-
tile fields, we fell a-talking on a subject ever near

22 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

the heart of each — the development of a higher
type of animal husbandry in the United States.

The International Show, it was agreed, would
serve as a rallying point for all who were interested
in the flesh-making breeds, and it had already been
proved that the draft, coaching and saddle types of
horses could be made a big feature of the exhibition.
Ogilvie was the especial advocate of those interests
in the earlier conferences, and it must be confessed
that at first he fought almost single-handed for their
recognition. His acquaintance with the stock-breed-
ing interests of Great Britain and America was
extensive, dating back to the daring days when men
of dauntless courage and boundless enthusiasm
bid up to $40,000 for single specimens of a rare
old bovine tribe. He had personally known all the
leading luminaries of the American pedigree stock-
breeding world, and had himself bred and exhibited
successfully for a series of years Clydesdale horses
of a type refined far beyond the average of their
day. One needs but mention the name MacQueen
to conjure up in the minds of the old guard of
American showmen one of the chief ornaments of
the draft horse competitions of a generation past,
and one of the most noted breeding horses of his
time, not to mention rare brood mares and flash

THE LIGHTING OF A TORCH 23

fillies always set before the judges in perfect bloom
— and always the recipients of high honors at the
hands of discriminating committees on awards.

A Canadian by birth, and for many years engaged
in merchandising in Chicago and Madison, Ogilvie
had all his life been a constant attendant at the
best Dominion and American shows and sales, and
in his time he has probably been familiar with more
of the important American collections of purebred
cattle, horses, sheep and swine than any man now
living. At Blairgowrie Farm he was able for some
years to gratify his ambitions and indulge his fond-
ness for Scotland's famous horse of heavy draft,
and upon closing out all his Wisconsin interests his
services became available in connection with the
management of the International, with the Horse
Department of which he has ever since been actively
identified; and to his untiring efforts and ripe expe-
rience is primarily due the triumphant success of
that section of the big show. It is but a simple
statement of fact to say that at the beginning his
department was looked upon by all, save himself, as
a more or less questionable side issue — a feature to be
tolerated perhaps, but which promised little. If con-
founding one's contemporaries and colleagues affords
real satisfaction, Mr. Ogilvie must, in the light of

24 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

what has since transpired, now be enjoying solid
mental comfort as he views the splendid proportions
into which this department of the International has
developed.

Robert Ogilvie is one of those who understand
perfectly the weary years of work that lie behind the
production of an outstanding animal of any type, no
matter in what class it may be presented. He is
one of those who glory in the accomplishments of
the great constructive breeders of the past. Like
all of the "initiated" he walks in spirit with Bake-
well, the GoLLiNGS, old Tom Booth, Bates, Torr, and
the laird of Ury. He kens McGombie too of Tillyfour
and the Keillor Watsons. The Gruigkshanks, Jonas
Webb and Tomkins are among the heroes he has
canonized.

Proper *'making-up" for show he recognizes at
a glance, whether among Shorthorn bulls, the Here-
ford calves or "humlie" bullocks. The best of shep-
herds are keenly alive to the fact that he also has
an eye for a proper woolly type or a 'leg o' mutton"
rightly filled. Few can tell you more of Percherons,
Shires, Belgians, Hackneys, Suffolks, Shetlands — all
are to him alike familiar friends; and when the
Clydesdale clans foregather, the sons of the shaggy,
misty Northland, those who were born and reared

THE LIGHTING OF A TORCH 25

where the heather grows and blooms, can recall no
more of the brilliant history of their favorites nor retail
recollections of old days, great men and shows or
epoch-making sires with finer grace or larger wealth
of fit vocabulary! In these excursions into the lives
and work of the masters who have founded and
carried forward our modern breeds, as a raconteur
of incidents and "accidents by flood and field" in the
realm of animal breeding, it must be said that since
the death of the lamented Richard Gibson — peace
be to dear old ''Dick"! — Robert Ogilvie stands alone.
But we are still aboard that train for Madison.
Mr. Leonard had already carried out another im-
portant enterprise in behalf of American stock-
breeding; no more nor less than the erection of a
building at the Yards in which various national
pedigree registry associations should find a home,
rent free, and a convention hall for members' meet-
ings. We talked of this enthusiastically for a time,
and then came the grand idea ! A club room? Yes,
but what sort ? Primarily, of course, a place for the
daily comfort of those in business at the Yards, but
why not extend the proposition in such way as to
make it a real haven of rest, a boon and blessing
beyond compare, to those who shall come from far
and near to see the great show, or participate in

26 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

the conventions, banquets and other functions by
which the newly-established crowning event of the
year in American stock-breeding circles would surely
be, in due course of time, annually attended ? The
old hotel had no adequate accommodations of the
sort required. To that all readily enough agreed.
And as we journeyed on, a vision was unfolded.
There was painted in fancy the beneficent ends to
be subserved in a thousand different ways by the
club of our dreams! An institution with incalculable
possibilities ! The potential center of inspirations to
be felt to the very outermost edges of a great
periphery! And presently all that was lacking was
its name! Before Madison was reached that point
was settled once for all. To men who knew and
reveled in the works of Dixon — "The Druid" of happy
memory, whose apt titles and unrivaled volumes
on British country life are still the delight of all
appreciative men — the matter of a name for such
a club as that in mind presented no problem what-
soever. That was the least of the impediments.
The decision was unanimous.

And so the Saddle and Sirloin Glub — projected
under a title now universally recognized as distinc-
tive, significant, and in extraordinary degree appro-
priate— was born.

DREAMS COME TRUE

The International had now been fairly started upon
its spectacular career. The Pedigree Record Building
had been completed and advantage taken of its hospi-
table accommodations by a number of the important
national registry associations. Best of all, the Club
had been organized upon a permanent basis and
given a home substantially and comfortably furnished.

Splendid encouragement had now been extended
by the John A. Spoor management to the producing
industries. True, some effort had been made by the
preceding administration at the Yards to lend a
helping hand, but not so lavishly. The late John B.
Sherman was for years General Manager of the
Company. His splendidly executed bust — a partic-
ularly faithful piece of modeling by Carlo Romanelli
— may be seen in the Club library. While not com-
monly credited with doing much for the encourage-
ment of stock-breeding, Mr. Sherman, nevertheless,
had been a contributor to the old fat stock shows
of the early days — along with P. D. Armour and
other Stock Yard magnates — and at considerable
expense to his company, although with little profit
to the cattle business, purchased a number of the

28 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

most famous of the bullocks sent into the first
Lake Front shows, and maintained them in charge
of that good old-time feeder, James Thompson, as a
sort of side-show at the Yards, returning them year
by year to the old Exposition Building at weights
calculated to astonish cub reporters and lay folk
generally. A steer called "Nels Morris" was sent
downtown in 1880 at a weight of 3,125 pounds,
and was carried over and returned in 1881, still
weighing 2,900 pounds. He might have competed
over a hundred years ago with ''The Durham Ox"
or "The White Heifer that Traveled," but certainly
served no useful purpose in 1880.

Recognition should also be made in this connec-
tion of the effort made by Elmer Washburn during
the closing years of the old regime in the direction of
a closer rapprochement with the patrons of the Yards.
While the National Cattle Growers' Association of
that period was endeavoring to secure legislation at
Washington for the better protection of our herds
and flocks from the threatened ravages of conta-
gious pleuro-pneumonia and other devastating animal
plagues, Mr. Washburn — who was manager of the
Yards for several years — not only gave liberally of
his time but money to the support of the movement,
serving as a member of its executive committee.

DREAMS COME TRUE 29

DeWitt Smith of Sangamon Go., 111., then, as now,
a man of commanding presence, influence and char-
acter, was President of this Association at the time,
and John Clay Treasurer. The writer was then a
young man looking particularly after cattle matters
for the newly-born ''Breeder's Gazette." This was
in 1885. A new Secretary for the Association was
wanted. DeWitt Smith alone, I think, of all the
members of a committee charged with making a
selection, thought he knew me fairly well at that
time, and assumed the responsibility — all unbeknown
to myself — of having me elected to that position.
I always had an idea that John Glay was not spe-
cially enthusiastic over the incident at the moment;
but he was fond of Smith — as well as of DeWitt's
brother, the major, a well-known character in north-
western ranching circles in the early days — and
stood, therefore, for the action taken. This proved,
I may say in passing, the beginning of a personal
friendship which I am happy to say has not to this
day been impaired. Glay was, as a matter of fact,
the vital force of this old-time National organization,
raising single-handed all of the funds with which
Smith, Major Towers, Tom Sturgis, Judge Garey and
their colleagues waged the long fight which was really
the beginning of the upbuilding of the National

30 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Department of Agriculture and its most important
appanage, the Bureau of Animal Industry.

The writer bears cheerful testimony to the efficient
assistance rendered this important public service at
a critical juncture by Mr. Washburn. Not only that,
but when the bank addition to the Live Stock
Exchange was planned, provision was made in its
construction for a conspicuous recognition of the
breeder, the feeder and the ranchman. This took
the form of ornamenting the bank entrance with
panelled figures in bas-relief of the late John D.
GiLLETT — founder of our once great live cattle
export trade, a typical western cowboy — and the
outline of a well-bred bull. The latter is an at-
tempted reproduction of the head and front of the
Bates Duchess Shorthorn bull Duke of Underley
(33745), bred by Earl Bective, and one of the
greatest sires of his day in Britain. The writer
supplied — at Mr. Washburn's request — a copy of the
English etching by A. M. Williams from which
this was made, and accompanied that famous archi-
tect, the late Daniel H. Burnham, on several visits
to the Northwestern Terra Gotta Works, where the
figures were all executed, in an effort at perfecting
the original modeling in the clay. Revolution in the
executive control of the great property was im-

WILLIAMS' ETCHING OF THE DUKE OF UNDERLEY

DREAMS COME TRUE 51

pending, however, and Mr. Washburn's period of
service terminated before he had full opportunity to
develop further plans for aiding the stockmen of the
country in the work of expanding production and
improving the quality of American meats.

Practically valuable and useful as the Inter-
national competitions and the bringing together of
record associations have proved, future generations
will accord the present management of the Yards
even higher praise for the foundation and progres-
sive evolution of the Saddle and Sirloin Club.
Originally planned simply as a place where visitors
and business men about the Yards might meet in
comfort, it has developed a mission which, properly
worked out, will lift it far beyond the level of any
similar organization in existence.

From the beginning it has appealed, both in name
and in its possibilities, to a coterie of men who
realized its advantageous relationship to North Amer-
ican live stock husbandry. Foremost among these will
always be mentioned Mr. Spoor and Mr. Leonard.
However, Robert Ogilvie is, after all, the one who
has labored most faithfully and most unselfishly for
its development along broad national, or rather, inter-
national, lines. Ex-United States Senator William
A. Harris and Mortimer Levering — both now de-

32 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ceased — contributed much to the creation of the
Club's distinctive atmosphere, and found special
pleasure in its promise as a Pantheon.

THE TROPHIES OF MILTIADES

The Saddle and Sirloin Club is not yet old in
years, as time is commonly measured, but it has
already stored up riches in the way of treasured
associations. Books and periodicals, prints and etch-
ings, are found in almost every club; but one mo-
mentous day in Saddle and Sirloin history a fine
oil portrait of Prof. W. A. Henry, then Dean of the
College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin,
was hung upon the walls of the newly-organized
institution at the Yards. An idea had been born in
the brain of Robert Ogilvie. It has not yet come
to full maturity. In fact, it has only just opened
up a prospect of a future still but dimly discerned
even by those who appreciate most the little that
has already been accomplished. There are a few
who rise not at all to the real conception. There
are some who are even inclined as yet to scofT;
but there will come a day when these unbelievers,
like their ancient prototypes, will remain to pray
devoutly within the temple.

A truth which is recognized by all intelligent
men was well enunciated by the founder of the
American Republic: "Agriculture is the most health-
ful, the most useful and the noblest employment of

34 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

man." A second proposition is that the creation,
development and perpetuation of beautiful and prac-
tical forms of animal life is the particular branch
of agriculture calling for the exercise of the highest
order of human intellect and skill. The Saddle
AND Sirloin corollary is that those who have attained
distinction in this field cannot be too highly exalted;
that their names, their faces, their works should be
preserved and "handed down as precious heirlooms
from one generation to another as an inspiration to
all who seek to follow in their footsteps. Nothing
is more certain than that familiarity with the high
accomplishments of those who have gone before
serves as the best of all stimulants to those who
are studying to equip themselves for this world's
work in similar fields. Now, as in the days of old,
the ambitious hear the call that stirred the Athenian
youth: "The trophies of Miltiades will not let me
sleep!"

Stuart's speaking likeness of the great Dean of
deans hung long in splendid isolation. Oil portraits
smell of money, as well as varnish. They are not
always to be had for the asking. But men who
met each December to discuss, over a sirloin or a
saddle, the breeding and performances of the Inter-
national champions, were ever recalling the glories

THE TROPHIES OF MILTIADES 36

of the past, and zest was added to their discourse
by the presence of living masters of the art of arts
from far and near. If it were Richard Gibson in
the chair you would be apt to hear something of
DuNMORE or Tom Booth — or mayhap Sheldon and
the Duchesses. If Senator Harris joined the circle,
he might hark back to Warfield, the elder Renicks
or to Robert Alexander — or if Linwood's palmy
days were mentioned, something entertaining would
surely be forthcoming as to Kinellar and the
Golden Drops or the good old Quaker Scot ' of
Sittyton. Both these men were fond of the history
.of modern cattle-breeding; both had helped to make
it. Both loved to tell how great results had been
attained by others. Both are gone forever from
our sight, but the spirits of both still live within the
Club and help to sanctify it in the hearts of those
who were once privileged to feel the charm of their
inspiring comradeship. In another corner Montgom-
ery of Netherhall might be holding Clydesdale court;
and early in the International's career James Peter
of Berkeley came to judge and grace the scene,
bringing across the sea the story, old yet ever new,
of Lord Fitzhardinge and Connaught. ' From these
and other men of similiar type fell words of wisdom.
From out their stores of knowledge those of less

36 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

experience gathered that which whetted interest in
their own endeavors.

From such an atmosphere as this it was easy
to evolve a plan of doing homage to the great men of
the olden days. However, the large collection of
portraits of men, living as well as dead, now to be
seen upon the Saddle and Sirloin walls was not
the work of a day, nor of a night. Neither, in its
present form, does it reflect in all its details the
underlying thought of those who first conceived it.
There are doubtless pictures there that should not
remain permanently in such a company; on the
other hand, there are a great number missing that
should be there. Which is but another way of saying
that the gallery as it now exists is as yet incom-
plete, and not at all beyond criticism. It would be
strange indeed if it were. But, hov/ever faulty it
may be in some details, whatever may be said as to
the manner in which the project has thus far been
carried out, there can be no difference of opinion
among thoughtful men as to the worth of the plan
itself, or as to the educational, historical and inspi-
rational value of the portraits, as a whole, already
in position.

It is not the purpose of this little volume to dis-
cuss in turn each of the subjects of all the portraits

THE TROPHIES OF MILTIADES 37

now entering into the composition of the Saddle
AND Sirloin gallery. Some day a Boswell, with
nothing else in this world to do, who might do
justice to them all, may develop in our midst. Let
us hope so. A book could be written around the
careers of many of these individuals. In fact, such
biographies in certain cases already exist. I know
I could not exhaust my theme within the limits of
one ordinary octavo in several illustrious instances.
But we must for the present at least confine our-
selves to general discussion.

The first substantial impetus came when Robert
Ogilvie sent forward his valuable paintings of Charles
and Robert Colling, Thomas Booth and "Nestor"
Wetherell, all done by Stuart in his palmy days
at Madison for Mr. Ogilvie's own library. Their
appearance awakened at once a responsive chord in
the breasts of other appreciative students of the
history of animal breeding, prominent among those
so influenced being the late Henry F. Brown of
Minneapolis, Minn., a one-time upper Mississippi
lumber king, who on a modestly-equipped farm on
the banks of Minnehaha Creek maintained through-
out all the vicissitudes of a long and active business
career a good herd of purebred cattle. Late in life,
and while still in the throes of financial embarrass-

38 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ment, Mr. Brown learned that large areas of his
cut-over and supposedly worthless northern timber
lands were underlaid with valuable deposits of iron
ore, and the discovery placed him again in his wonted
comfortable position. While in attendance at the
International Show he saw the Ogilvie pictures, and
then and there absorbed the big idea of the Saddle
AND Sirloin Glub. Soon afterward he volunteered
to pay for the painting of a considerable number of
the portraits of old-time Shorthorn cattle breeders,
to be permanently retained as his contribution to
the collection then in embryo. This revealed a vein
of sentiment in Henry Brown's make-up that sur-
prised not a few of his acquaintances; but among
those who knew him intimately — rather than by
hearsay — it was a characteristic action.

In the meantime Ogilvie had entered into an
arrangement with Stuart — whose Henry portrait was
the nucleus of the collection — to come to Chicago
and execute certain pictures already ordered. Stuart
was a Scotchman who had spent most of his life in
America, and at Madison had gained a reputation as
a portrait artist by his studies of some of the lead-
ing dignitaries of the State of Wisconsin, including
governors, judges of the Supreme Court, United
States senators and other personages of national or

THE TROPHIES OF MILTIADES 39

local fame. He was set to work upon Mr. Brown's
order, and from old, and in most cases more or less
unsatisfactory, photographs or other old-time originals,
succeeded in working out pictures of Robert Bake-
well, Thomas Bates, T. G. Booth, Jonas Webb,
William Torr, Barclay of Ury, Amos Gruickshank,
Robert Aitchison Alexander and others now to be
seen in the Glub collection. All of those named
hang in the private dining-room now known to those
who follow the Club's fortunes as *'the inner shrine."
It was Robert Ogilvie and Henry Brown, there-
fore, who gave the gallery its most valuable and
most impressive group. In the baronial hall, the
Glub corridors and lounging rooms may now be seen
portraits of many individuals who have left marks
more or less important upon American stock-breeding.
Some of these are of men still living; all, however,
persons who have in some way rendered service
presumably entitling them to this consideration. The
living have, however, first of all to die, and have
their works subjected to the acid test of time, before
their portraits can have permanent residence assured
or be considered by those who follow after in con-
nection with the matter of admission to place among
the "immortals" in any future extension of the Sanc-
tum Sanctorum, which we are now to enter.

VII
A SANCTUM SANCTORUM

Paul Potter could paint a bull, but he never
bred one. Rosa Bonheur gave the world "The
Horse Fair," but her models were creations of The
Perche. It is one thing to draw well, and deftly blend
pigments on the canvas. To produce a national or
an international champion is quite another. The com-
position of a great picture calls for genius. Some-
thing more than that is demanded in the assembling
and fusing of the materials that enter into the making
of a breed. Fabulous sums have been paid by con-
noisseurs for masterful examples of the art preserv-
ative. Now andv then rich rewards have come to
those who produce originals.

For the most part, however, we have taken as a
matter of course, and have accepted or appropriated
without special thought or credit, the marvels of
the animal -breeding world. We are in daily enjoy-
ment of the fruits of the labors of great groups of
men who were possessed of rare constructive gifts;
but we scarcely know their names, much less have
we any familiarity with their personalities or their
labors. We know that without good live stock our
grasses, grains and forage generally would cum-

A SANCTUM SANCTORUM 41

ber uselessly the earth; that the soil itself would
suffer by the absence of the golden hoofs. We are
aware that we are the best fed people in the world,
but few of us know or care particularly to hear
about how we came by these generous supplies.
The fat of the lahd is delivered daily at our doors,
and yet we grumble. As for expressing gratitude
to the great producers and providers, nothing is
usually farther from our thoughts. We do not mean
to be ungrateful, but despite the fact that we need
cattle vastly more than cannon, we build our monu-
ments to HiNDENBERGS, not to herdsmen. The sen-
sational, the dramatic, gets the limelight always.
The most illustrious exponents of the unobtrusive
useful arts are rarely in the public eye or print,
and so it comes to pass that many of the greatest
benefactors of the race go to their reward for the
most part unhonored and unsung.

Although the Saddle and Sirloin Club does not
yet fully comprehend its own great potential power,
it is doing something to remind the country of these
wholesome truths. It could do more, and let us
hope that in the years to come it will give still
further assurances to those of the present and the
future who may render outstanding service along
these lines, that their work and the influence of

42 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

their example shall not be allowed to perish. Already
its ideals are bearing fruit.

The Kansas youth who receives his education at
the Agricultural College at Manhattan sees through-
out his entire course of study an heroic bust in
bronze of the farmer- statesman of Linwood, designed
and largely paid for by Saddle and Sirloin influ-
ences. The faculty of the College of Agriculture of
the University of Illinois, moved by the Saddle and
Sirloin spirit, has founded a "Hall of Fame" that
will endure indefinitely and receive an annual addi-
tion. The American Guernsey Cattle Club, desiring
to honor one of America's foremost expounders of
the gospel of good blood and good management in
the field in which that body holds so distinguished
a position, presents his portrait to the Club, where-
upon a movement is promptly projected for the
erection of a monument to the great editor at the
capital of his adopted state. In brief, the leaven
which shall finally leaven the whole lump is already
doing its beneficent work. But the real advance
lies still ahead.

When the great agricultural states shall erect
shafts like that of Nelson in Trafalgar Square to
the pioneers in their development; when some great
soul shall some day give the Saddle and Sirloin

A SANCTUM SANCTORUM 43

Club a million-dollar memorial home, filled with rare
mementos, paintings, bronzes and marbles of men
and International champions, then and not till then
shall we know that animal breeding, the art supreme,
has in truth come into her own. Meantime, let us
thank the gods that we already have one secluded
nook where those whose lives are devoted to the
study of the higher evolution of animal life may sit
at the feet of great achievement and hearken to the
plashing of inspiring fountains.

It is just a little place, this sanctuary of which
I speak, and its windows afford only the customary
city view of myriad roofs and chimney pots. If you
look closely you may get the outlines of the Nelson
Morris golden calf; but even if you do you will not
find many who can tell you anything about it. Besides,
we are in a room called yesterday, so let us draw
the shades upon today.

I often enter this "holy of holies" of the Saddle
AND Sirloin Club alone just to renew old acquaintance
with those who there preside. When you know them
you will like them, for I can assure you they are
not only an altogether worthy, but a most compan-
ionable lot. You will get the twinkle in the eye of
Thomas Bates before you have been long with the
keenest-witted member of the company, and you

44 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

will also learn that the grim visage worn by good
old Amos Gruickshank is but the mask of a kindly-
soul reflecting nothing more than the granite of his
Aberdeenshire hills. And if you had spent a good
part of a lifetime delving into their secrets, you
would find that it is the invisible in that little room,
rather than the visible, that fires the soul of one
who enters understandingly.

To my mind, this little room is superbly sugges-
tive and symbolical. It is not simply the one good
old Yorkshire squire I see when I gaze upon the
kindly face of Thomas Booth, but all his race and
kin. And what a power for good they were in the
world of rural progress! It is not alone the laird of
Ury that fascinates me as I look at that extraor-
dinary physiognomy, but through him I recognize the
mighty impulse Scotland gave to the cause of better
farming. It is not merely William Torr to whom
we pay our homage as we contemplate those fea-
tures once so familiar to all the countryside around
Aylesby Manor, but rather do we recognize in him
an outstanding type of the trained tenant farmers of
Great Britain — men who have laid under obligation
the agriculture of all the temperate zones of earth.

Let it be said, once for all, and at the very
threshold of our story, that while as a matter of

A SANCTUM SANCTORUM 45

fact these rare pictures are studies of individuals
who in their day were largely identified with the
origin and upbuilding of one particular breed that
has attained a world-wide vogue, the Club wishes it
distinctly understood that it exalts them only in the
sense of their being truly typical of the entire class
to which honor is intended to be paid. It is as types,
therefore, that" they are in the larger sense to be
considered. At all times it should be borne in mind
that these particular worthies had peers and col-
leagues by the score, each of whom wrought in his
own way with varied valued materials, and your true
Saddle and Sirloiner only bewails the fact that the
entire great aggregation is not all here assembled.
The time will come, let us hope, when the galaxy
will be extended to its full and splendid limit.

VIII
ALADDIN'S LAMP

Let us call first of all upon Robert Bakewell,
patriarch of all the generations of animal breeders
since his time; the man who first found a short cut
to live-stock improvement. He flourished about the
middle of the eighteenth century. We do not know
as much of his life as would be the case had his
contemporaries realized at the time the magnitude
of his discoveries, or appreciated the far-reaching
influence of his work. We know this, however, that
flying squarely in the face of all preconceived notions
governing the production of farm animals, he was
the first of the world's great animal breeders, of
which there is record, to demonstrate the power
of the principle of the concentration of blood ele-
ments as the readiest and most effective method
of establishing and fixing desired characteristics.

The scene of his labors was at Dishley, Leices-
tershire, and his great success was made with the
long-wooled Leicester sheep and Longhorn cattle,
the' latter then a widely distributed type in all the
midland counties. His work is said to have been
conducted at first with more or less secrecy so far
as the public was concerned. Aware of the general
prejudice existing at the time against close breeding,

ALADDIN S LAMP 47 ^■^1'

he probably did not care to call down criticism
while still experimenting. Some have intimated that
in the case of his "improved Leicesters" he was
actuated by a desire to conceal one of the real
sources of the betterment attained. One story ran
to the effect that he had used in his earlier experi-
ments an extraordinary black-faced "tup," which no
visitor was ever permitted to see, and the occasional
appearance of blackish lambs among the descend-
ants of the Dishley sheep long years later was cited
as an illustration of the power of atavism or rever-
sion to an original type even after the lapse of
many generations.

Naturally progress was more rapid with the
Leicesters than the Longhorns, and it was not
long before the flockmasters of the entire kingdom
were taking notice of the marvels being wrought.
One celebrated ram, Two Pounder, is said to have
earned £800 in a single season! The improvement
of the Longhorns followed, and the Dishley "breed"
became the prevailing popular type in all the neigh-
boring districts. He is said to have maintained
somewhat of a "museum," or as Dixon calls it, a
"business room," in which there were preserved
both skeletons and "pickled carcasses" illustrating
interesting results attained. Among these latter

48 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

trophies of the Longhorns were some joints that
were prized relics of Old Comely, that died at the
good old age of twenty-six, with fully four inches
of outside fat upon his sirloin. The herd was dis-
tinguished above all others for its depth of flesh,
and Bakewell did not for a moment doubt that he
had evolved a type which would ''represent the
roast beef of old England forever and aye." At a
sale in Oxfordshire in 1791 several of these Long-
horn bulls fetched above 200 guineas each, and at
Paget's sale two years later a bull of Fowler's
Bakewell stock brought, for those days, the great
sum of 400 guineas. King George III became in-
terested, and honored the wizard with a royal inquiry
as to his ''new discovery in stock breeding."

To understand the full import of Bakewell's
work it is necessary to know that his great suc-
cesses antedated the creation of all the leading
breeds of the present day. He had hit upon the
secret of how to accentuate specific points and
insure their perpetuation. That was the one great
central fact developed by his work — the principle
that proved the forerunner of universal improve-
ment in all the various Island types. He little
dreamed that through its application to other ma-
terials his wonderful Leicesters and Longhorns

ALADDIN S LAMP 49

would in time be put in total eclipse. The live-
stock kingdom of his day was one great conglom-
eration of local types and nondescripts. The "im-
proved Shorthorn" was as yet only incubating along
the banks of the River Tees. In the abutting counties
of York and Durham were many different sorts known
by various names, all of which were soon to be suc-
cessfully unified by the cement of inbreeding applied
so persistently by the Shorthorn fathers after a con-
templation of Bakewell's handiwork. Over in Here-
fordshire at this same time were equally varied
assortments of cattle soon to be brought together
by a resort to the same magic power in the hands
of Benjamin Tomkins, his contemporaries and suc-
cessors. At a later date Ellman fairly made the
Southdown sheep from Bakewell precedents. And
so we might go up and down almost the entire line
of the modern breeds and sub-varieties, and find
in almost every instance that the first great results
have been obtained primarily through the mating of
near kin in accordance with the Bakewellian law.
While his name has not been given to any of the
types that owe their origin directly to his demon-
strations, over in France they have created a
beautiful breed of sheep, by a judicious blending of
Leicester and fine-wool blood, which they call the

50 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Dishley Merino, in recognition of the great law-
giver's English home.

Is there objection anywhere as to the peculiar
appropriateness of canonizing first of all in our
Saddle and Sirloin sanctum sanctorum this man
who in truth blazed the way for the great breed-
builders of the succeeding generations?

DURHAM DIVINITIES

Those two old warriors yonder in knee breeches,
high-cut waistcoats and stocks are commonly accred-
ited with being the most active of all the originators
of the one distinctively national British breed of
cattle — the Shorthorn. The Herefords, the Devons,
the Angus, the Galloways, the Ayrshires, the Sussex,
the Norfolks and the Highlanders are also purely
British products; but the "red, white and roan"
is the one type of the entire lot that has found
favor in nearly every part of the United Kingdom
and Ireland, whereas most of the others are still
bred mainly in the particular districts in which they
were originated. This comment is made merely as
a statement of historical fact relating to distribution
in the British Islands only. As is generally known,
certain of the others have gained world-wide fame
in vastly broader fields than is afforded by all the
acreage of England, Scotland and the Emerald Isle
combined.

These two are probably discussing their favorite
subject: ways and means of eliminating certain of
the obvious faults of the old Teeswater and Hol-
derness stock, and improving on both. They are
known to fame as Charles and Robert Colling.

62 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

The former farmed at Ketton Hall, and the latter
on the farm of Barmpton, both in the valley of the
River Tees, some three miles distant from the city
of Darlington in the county of Durham. Cattle of
the breed which they were largely instrumental in
creating are still referred to in many parts of the
United States as *'Durhams," although that name
was rarely employed in the land of its nativity.

Charles Colling paid a visit to Bakewell in
1T83, and spent considerable time in a study of the
results obtained. Evidently he was convinced, but
at the same time he wisely deferred the actual
application of the Dishley system until he became
possessed of materials that suited his purpose. In
1784 he had bought the Stanwick Duchess cow,
to be referred to further on; but it was not until
1789 that he obtained from Maynard of Eryholme
a roan cow, always referred to in her later years
as *'the beautiful Lady Maynard," and with her began
the actual work of bringing order out of local cattle-
breeding chaos.

A human-interest story this of how modern
stock-breeding got, in this purchase, its first great
impetus. Picture a fair September morn. The
master of Ketton Hall about to start on a neigh-
borly visit to his friend Maynard, whose eight bul-

DURHAM DIVINITIES 53

locks sent forward annually to the March market
in Darlington were always the object of much atten-
tion as they stood on the pavement opposite "The
King's Head." The men had much in common.
Both loved good cattle, and this fondness for ani-
mals met in their households steadfast sympathy.
Mrs. GoLLiNG was as interested in the farm and in the
big red, white or roan matrons of the fields and their
lusty babies as was her lord and master. She knew
the animals by name, and was much among them.
In fact, tradition says that she was no mean judge
herself. And so we see her with her husband as
the Tees is crossed at Croft on this historic call
at Eryholme. As they approach, Miss Maynard is
discovered milking a rare roan cow, then seven years
old. After the customary greetings the inspection
of the herd begins. Both Mr. and Mrs. Colling
had observed the foaming contents of the generous
pail Miss Maynard had been busy filling as they
were arriving. And so Durham presently fell to
dickering with York, and the mother of the modern
Shorthorn was headed toward her extraordinary
destiny! At Ketton out of compliment to the mis-
tress of Eryholme the name of this bovine Eve was
changed to Lady Maynard. An admiring country-
side subsequently added to this the sobriquet "the

54 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

beautiful," by which designation she still lives in
agricultural history.

One of her daughters was mated with a bull
that had been produced by another daughter, the
progeny being a bull calf called — in commemoration
of the old cow's precedence at Eryholme — Favorite,
with which was at once commenced at Ketton a
most extraordinary course of concentration. For
years this bull was used almost indiscriminately upon
his own offspring, often to the third and in one or
two instances to the fifth and sixth generations,
and with results that astounded all England and
aroused even distant America. The get of Favorite
were not only the most noted cattle of their day
in all Britain, but his immediate descendants consti-
tuted a large percentage of the entire foundation
stock upon which existing Shorthorn herd book
records stand. He was even bred back to his own
dam, the produce being a heifer, Young Phoenix;
and to still further test the power of Bakewell's
scheme in dealing with such plastic clay this heifer
was then bred to her own sire, the issue of that
doubly-incestuous union being the bull Comet (155),
the pride of his time and the first beast of the
cattle kind to sell for $5,000! Mr. Fowler had
once refused a thousand guineas for a Bakewell

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DURHAM DIVINITIES 55

Longhorn bull and three cows, but such a sum for
a bull alone soon set all England talking of a rising
power.

It must of course be borne in mind that the
animals subjected to this severe strain had been
specially chosen originally for their scale and con-
stitution. Great size was a leading tenet with the
farmers along the Tees, and they had, up to this
period, abstained religiously from any such course
as that which had wrought marvels in the "Long
Pasture" and straw-yards at Dishley. True, some
of the old families of the district prided themselves
upon having kept their own "breed" pure for many
generations, but such liberties as Charles Golling
took with the Lady Maynard blood were until then
quite unknown in North Gountry live-stock hus-
bandry. One can better imagine than describe,
therefore, the sensation produced by this unparal-
leled procedure and its marvelous results.

We must not fail to mention here, however, that
shortly before Gharles Golling acquired in Darling-
ton market the first Duchess in 1784>, he had used
for two seasons an unnamed bull that he afterward
sold to go into Northumberland, a bull that had
introduced a refining element in the Ketton cattle,
which doubtless served — although at the time little

56 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

comprehended — to pave the way for subsequent
successes achieved; but this is another story pres-
ently to be related.

The sale of Comet, and the reputation gained
through the exhibition throughout England of two
enormous fat beasts, both by Favorite, called *'The
Durham Ox" and "The White Heifer that Traveled,"
served to spread the name and fame of the Gollings
and their "improved Shorthorns" throughout all
Britain, obscuring altogether for a time the name
and fame of Bakewell, and dooming the Longhorns
to a swift decline in popularity. Moreover, these
great doings did not escape the notice of a well-
read pioneer in the then newly-settled far-away
blue-grass region of Kentucky, resulting in 1816 in
an order for the first Shorthorn cattle ever imported
into the Middle West. And if there be people of
this day and generation who think that our own
forefathers lacked in enterprise, let Lewis Sanders
of Grass Hills tell the simple story of an act that
started the cornbelt of America on the highway
to success in cattle-feeding:

"I was induced to send the order for the cattle
in the fall of 1816 from seeing an account of
Gharles Golling's great sale in 1810. At this sale
enormous prices were paid — 1,000 guineas for the

DURHAM DIVINITIES 57

bull Comet. This induced me to think there was a
value unknown to us in these cattle, and as I then
had the control of means I determined to procure
some of this breed. For some years previous I was
in regular receipt of English publications on agri-
cultural improvement and improvements in the
various descriptions of stock. From the reported
surveys of counties I was pretty well posted as
to the localities of the most esteemed breeds of
cattle. My mind was made up, fixing on the Short-
horns as the most suitable for us. I had frequent
conversations with my friend and neighbor, Gapt.
William Smith, then an eminent breeder of cattle.
He was thoroughly impressed in favor of the Long-
horn breed. To gratify him, and to please some
old South Branch feeders, I ordered a pair of
Longhorns; and was more willing to do so from the
fact that this was the breed selected by the dis-
tinguished Mr. Bakewell for his experimental yet
most successful improvements."

Charles Colling closed his career as an im-
prover of cattle in 1810, at which time three-fourths
of the herd were by the inbred Favorite and his
son Comet, and the remainder by sons of those two
celebrated bulls. A great company gathered beneath
the limes that fine October day of more than a
century ago to do honor to one of the pillars of
British agriculture of that notable era. From both
sides the river and from great distances landlords

58 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

and their tenants, members of Parliament, and all
that famous coterie that had for so long fore-
gathered at the Yarm and Darlington markets, came
with gigs or traps or saddlebags. Every yard was
filled to overflowing, and scores left their horses or
conveyances at adjoining farms. It was the event
of a generation. Ketton was fairly "eaten out of
house and home," and messengers were hurriedly
dispatched to Darlington for fresh supplies.

One Kingston was the auctioneer, selling by the
glass, as did Strafford and John Thornton in more
recent years. He had no aids, and received the
munificent sum of five guineas for auctioneering the
most famous herd of its time. The 47 head fetched
about $35,000, the bull Comet, as already mentioned,
bringing $5,000. The highest-priced female was
the white cow Lily at $2,150. Mr. Golling had
reserved one treasured cow, the deep-milking, broad-
ribbed Magdalena by Comet; but Whitaker, one of
the "old guard," importuned his friend to let him
have her. A reluctant consent was given this pro-
posal, and then indeed was Othello's occupation
truly gone forever. We have here a fine illustra-
tion of what one enterprising, intelligent farmer may
do for the world at large, if he be possessed of
vision and determination. Verily, peace and agri-

DURHAM DIVINITIES 59

culture have their victories no less renowned than
those of war.

After the sale Charles Colling was compli-
mented with a valuable piece of plate bearing this
inscription :

PRESENTED TO

MR. CHARLES COLLING,

THE GREAT IMPROVER OF THE SHORT -HORNED BREED OF

CATTLE, BY THE BREEDERS

(Upwards of fifty)
WHOSE NAMES ARE ANNEXED,

AS A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE DUE FOR THE BENEFIT THEY

HAVE DERIVED FROM HIS JUDGMENT, AND ALSO AS A

TESTIMONY OF THEIR ESTEEM FOR HIM AS A MAN

1810

We do not hear of this sort of thing being done
very often in these degenerate days. Why? I wonder.

THE GRASSY LANES OF HURWORTH

Would the curious story of how a once nameless
bull emerged from absolute obscurity into the lime-
light of bovine glory interest anybody as we pass?
Possibly not. Nevertheless he was to all intents
and purposes the Adam of his race, and as such
has to do directly with the forbears of trainloads
of good bullocks contributed weekly to all our
central markets.

In that fateful year, A. D. 17T6, one John Hunter,
a bricklayer by trade, lived in the sleepy village of
Hurworth, situated on the north bank of the Tees
in the county of Durham, just across that little
river from Eryholme, the place where Charles
Colling afterwards found and purchased Lady
Maynard. Hunter had once been a tenant farmer
and bred cattle. On leaving the farm and removing
to Hurworth, he sold off all these except one
particularly prized little cow, which he took with
him. Let it be observed in passing that size was
at this time accounted a most valuable asset in
the cattle of the valley. As Hunter had no pas-
ture of his own, this cow was turned loose to
graze in the grassy lanes round about the village.

THE GRASSY LANES OF HURWORTH 61

In due course of time she was bred to "George
Snowdon's Bull," then in Hurworth. From him the
cow dropped a bull calf. Soon afterward the cow
and calf were driven to Darlington market and
there sold to a Mr. Basnett, a timber merchant.
Basnett retained the cow, but sold the calf to a
blacksmith at Hornby, five miles out from Darling-
ton. The dam of the calf taking on flesh readily
would not again breed, and after some months
was fattened and slaughtered. Growing to a use-
ful age, the bull in 1783 was found, at six years
old, in the hands of a Mr. Fawcett, living at
Haughton Hill, not far from Darlington.

Mr. Wright, a noted Shorthorn breeder, says
that Charles Colling, going into Darlington market
weekly, used to notice some excellent veal, and
upon inquiry ascertained that the calves were got
by a bull belonging to Mr. Fawcett of Haughton
Hill, and at this time serving cows at a shilling
each. Colling went to see him, but did not appear
particularly impressed. A little later, however,
Robert Colling and his neighbor, Mr. Waistell,
who had also seen the bull, thought well enough
of him to offer Mr. Fawcett ten guineas for him,
at which price he became their joint property.
Colling had seventeen and Waistell eleven cows

62 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

served by him during the season. Evidently, how-
ever, they were afraid of reducing the size of
their cattle through his use, and in the following
November Charles Colling took him off their
hands at eight guineas !

Charles evidently thought there might be real
value somewhere underneath that mellow hide,
notwithstanding the fact that nobody seemed to
think much of the bull, and put him in active
service for a period of two years, selling him late
in 1785, at ten years old, to a Mr. Hubback, at
North Seton, in Northumberland. The bull had
not been deemed worthy even of a name up to
this date, but the time came when it was of the
highest importance that he receive individual
designation. His new owner used him until the
year 1791, when he was fourteen years old, and
he had been vigorous to the last. As he was ending
his long and checkered career, these veterans of the
early cattle trade woke up to the fact that they had
been dealing with the very element their herds stood
most in need of. The name of this Northumberland
farmer was then assigned him, and as Hubback he
figures in the history of the modern Shorthorn king-
dom as the real founder of the dynasty.

In other volumes I have had occasion to note

THE GRASSY LANES OF HURWORTH 63

how frequently an element of chance has served
to point the way to explorers in this field in the
early stages of their work. I would not undertake
to say that the matter of judgment did not enter
at all into the original selection and use of the bull
that is regarded as the real progenitor of the im-
proved Shorthorn; but certain it is that no one was
particularly interested in, or excited about, Hubback
(319) at the time he was first put in limited ser-
vice by the Gollings. But he revolutionized the
cattle-breeding of all York and Durham just the
same, and imparted qualities which the herds of
that region had not previously possessed, and which
the best Shorthorns of our day still claim as a
proud inheritance.

It is certain that neither Waistell nor the
Gollings appreciated the value of Hubback until
after they had parted with him and saw the excel-
lence of his calves as they grew up and developed.
He was small, and this condemned him; but his
dam, though also small (for a Shorthorn), was **a
very handsome cow, of fine symmetry, with a nice
touch and fine, long, mossy hair." All these qual-
ities Hubback inherited. But scale was a big point
in Shorthorns at that time, and this assumed fault
led the Gollings to be wary.

64 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

The subsequent reputation of Hubback was higher
than that of any other bull of his time, and "it was
considered a great merit if any Shorthorn could
trace its pedigree back even remotely into his blood."
His get had "capacious chests, prominent bosoms,
thick, mossy coats, mellow skins, with a great deal
of fine flesh spread evenly over the whole carcass,"
and the bull himself had "clean, waxy horns, mild,
bright eyes, a pleasing countenance and was one of
the most remarkably quick feeders ever known, re-.
taining his soft and downy coat long into the summer.
His handling was superior to that of any bull of
the day."

The full significance of this early episode comes
to light in a subsequent narration. How often have
only post mortem honors come to men as well as
bulls! Meantime we must finish with, and take our
leave of, Robert Colling.

As a young man he had served an apprentice-
ship with GuLLEY and other advanced farmers of
their times, and early in his career bought Leicesters
from Bakewell, which he managed so successfully
that his ram-lettings became a reliable source of
profit. Cattle engrossed most of his attention, how-
ever, and he worked in close collaboration with his
brother Charles. He had bought good cows from

THE GRASSY LANES OF HURWORTH 65

the best local sources, but like all his contempo-
raries was working more or less in the dark. Pedi-
grees were practically unknown. There was no
uniformity of type, no agreement as to any fixed
standard of excellence — no application as yet of
Bakewell's method. But fate was silently shaping
a great destiny for the Barmpton and Ketton herds,
and through them a great new breed was presently
to emerge.

Among the best of the Barmpton cattle were
the sorts subsequently known to fame as the Wild-
airs, Red Roses and Princesses — tribes from which
thousands of the best cattle ever bred in England
or America have been directly descended. From
Barmpton also came the bulls used in the founda-
tion of the epoch-making herd of Thomas Booth,
to be referred to presently, and the Princess-Hub-
back blood from Barmpton after the lapse of many
years became, through Belvidere, the basis of the
greatest success achieved by Mr. Bates, which
somewhat eccentric but extraordinary individual we
are also soon to meet.

Robert Colling made a partial sale of his herd
in 1818 and retired in 1820, having for forty years
contributed largely to the development and evolu-
tion of the Shorthorn type. At the first sale 61

66 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

cattle sold for near $40,000, the top being $3,060
for the bull Lancaster, Mr. Booth giving $1,550
for the bull calf Pilot (496), afterwards a famous
sire. The end came in October, 1820, when the
remaining 46 head sold for around $10,000. There
was general depression in agriculture at this period.
It appears, nevertheless, that about $50,000 was
realized at the two auctions.

FROM SIRE TO SONS

The original of the pleasing portrait of Thomas
Booth is a much-prized heirloom in the possession
of a fine old Yorkshire family. It is so typical of
the old school that the Club is deeply indebted to
Mr. Ogilvie for its possession of so good a copy.
The elder Booth was one of two men — the other
being Thomas Bates — who completed in sensational
fashion the work of establishing a new and highly
improved type of cattle, through a continuance of
Bakewell methods upon the Colling foundations.
The two worked along different lines, and agreed in
one point only, that the Hubback-Favorite blood
supplied the best basis for further progress; but
they sought it through different channels, were in
pursuit of different ideals, and applied the blood
after it had been obtained in a decidedly different
manner. Both attained success such as rarely comes
to men in any line of work. There were other able,
forceful men engaged in similar efforts, such as
Mason, Wiley, Whitaker, Wetherell and Earl
Spencer; but among those who developed outstand-
ing skill in the art, the Booths and Bates will ever
stand pre-eminent in their day and generation.

68 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Mr. Booth was the owner of the beautiful estate
of Killerby, comprising 500 acres of arable and pas-
ture land situated in the charming valley of the
Swale, two miles from Gatterick. The house stood
on the site of an ancient military stronghold, from
which the estate took its name, that had been con-
structed by the Earl of Arundel in the days of
Edward I. The approach was through a park
studded with noble oaks and elms. Here the old
master began those experiments destined in later
years to give to British herds and showyards some
of the most perfect animals of a heavy flesh-carrying
type the world has ever seen. In common with
the GoLLiNGs and nearly all of his other contempo-
raries, Mr. Booth endeavored to solve the problem
of how to refine the old Teeswater stock. He real-
ized the faults of the prevailing type and was among
the first to concede that through Hubback (319)
and the Bakewell system the Gollings had prob-
ably hit upon the long -sought line of progression.
Unlike Mr. Bates and many other breeders of the
time, he did not deem it essential, however, to go
to Ketton and Barmpton for females to carry on
his experiments. He had an idea that by crossing
moderate -sized, strongly bred Golling bulls upon
large-framed, roomy cows showing great constitu-

FROM SIRE TO SONS 69

tion and an aptitude to fatten, he could improve
even upon the work of the Gollings. To this ex-
tent, therefore, he must be credited with greater
originality than some of his brother breeders. More-
over, the outcome revealed that he possessed quite
as much skill as he had independence of character.

Mr. Booth always put substance ahead of points
of less practical importance, and from the very first
regarded flesh-making capacity and breadth of back
and loin of more value than persistent flow of milk.
While there were some cows of marked dairy capa-
city in his original herd, they soon acquired a dis-
position to "dry off" quickly and put on great wealth
of flesh — a trait which ever afterward distinguished
the best of the Booth cattle.

The inbred Colling bulls on the unpedigreed
market-cow foundation had given Mr. Booth by the
year 1814 two families of cattle in particular, called
the Strawberries (or Halnabys) and the Bracelets,
that made great weights and possessed plenty of
substance and constitution, but lacked somewhat
in refinement and quality. In that year his son
Richard engaged in Shorthorn breeding at Studley,
taking from Killerby three good cows, one of which,
Ariadne, became the dam of Anna by Pilot, ances-
tress of one of England's greatest showyard tribes.

70 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Richard followed in the footsteps of his father,
using Killerby bulls upon selected market cows,
from one of which, purchased at Darlington, he got
his world-famous Isabellas.

In 1819 Thomas Booth removed from Killerby
to another farm he owned called Warlaby, giving
over Killerby and a portion of the herd to the
management of his other son, John B., then just
married. The latter became one of the leading
breeders and exhibitors of his time. The showyards
of Great Britain have probably not since their day
been graced by more wonderful cattle than his
never-to-be-forgotten twins. Necklace and Bracelet,
a queenly pair that took home to Killerby as tro-
phies of showyard war no less than 35 class and
championship prizes and medals, and one of which
finished by gaining the Smithfield fat stock cham-
pionship at London in 1 846 against S7 competitors.
Speaking of John Booth, "The Druid" in "Saddle
and Sirloin" says:

"Mr. Booth was a very fine-looking man, upward
of six feet and fifteen stone, with rare hands and a
fine eye to hounds. This was the sport he loved best,
and when he was on Jack o' Lantern or Rob Roy few
men could cross the Bedale country with him. * * *
He was full of joviality and good stories as well as
the neatest of practical jokes. His friend Wetherell

FROM SIRE TO SONS 71

generally had his guard up; but when he received a
letter, apparently from the Earl of Tankerville, say-
ing that he was to lot and sell the wild White cattle
of Ghillingham, he puzzled for minutes as to how on
earth His Lordship ever intended to catch them and
bring them into the ring before he guessed the joke
and its author. * * * Booth judged a good deal in
England, and never went for great size either in a
bull or a cow. As a man of fine, steady judgment in
a cattle ring, he has perhaps never had an equal. He
died in 1857, after a weary twelve months' illness,
in his seventieth year, at Killerby, and a memorial
window at Gatterick, where he rests, was put up by
his friends and neighbors and the Shorthorn world
as well."

Richard Booth succeeded to his father's estate
of Warlaby in 1835. It is said that on his entrance
at Warlaby he did not at first contemplate any
special effort in the line of Shorthorn breeding.
Unlike his brother John — who had the traditional
Yorkshire love for the excitements of the race-
course and the hunting field — Richard had never
been given to active pursuits, and "was only a quiet
gig-man" from the early days. Happily for the
breed, however, he changed his mind in relation to
cattle-breeding and devoted the remainder of his life
to the upbuilding of what was beyond all question
the most remarkable herd of its time and one of

72 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

the greatest known in all the annals of live-stock
history.

To recount his triumphs as a cattle breeder is
quite beyond the scope of this brief sketch. So
long as men shall continue to admire bloom and
beauty in fine cattle, and shall familiarize them-
selves with the records of the past, the names of
Faith, Hope and Charity, Grown Prince, Isabella
Buckingham, Plum Blossom and her white son
Windsor, Bride Elect, Soldier's Bride, Bride of the
Vale — bought by Richard Gibson for 1,000 guineas
— Vivandiere, Queen of the May, Queen of the
Ocean, Lady Fragrant and Gommander-in-Ghief will
call to mind true triumphs in animal breeding.
Richard Booth died in 1864 at the ripe old age of
76, and the annals of the art hold no record of a
fairer fame. Shortly before his death an offer of
£15,000 had been refused for the herd, then re-
duced to thirty head ! "He sleeps in peace beneath
the shade of the old gray tower of Ainderby, that
looks down upon the scene of his useful and quiet
labors."

Tom G. Booth, whose portrait has also been
accorded Sanctum Sanctorum honors, a son of John
of Killerby, succeeded to the great herd at Warlaby,
and with the cattle left by his uncle Richard car-

FROM SIRE TO SONS 75

ried the work successfully forward for many years.
We shall meet him again as an enthusiastic bidder
at the ToRR dispersion sale.

The Booths adopted a system of leasing their
bulls from year to year, instead of selling them
outright, and to this uncommon practice has been
attributed much of their success. The most prom-
ising were sure to be in demand from responsible
breeders, and those that turned out best could be
recalled for home service. They let "the other fel-
low" try them out first. So thoroughly were the
Killerby and Warlaby herds advertised through their
repeated victories at the Yorkshire and the national
shows that competition for the bulls "on hire" was
always keen. They divided with Thomas Bates
and his disciples the best patronage of England,
and as high as £1,500 was at times refused for a
single season's use of a bull of outstanding merit as
a sire. For solid constructive work along lines of
their own selection, for sustained position, even into
the third and fourth generations, the Booths occupy
a unique and possibly unrivaled position in the rec-
ords of the development of improved live stock
during the past century.

XII
A MASTER OF ARTS

That bright-eyed, brilliant-minded Northumbrian
there, with the curly locks, in his day had little
patience with his contemporaries. He bought the
only cow really worth having in all England — accord-
ing to his way of thinking — from Charles Colling
in 1804, and from her bred a race of cattle that
not only gained great renown during the lifetime of
their creator, but after his death became the subject
of almost frenzied international financial operations.

It is now three and twenty years since I stood

at the grave of this man, Thomas Bates, in the

little churchyard at Kirklevington, near Yarm, in

Yorkshire, and copied into a note book from the

modest monument that marks his last resting place

this inscription:

This Memorial
of

THOMAS BATES

of Kirklevington

One of the most distinguished breeders of

Shorthorn Cattle

Is Raised by a Few Friends Who Appreciate

His Labors For the Improvement of

British Stock and Respect His Character

Born 21st June, 1776— Died 26th July, 1849

A MASTER OF ARTS 75

While I was thus engaged, my companion upon
that memorable pilgrimage of 1892, the late la-
mented Senator Harris, returning from a stroll
deciphering the legends borne by various head-
stones, repeated solemnly from the immortal **Elegy":
"Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

Bates once told a crowd in Edinburgh, in the
course of one of those after-dinner speeches which
he was really fond of making, that while he then
lived in York his heart was really in his native
Northumberland, where he had resided until his fifty-
fifth year. It was about this date — 1 830 — of his
removal from Ridley Hall to Kirklevington that the
portrait which has been copied for the Saddle and
Sirloin Club was painted by Sir William Ross of
the Royal Academy.

The inspiring story of how this man sought first
to educate himself thoroughly in the arts of agri-
culture and constructive cattle-breeding before un-
dertaking the task, as he saw it, of conserving that
which was best for the benefit of succeeding gener-
ations, and the subsequent success achieved, has
been the theme of at least two English volumes.
The main facts have been summarized by the writer
hereof in a book prepared for American readers

76 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

some years ago. Those who may be interested in
the details of how he originated his famous Dukes
and Duchesses are referred to these works. We will
therefore merely summarize.

Bates refused to follow the crowd from the very
first. As a young man he had listened to the ani-
mated debates of the Gollings, the elder Booth,
Maynard, Mason, and the rest as they discussed
at the "Black Bull" or the "King's Head" the rela-
tive merits of the cattle shown in the streets of
Yarm and Darlington; and while all were raving
over the great "Durham Ox" at the show of March,
1799, he left the throng to study quietly a heifer
driven in from Ketton that was descended from the
primal Duchess bought by Charles Golling in 1784.
He was ever the student. He was wont to spend
the week-ends with Golling or with Mason just
preceding the Monday market days. And while they
talked he went among the cattle and thought out
his own conclusions.

In 1804 he was able to gratify his chief ambi-
tion. For the then great price for a cow of 100
guineas he bought from Golling a four- year- old
Duchess, then in calf to Favorite, and in due course,
from that union, a bull called Ketton was produced.
This Duchess was distinguished for her mellow

A MASTER OF ARTS 77

handling quality, undoubtedly derived from Hubback,
was a rich and persistent milker, and when fed off
at 17 years of age made a fine carcass of beef.
Her son Ketton developed into a great bull and
became the foundation sire of the herd. At Gol-
ling's dispersion in 1810 a granddaughter of this
first Duchess was bought at 183 guineas. As usual
at that date Mr. Bates had not much company in
his judgment. She was not the type then popular.
The crowd cried for scale, and, then as now, was
hot upon the trail of fat. Bates talked "quality"
and ''touch" as indicating aptitude to fatten when
desired, but few there were to listen to his argu-
ment. He relied upon the blood of Hubback when
not violently outcrossed, secured it in its purest
and most concentrated form in these Duchess cows,
and went his way.

Time passed. Ketton's sons, Ketton 2d and Ketton
3d, were used until 1820, and then the Duchess
blood was once more doubled in through The Earl,
called by Mr. Bates "the hope of the Shorthorns,''
a bull that was used with highly gratifying results,
siring among other remarkable animals a bull which
Mr. Bates so highly regarded that he named him
2d Hubback. In him all that was best in the once
nameless bull of a preceding sketch reappeared, and

78 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

when the herd in 1830 was driven across country
from Ridley Hall to Kirklevington, the cows, some
fifty in number, "alike as beans," left a great impres-
sion upon all who saw them pass. Up to this time,
Mr. Bates did little or nothing in a public way to
attract attention to his cattle. Others were still
breeding largely for size. The hundred-weight was
their chief measure of success. Refinement and
quality were not yet fully appreciated. Tallowy hulks
were at a premium. Heavy bone and grossness
generally were still esteemed in a land where no
joint or baron of beef was too ponderous for hearty
Anglo-Saxon squires and their retainers. With
ill-concealed contempt for the commonly-accepted
standards of his day. Bates, almost alone in all that
goodly company that builded up the breed that first
stocked our American feedlots with good cattle,
sought out the Hubback silkiness of hair and mellow-
ness of touch. To him these things clearly indicated
easy-keeping, quick-fattening characteristics, lightness
of offal and a finer -fibered flesh, and along with
this he never lost sight of dairy power as early
exemplified in Lady Maynard. The week's butter
ready for market was to him a source of pride as
well as profit. Others might stuff" their favorite
breeding bulls to make a showyard holiday. He

A MASTER OF ARTS 79

would steer his undesirable youngsters and make
them up into money-making bullocks. The Booths
and others might sacrifice their best cows and heifers
upon the altar of Royal championships. He would
fatten only shy breeders or barren females. And so
he bided his time, seeking, as he himself did not
hesitate to claim, the ultimate good of a dual-purpose
type that should prove a mine of wealth to the farm-
ers of succeeding generations, rather than permit
himself to be lured into the pursuit of the guineas
to be quickly gathered by following the fashion of
his time in cattle-breeding circles. He applied the
Bakewell methods to the Hubback-Lady Maynard
blood, and through his Duchesses gave a character
to the English and American herds of a later period,
the value of which millions of pounds sterling could
never adequately measure.

Somewhere about 1830 Bates received a "check"
in his progress with the Duchesses. Attractive and
uniform as were the fifty cattle he drove from their
Northumberland home into the upland pastures of
Kirklevington, he had run up against that great
scourge of incestuous matings long-continued — a
serious loss of fecundity. He was in the position
of a gardener who had produced rare and in every
way desirable flowers having little tendency to

80 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

reproduce themselves. This was a real menace,
and a volume might be written on his troubles in
the line of finding suitable outcrosses. Suffice it to
say that he learned one day of the existence of a
bull called Belvidere, of Robert Golling's old Red
Rose or Princess strain, the foundation dam of which
carried a double cross of Favorite on top of Hub-
back, he of the Hurworth lanes. In Belvidere alone
of all bulls then living Mr. Bates believed the
original blood had not been subsequently tainted by
what he would call injudicious crossing. Here then
was the material that would regenerate the Duch-
esses. Believing, therefore, as he did, that this was
the one animal then alive that could save his pets
from threatened extinction and at the same time
give them still greater merit, we can well imagine
with what impatience he urged his nag forward
that 22d of June, 18S1, as he rode over to John
Stephenson's beyond the Tees at Wolviston, to see
"the last of a race of well-descended Shorthorns."

It is related that as Mr. Bates entered the yard
he caught a glimpse of the head of Belvidere through
an opening in his box, and at that one glance saw
something in the bull's physiognomy that assured
him that here was truly what he long had sought.
We can also fancy the effort required to conceal

A MASTER OF ARTS 81

his eagerness from John Stephenson. The bull
proved a big one, possessing a lot of "stretch,"
with heavy shoulders and a commanding presence.
The much-desired masculinity was there, and what
was of equal importance, unlike so many of the
other bulls of his time, he was ''soft as a mole to
the touch." Asked to name a price, the owner was
modest enough to place it at £50. The very next
day Belvidere was on his way to Kirklevington. He
was the product of the mating of a bull called
Waterloo to his own sister! To such extremes did
these old worthies go in their adoption of Dishley
methods. The bull was then six years old, and as
he had inherited the "hot-blood temper" of his sire,
it is related that it took three men to get him safely
away down Sandy Lane on his way to his great
work of fructifying the seed that was to fill not only
all England, but America as well, with square-quar-
tered, straight-lined, stately cattle. Mr, Bates, with
characteristic assurance, announced in advance that
he would now "produce Shorthorns such as the world
has never seen," and he did.

For six years Belvidere was kept steadily in ser-
vice, being succeeded by one of his own sons, dropped
by Duchess 29th, she by 2d Hubback out of a 2d
Hubback dam! Among the best heifers left by Bel-

82 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

videre was Duchess 34th, that accidentally broke a
leg as a yearling. The accident lamed her for life,
but did not injure her for breeding purposes. Bred
back to her own sire — mark this terrific inbreeding
— she gave birth to Mr. Bates' bull of all bulls, the
far-famed champion Duke of Northumberland, of
which more anon.

• By this time the superior grace, beauty and
quality of the Bates cattle became a freely-admitted
proposition, and it was at this interesting juncture in
the breed's development that Felix Renick appeared
upon the scene — that is Felix out there in the
other room in the old high hat of the vintage of
1 840. He and his colleagues, representing the Ohio
Importing Company, went to England in quest of
Shorthorns. They visited the leading breeding estab-
lishments, including that of Mr. Bates, who told
them frankly that Belvidere's sire, old Waterloo,
then in his sixteenth year, and Norfolk, a 2d Hub-
back bull owned by Mr. Fawkes of Farnley Hall, were
the only two bulls in all Britain, aside from his
own Belvidere, that were "in the least likely to get
good stock"; a remark which illustrates the truth
that Mr. Bates was never in the least backward
about coming forward whenever the merits of his
own "breed" were being weighed in comparison with

A MASTER OF ARTS 83

others. He sent the good cow Duchess 33d to be
bred to Norfolk, and the resulting calf, a heifer
named Duchess 38th, lived to become the maternal
ancestress of the entire group of Dukes and Duch-
esses which, long after Mr. Bates' death, in the
hands of Samuel Thorne, James O. Sheldon and
Walcott & Campbell, all of New York State, became
the subject of the wildest bidding ever registered in
the cattle business in Europe or America.

The use of Norfolk and other good bulls derived
from the Bates herd was now rapidly spreading the
name of the Kirklevington cattle. The get of these
strongly-bred sires possessed that finish and neatness
for which their creator had so long striven; but it
was not until the establishment of the Yorkshire
show in 1838 that any effort was made to secure
competitive honors. In that year the young Duke
of Northumberland, already mentioned, was sent to
York along with some of Belvidere's best daughters,
and while "The Duke" was given first prize in the
two-year-old class, he was beaten for the champion-
ship. Duchess 41st headed the two-year-olds and
Duchess 42d was second in yearlings. Mr. Bates
did not agree with many of these ratings. He called
Duchess 43d, "The Duke," and Red Rose 13th, his
three best, and two of these had been missed entirely.

84 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

In this connection it may be said that Mr. Bates
was a great advocate of showing live stock by
family groups. Isolated champions counted for little
in his estimation. It was not, with him, so much a
question of what a skillful fitter could do with a
single animal that happened to be blessed with a
strong constitution and a good digestion, but rather
what results might be achieved, en bloc, through
consanguinity. In this he was undoubtedly contend-
ing for a sound principle, and in all cur modern
shows it would be well if the views of this prince
of British stock breeders upon this important point
might find more general adoption.

The English Royal Show was founded in 1839
and held its first meeting at the old university town
of Oxford. Mr. Bates, by the way, often expressed
regret that at the two great national seats of learn-
ing— Oxford and Cambridge — there were no profes-
sorships in agriculture. He urged at all times the
study of soils, chemistry, and the little-known laws
of heredity in animal life, upon all who would listen.
He made up his mind that he would wipe out those
Yorkshire decisions by an appeal to the higher tri-
bunal now set up, so we find him at Oxford in 1839
with *'The Duke," now three years old, Duchess
42d, Duchess 43d and a heifer of a newly-acquired

A MASTER OF ARTS 85

family, sired by one of his Duchess bulls. Each
headed its class, and the unnamed heifer in honor
of the victory was called the Oxford Premium Cow
and became the ancestress of the Duchess-crossed
family which, under the name of Oxfords, in the
great days to follow, was destined to rank second
only to the Duchesses themselves in the estimation
of the breeders of two continents. Daniel Webster,
the American orator and statesman, was present at
this initial Royal Show, and made an address at an
elaborate dinner given in the quadrangle of Queen's
College, in the course of which he said, speaking of
Mr. Bates' great success: "From his stock, on the
banks of the Ohio and its tributary streams, I have
seen fine animals which have been bred from his
herd in Yorkshire and Northumberland." This was,
of course, a reference to the animals imported by
the Ohio Company under the leadership of Felix
Renick, and reveals an interest in affairs agricul-
tural, and in the farming of the Ohio Valley, that
probably surprised Mr. Bates quite as much as it
may interest present-day Americans.

No higher proof of the superlative excellence of
these products of the genius of Thomas Bates as a
cattle breeder can be adduced than this sweeping
victory over all England at the first national contest

86 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

for honors. George Drewry, for long years after-
wards herd manager for His Grace the Duke of
Devonshire at Holker Hall, writing of these Oxford
winners after the lapse of fifty years, said: **The
two things that I remember best at Oxford were
the Duke of Northumberland and Duchess 43d.
These I still think were the best two Shorthorns
that I ever saw."

The sage of Kirklevington had now reached the
age of three score years and five, and having vindi-
cated, as he believed, the correctness of his prac-
tices, was not disposed to enter regularly in the
showyard battles of the time. The Booths were
the ruling power at the ringside of those days, with
cattle of tremendous substance and wealth of flesh,
but lacking the elegance and dairy propensity of
Mr. Bates' stock. John Booth of Killerby bantered
Bates upon one occasion upon his lack of courage
in not entering regularly the lists, and challenged
him to show a cow at the Royal of 1842, held at
the beautiful and ancient Yorkshire capital. This
was accepted, and the broken-legged Duchess S4th,
mother of the Duke of Northumberland, was driven
across country nearly forty miles to meet the re-
nowned Necklace. Although ten years old and taken
direct from pasture, she turned the trick. Many of

A MASTER OF ARTS 87

the leading breeders of the day were present and did
not hesitate to say to Mr. Booth that they thought
his wonderful cow fairly beaten. "Then I am satis-
fied," rejoined that good sportsman, and the great
rival breeders remained the best of friends.

The Duke of Northumberland was the crowning
triumph of Mr. Bates' career. It was this bull and
his dam, Duchess S4th, to which the veteran breeder
alluded in a letter he addressed to a publishing house
about to produce pictures of these animals, when
he made the following characteristic, caustic, yet
clever, comment: **I do not expect any artist can
do them justice. They must be seen, and the more
they are examined the more their excellence will
appear to a true connoisseur; but there are few
good judges. Hundreds of men may be found to
make a Prime Minister for one fit to judge of the
real merits of Shorthorns."

Throughout almost his entire career Bates quar-
reled with his contemporaries as to their methods
and standards, but the time had nearly arrived when
his life-work was to be completed, and the blood of
the Dukes and Duchesses started on its great career
of modifying the type of the cattle of two continents.
He died in 1849, and in May, 1850, his herd was
dispersed at auction. The times were not propitious

88 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

for the making of high prices. The impressiveness
and rare refining powers of the bulls of Kirklevington
breeding had not yet overcome the great vogue of
the BooTH-bred sires. The master had never married,
and had no near kin to inherit or take an interest
in his great legacy to posterity. A decade previously
he could have taken £400 each for his Oxford prize
females, or named his own price for "The Duke."
British agricultural values of all kinds were now
profoundly depressed. The best price made at the
sale was £200, paid by Earl Ducie for the 4th
Duke of York, which his breeder had valued at
£1,000. Several Americans were represented, in-
cluding Gol. L. G. Morris and N. J. Becar of New
York. These gentlemen took three of the Oxford
females; but the Duchess tribe remained intact for
the time being in England, fetching the poor average
of £116 each for the fourteen sold. Lord Ducie
was the leading buyer, and with the transfer of
these purchases to his estate at Tortworth Court,
in Gloucestershire, the most dramatic story in bovine
records has its real beginning.

XIII

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES

Robert Aitchison Alexander probably had a
larger hand in molding the character of our west-
ern cattle stock, as seen during the early days of
the upbuilding of all our great central markets, than
any other one individual identified with our agricul-
ture throughout the great constructive period. I
doubt if many bulls ever went upon the western
range prior to the advent of the Herefords that did
not carry the Bates Duchess blood. Practically
every important cornbelt herd established during
the rapid extension of good breeding that set in
during the "Seventies" had as its dominant factor
the blood of imported Duke of Airdrie or his sons
and grandsons. Substantially all of the best cattle
feeders of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Mis-
souri were indebted to the Bates Duchess blood
for the squareness and the levelness of the big
frames that distinguished the export bullocks of
Gillett's and Moninger's time. All of which is but
another way of saying that Kentucky set the stand-
ard and supplied the seed for these widespread
early improvements, and that the most impressive
sire ever used in the "Blue Grass" herds was this
same Bates Duchess bull called — in honor of the

90 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ancestral Alexander acres in Scotland — the Duke
of Airdrie. Through his successful use at Wood-
burn and his extensive patronage at the hands of
the Renicks, Bedfords, Vanmeters, Warfields, Dun-
cans and all the rest of that great coterie of cattle-
men that once ruled in Central Kentucky, the old
Duke of Airdrie set at an early date the seal of
Thomas Bates indelibly upon our American cattle
of the Shorthorn type — grades as well as purebreds.
By that is meant that so prepotent did the Duke
of Airdrie prove, so wonderfully did he impress his
level conformation and finish upon his get even to
the third and fourth generations, that his blood not
only actually coursed in the veins of practically all
our best western cattle at one time, but the type
was so well liked, the transformation in the case of
coarse or ill-bred cattle was so extraordinary and
immediate, that all bulls that carried the Duchess
blood were in demand at once and vastly in excess
of the supply. To this fact may be clearly attrib-
uted the inception of that remarkable chapter in
international agricultural history known as the great
"Bates Shorthorn boom."

Question not, therefore, ye who saunter through
the Saddle and Sirloin galleries, the right of
Robert Alexander to his place of honor. The

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 91

portrait is a copy of one painted by an English
artist of renown in London on the occasion of one
of Mr. Alexander's trips to the other side while
still a comparatively young man. And before we
proceed to sketch the Duchess furore let us add
that Mr. Alexander was by odds the most generous
patron of improved animal breeding of his time in
the United States, his ample fortune and his beau-
tiful Kentucky estate being for years a Mecca for all
who sought valuable materials for carrying forward
advanced work with Shorthorn and Jersey cattle,
Thoroughbred and Trotting horses, or Southdown
sheep. The great four-mile racer Lexington was
one of the particular joys of his long and useful life.
Strangely enough, Duchess 54th — the ancestress
of the sensationally - successful Airdrie Duchess
family to which must be credited the virtual inau-
guration of the craze for Bates Shorthorn blood
throughout the United States, the progress of which
movement soon stirred English cattle breeding to
its very depths — had been outcrossed with the very
last blood that Thomas Bates would have selected
for such a purpose, that of John Booth's Bracelet,
twin sister of Necklace, that the dam of the Duke
of Northumberland had defeated at York as already
related. And here our story impinges upon the

92 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Kirklevington dispersion of 1850, with which our
last sketch was concluded. Upon that occasion
Duchess 54th was bought by Mr. Eastwood for
£94 10s. for Col. Towneley. The latter was a man
of catholic tastes and wealth, wedded to no partic-
ular line of procedure, a lover of good cattle, with
an inquiring and receptive mind. To him the Short-
horn world was afterwards indebted for the won-
derful Towneley Butterflies. Sacrilegious as it would
doubtless have appeared to Thomas Bates, Duchess
54th was bulled by the white Lord George, son of
Bracelet's daughter Birthday. A bull calf named 2d
Duke of Athol was the fruit of this union of the
two great rival houses, and while engaged in buy-
ing a large selection of well-bred cattle from the
best sources for shipment to Kentucky, Mr. Alex-
ander saw and liked and bought the young Duke
bearing this bar sinister upon his Bates escutcheon,
and also his sister of the pure blood, a daughter of
Duchess 54th, called Duchess of Athol. This was
in 1853. The Duke was then a yearling and the
Duchess a two-year-old, the sum of 500 guineas
being given for the pair, a fact which indicates how
rapidly values had risen since the dispersion sale a
few years previously, and incidentally proving once
again the old, old proposition that the time to buy

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ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 93

good property is when nobody else seems to want
it even at less than its obvious intrinsic value. To
a service of her half-brother the 2d Duke of Athol
or of a bull called Valiant — the exact fact as to
the coupling never having been established — the
young Duchess of Athol produced a heifer which
Mr. Alexander named Duchess of Airdrie.

Allusion has already been made to the fact that
Lord Ducie was the principal buyer of the Dukes
and Duchesses at the Bates dispersion. His Lord-
ship was at this time, next to Earl Spencer,
probably the closest student of cattle-breeding
problems among all the noblemen of his time in
England. He knew of the Bates contention as to
the "exclusive" breeding of the Duchesses, and
probably sensing a good speculation in them, se-
cured most of them at the bargain prices prevailing
at the time they were disposed of by Mr. Bates'
executors. He had an idea, however, that they
needed an infusion of fresh blood, and when Duch-
ess 55th was knocked down to his bidding at 110
guineas he remarked that he would send her to
Earl Spencer's to be bulled by his MASON-bred
Usurer, "to improve her shoulders." This he sub-
sequently did, the cow producing a white heifer to
the service, which he did not like; whereupon he

94 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

is said to have affirmed that "Bates was right and
I am wrong. I will never cross them again with
anything but themselves." Just the same, this out-
crossed white heifer lived to found the family
known afterwards in England as Grand Duchesses,
and in the course of time, when the pure blood
had become wholly extinct, this particular English
branch of the fine old tribe and the American
Duchesses of Airdrie, carrying the Lord George
(Booth) cross, through Mr. Alexander's 2d Duke
of Athol, alone remained to perpetuate the ancient
name.

DuciE had been in feeble health for some little
time prior to his acquisition of the cream of the
Kirklevington herd, and did not live long enough to
carry out his plans. He was a crafty individual
and from all accounts not overscrupulous in shap-
ing his plans to practically "corner" the Duchess
blood. The bulls of that ilk, as well as the females,
were not numerous. The tribe had been so closely
bred that they were for the most part shy pro-
ducers. In fact, the larger part of the herd during
its later years consisted of tribes of other origin
crossed with the Duke and Oxford bulls, chief
among these in point of numbers being the Wild
Eyes and Waterloos. One of the last sires used

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 96

by Mr. Bates had been the 3d Duke of York,
which had been sold privately before the closing-
out auction was held. Lord Ducie sent his agent
to buy him, with instructions to send him to the
butcher, and the bull was actually slaughtered at
Tortworth. His Lordship supposed that this left
him in possession of the only bull of the line then
living; but upon being told that Mr. Tanqueray, a
well-known breeder of that period, had recently
come into the ownership of the 6th Duke of York,

he is credited with testily exclaiming, "D that

bull; I had lost sight of him!" However in the
language of "Bobby" Burns, "the best laid schemes
o' mice and men gang aft agley." The old Earl
died and his herd was dispersed in 1853, and up-
on that occasion Great Britain and America clashed
for the first time for the possession of the Duchess
blood. Becar and Gol. Morris, who had secured
three of the Oxford females at Kirklevington's
dispersion, were on hand now to contest for
Duchesses, and in this were reinforced by Jonathan
Thorne, also of New York City, George Vail of
Troy, and Gen. Gadwallader of Philadelphia. Their
English competitors were Tanqueray, Gol. Gunter,
Lord Feversham and the Earl of Burlington.
The eight Duchesses fetched an average of £401

96 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

each, Becar and Morris jointly taking Duchess 66th
at £735, Mr. Thorne securing the 59th, 64th and
68th at £367, £630 and £420 respectively. Becar
and Morris got Duke of Gloster at £682 and Vail
& Gadwallader bought 4th Duke of York at £525,
with the understanding that he was to be left in
England one year before shipment to the States.
Mr. Alexander then arranged to have his Duchess
of Athol bred to the Duke of Gloster, and the prod-
uce of that union was the Duke of Airdrie, that
became, as we have already mentioned, the favorite
sire of his time in the Middle Western States. He
was brought over to Woodburn in 1855.

In 1858 Richard Gibson, who figures later in
these notes, made his first visit to a Royal Show in
the land of his nativity. By that time a determined
and wealthy constituency had got behind the Bates
Shorthorn cult, and Lord Feversham sent one of
his Ducie purchases, the grand bull 5th Duke of
Oxford, to the national competition, which was held
that year at Chester. This lineal Duchess-crossed
descendant of the Oxford Premium Cow headed a
strong class of aged bulls, and Gibson never quite
forgot the impression that lordly beast made upon
him at that time. "The way he moved and the air
of conscious superiority he assumed I have never

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 97

forgotten." Such was Richard's comment made to
the writer in speaking of this old-time champion
many years ago.

In 1861 GuNTER — who was now the sole possessor
of Duchess females on the other side of the Atlantic
— took Duchess 77th out to the Leeds Royal and
beat Richard Booth's and Lady Pigot's entries.
The Lady was one of several capable women who
had espoused Shorthorn breeding enthusiastically,
flying the flag of Warlaby.

During this same year Samuel Thorne, who had
in the meantime come into possession of Thornedale,
the family seat near Millbrook, Dutchess Co., N. Y.,
while on a trip to England was besieged by British
breeders, who were now beginning to realize what
had been lost to America, to return some of the
blood to the other side. This was before the Duke
of Airdrie had made his great hit in western herds,
and Mr. Thorne consented to humor his English
friends, sending over for sale three Dukes and a
bull and a heifer of the Oxford tribe, bred from
Jonathan Thorne's purchases at the Ducie sale of
1863. These were quickly picked up soon after
being landed at Liverpool at from 300 to 400 guineas
each. One of these, the 4th Duke of Thornedale,
finally went to Gol. Gunter at Wetherby, where he

AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

was kept in service until ten years old, enjoying,
along with the T'th Duke of York, the celebrity
which attached to the pair of being the only "pure
Duke" bulls in England.

In response to a similar call from Britain Mr.
Alexander sent the fine bull 2d Duke of Airdrie
and the 5th and 6th Dukes of that line to the
mother country, all outcrossed with the blood of
the Booths. The 2d Duke had been a winner of
a $1,000 championship at St. Louis prior to his
exportation.

Meanwhile, the demand for the Bates cattle from
the nobility and gentry of England grew with each
succeeding year. It had to be met mainly by Duke
and Oxford-topped cattle of various sound old British
strains, for there were not Dukes and Duchesses
enough for all. The outcrossed Grand Duchesses
already mentioned now came into their own. The
females, were not numerous, and had been held
together, first by Mr. Bolden of Lancashire, and
subsequently by Messrs. Atherton and Hegan, the
latter paying the former the sum of £5,000 for
nine cows and four bulls. Three of the females
proved barren, and at Mr. Hegan's death in 1865
the twelve cows and heifers and five bulls of this
branch were auctioned off at Willis' rooms in the

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 99

city of London. This event was unique in the
annals of cattle-breeding from the fact that the
animals were not before the bidders when sold.
They had, of course, been seen privately at Daw-
pool before the sale. Lord Feversham presided, and
there was a brilliant assemblage of peers, M. P.'s
and notables generally. The females were offered
in "blocks of three," and the entire lot was taken
by E. L. Betts of Preston Hall in Kent, at 1,900
guineas for the first trio offered, 1,300 guineas for
the second, 1,800 guineas for the third and 1,200
for the fourth. The bull Imperial Oxford, that was
then being used upon them, went with them at an
extra price of 450 guineas. The Duke of Devon-
shire took Grand Duke 10th at 600 guineas. Two
years later Mr. Betts resold the cattle. They had
not been prolific; but the thirteen head offered
brought the fine average of 432 guineas each, the
"plum" of the lot, the celebrated Grand Duchess
IT'th, bringing 800 guineas from Gapt. R. E. Oliver
of Sholebroke Lodge.

By this time events were shaping themselves
for still greater activities in America. In 1866 J.O.
Sheldon of White Spring Farm, Geneva, N.Y., bought
the entire Thornedale herd of Duchesses, Oxfords,
etc., at a reported price of $40,000, thus acquiring

100 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

a monopoly of the "pure" blood this side the At-
lantic. The following year Sheldon exported two
Dukes and a Duchess heifer to England, along with
some of the Oxfords. They were sold, after inspec-
tion, by Strafford by candlelight in the cafe of
the Castle Hotel at Windsor, where Mr. Leney, of
Kent, gave 700 guineas for the white 7th Duchess
of Geneva. For the entire shipment about $20,000
was realized. In 1869 Mr. Sheldon parted with
the two-year-old heifer 11th Duchess of Geneva,
the yearling 14th Duchess and the bull calf 9th
Duke of Geneva for a round $12,500 to E. H.
Cheney of Gaddesby Hall, selling also about the
same time the 8th Duke, a bull calf, for export at
$4,000.

By 1870 the Bates tribes proper were firmly
held by powerful interests on both sides the Atlan-
tic; but the speculative spirit engendered by the
Thorne and Sheldon exportations and by their sales
of young Dukes at prices ranging from $3,000 to
$6,000 each, to various American breeders, was not
only beginning to tell against the character of the
cattle themselves, but bid fair to reach a dangerous
height. The entire Sheldon herd was acquired by
Walcott & Campbell of the New York Mills, at
Utica, at around $100,000, and Richard Gibson was

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 101

placed in charge. The Duchesses had cost them
about $5,500 each. Hon. M. H. Cochrane of Hill-
hurst, Canada, had brought out three of the Gunter
Duchesses from England, two at $5,000 each and
one at $7,500. One of the former he sold to Col.
William S. King of Minneapolis for the then un-
heard-of price of $12,0001 Later on she was bought
back and resold for return to England. In April,
1871, Senator Cochrane exported the bull Duke of
Hillhurst to Col. Kingscote at $4,000. He was
sired by the 14th Duke of Thornedale, a bull that
afterwards sold in Kentucky for $17,900, and in
England the Hillhurst Duke begot the world-famous
Duke of Connaught, for which Lord Fitzhardinge
of Berkeley Castle paid the record price of 4,600
guineas! In November, 1871, Cochrane sold to
Earl Dunmore two Duchess heifers for $12,500.
In 1872 Richard Gibson bought from Mr. Alexander
three Airdrie Duchesses for export to E. H. Cheney.
And so these ''days of most stupendous follies," as
Col. King was wont to put it after all was over,
proceeded to their international climax of 1873.
Dunmore opened the ball that year with a purchase
of ten head of Bates cattle from Hillhurst at
$50,0001 And in the autumn came the deluge —
the New York Mills dispersion. This is not the

102 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

place to write in detail of that most extraordinary
event, when England and America went jointly mad.
The "pure" Duchess breed was now extinct in the
land of its birth, and the fast and furious fighting for
their possession did not end until the sum of $40,600
had been bid for the 8th Duchess of Geneva!

The sun went down that September afternoon
upon an average of $18,740 for eleven Duchesses
and three Dukes, the top figures being paid by Eng-
lish bidders. Earl Bective took the 10th Duchess
of Geneva at $35,000, and Lord Skelmersdale
gave $30,600 for 1st Duchess of Oneida. Mr.
Alexander led the American contingent with
$2T,000 for the 10th Duchess of Oneida. It after-
wards developed that the agent who represented
Mr. R. Pavin Davies, of England, in the tense ex-
citement of the day had exceeded his instructions
in making the $40,600 bid, and the cow was after-
wards taken by Col. L. G. Morris at the price made
by her daughter, $30,600.

What was the harvest? For the most part dis-
appointment: deaths, abortions and failures to breed.
The $36,000 cow became in England the mother
of a splendid sire, the same Duke of Underley
whose head in terra cotta relief may be seen any
day, by those curiously inclined, in one of the panels

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 103

already alluded to in this volume as ornamenting
the entrance to the National Live Stock Bank at
the Chicago Yards.

In 1875 Mr. Alexander sold the good bull 24th
Duke of Airdrie and the 20th Duchess of Airdrie to
George Fox, of England, at $12,000 and $18,000
respectively. About the same time Cheney paid the
proprietor of Woodburn $17,000 for the 16th Duch-
ess of Airdrie. Avery & Murphy of Port Huron
gave Cochrane $18,000 for Airdrie Duchess 5th.
An interesting incident also of this period was the
attempt to push into the limelight the Princess tribe,
because of Belvidere's successful use nearly fifty
years previously at Kirklevington. A. W. Griswold
of Vermont sold five of these in 1875 for $18,000.
Six head were subsequently sold in Kentucky for
$15,725. The English took a hand in this, and
several were exported at long prices. The Renick
Roses of Sharon also caught the swell of this unpar-
alleled speculation, and several of them were exported
at long figures. At Lord Dunmore's memorable sale
of Aug. 25, 1875, where the Duke of Connaught
fetched 4,500 guineas, the RENicK-bred Red Rose
of the Isles topped the females at $11,650 from
Earl Bective. On this great occasion thirty-nine
head sold for $149,335, an average of $3,829!

104 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

We might continue this narration on down
through the decade following; but, after the figures
already quoted, sales of Duchess cattle at from
$10,000 to $20,000 each begin to lose their in-
terest. They were still selling at those figures at
intervals after the writer began his work. As a
boy in 18^6 I saw Albert Grane pay $23,600 and
$21,000 respectively for Airdrie Duchesses 2d and
3d at Dexter Park. In 1S77 I saw the 22d
Duchess of Airdrie knocked off by Gol. Judy for
$15,000, and wondered why. I figured later that
the descendants of the old 10th Duchess of Airdrie
had brought in round figures the great sum of
$300,000!

In 1882 Senator Cochrane sold his Hillhurst
Duchesses at Dexter Park, including the famous
old Woodburn-bred 10th Duchess of Airdrie and a
number of her descendants, receiving an average of
$2,080 on 23 head, belonging to various Bates
families. The late John Hope, superintendent of the
Bow Park herd at Brantford, Ont., — at which estab-
lishment John Clay made his start in business in
America — bought four Duchesses here at prices rang-
ing from $4,^00 to $8,500. Ghas. A. Degraff of
Lake Elysian Farm, Janesville, Minn., gave $3,025
upon this occasion for the 8th Duke of Hillhurst.

ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 105

Mr. Hope was for many years a prominent figure
in the American shows and salerings, and the herd
in his charge was fortunate in the possession of
probably the best of all the latter-day Duchess bulls
in North America — the imported 4th Duke of Clar-
ence, not only a good show bull, but a prepotent sire,
one of the most noted of his get being the white
steer Clarence Kirklevington, champion alive and on
the block at the American Fat Stock Show of 1884.
Hope was completely wrapped up in **the Duke,"
and always spoke of him in terms of the most af-
fectionate regard. I have known many cases of
strong attachment of a master for a pet horse or
hound, but Hope's feelings toward the 4th Duke
of Clarence seemed deeper than I have ever ob-
served elsewhere on the part of an owner or herds-
man toward a beast of the bovine species. And
when the end came for poor John — who under the
spell of an insufferable nervous depression com-
mitted suicide in 1894 — he betook himself to the
old Duke's box to end his own sufferings. Hope
was of English birth, a good all-around judge of
farm animals, experienced in all the arts of show-
manship, and, as evidenced by the act just men-
tioned, was full of sentiment. Unfortunately, he was
identified with a sinking ship so far as the financ-

106 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ing of a cattle-breeding establishment conducted
along Bates lines was concerned. Still, he was in
comfortable circumstances personally at the time
of his death, and only disappointment at not obtain-
ing the title to the farm was advanced at the time
as an inciting cause for the rash act which ended
his career. Hope was a man who should have
lived out a long and satisfying life, and had he
done so he would have been one of the stanchest
supporters of Saddle and Sirloin aspirations and
policies.

Charles A. Degraff, big, generous-hearted, noble-
minded patron of animal breeding, until overtaken
ail too soon by the grim reaper, was one of the
kingliest characters of his generation. Minnesota
was indeed fortunate in the early days of the de-
velopment of her agriculture in having such men
as William S. King, N. P. Clarke, Henry F. Brown
and Charles A. Degraff to spread with lavish
hands the materials for the foundation of her sub-
sequently splendid live-stock husbandry; but easily
the kindliest, greatest-hearted of them all was
"Charley" Degraff.

In 1883 came some of the last brilliant flashes
of the Duchess boom. Holford of Castle Hill sold
the 3d Duchess of Leicester and the 3d Duke of

ManMM— jgijii— gaaagaaan m ii« riii-ii*r<nrMinr'f^' - i f — 1 1 ir ■ 1 1 --n n. ■ - i i — -i n-. • • -
ROMANCE OF THE DUKES AND DUCHESSES 107

Leicester to Lord Fitzhardinge at $5,Z50 and
$4,500 respectively, and Earl Bective paid $7,625
for the Duchess of Leicester. And about this date
the 8th Duke of Tregunter, that had been exported
to Australia, changed hands in that land of illimit-
able pastures at $20,000. But the bloom was fad-
ing. The primal excellence of Charles Colling's
Stanwick cow of 1783, the excellence of the first
Duchess bought by Mr. Bates, to say nothing of the
really grand specimens that came with the use of
Belvidere, had been largely lost through reckless in-
and-in breeding, directed, not by the master mind of
Thomas Bates, but for the most part by amateurs
who were little less than gamblers, faithless alto-
gether to the high ideals of the creator of the type
and loyal only to the god of gold.

The story needs no written moral; but what a
tribute to the genius of him who rests yonder
across the sea in the little churchyard of Kirklev-
ington! Verily this narrative of the belated apprecia-
tion of the work of Thomas Bates, and the fierce
struggle for the possession of his legacy to the bovine
world that occurred so many years after his decease,
recalls the fate of the creator of the tale of Troy:

"Seven wealthy towns contend for Honrier dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread."

XIV
THE FIRST FARMER OF ENGLAND

Here is a story of success in farming and stock-
breeding that reveals, in startling fashion, the
possibilities of a noble profession persistently and
intelligently pursued — a recital that contains more
inspiration perhaps than almost any other that may
be told in Saddle and Sirloin circles — the tale of
William Torr.

In the portrait you may see a faint reflection
of the "cheery sun-at-noonday smile" which was the
outward manifestation of a disposition that endeared
him at once to all who came into his presence.
He attained to a distinction second to none other
that can be bestowed upon a Briton-born, the
sobriquet of "the first farmer of England." In a
land where practically every man, woman and child,
from His Majesty at Buckingham Palace down to
the very humblest, have an inborn affection for the
soil and a pride in rural achievement, the phrase
we couple with the name of Torr is redolent of
fertile, well-kept fields, rare herds and flocks, rich
swards bedecked with buttercups, the hawthorn
hedge, the smooth hard highway winding in and out
between stone walls, distant spires or turrets half

108

THE FIRST FARMER OF ENGLAND 109

hidden by the oaks or elms that guard some stately
home — the open country of this island garden of
the North Atlantic! To be first, or even among the
first, in a land which above all other lands realizes
in fullest measure one's fondest dreams of all that
God's great out-of-doors should be, stamps him to
whom it is applied as possessing every claim to
that immortality with which we love to invest those
whose portraits pass the curtains of the inner shrine.
May election to that chamber be ever closely guarded!
ToRR was a Lincolnshire man who first of all
became a master of the arts of tillage, his crops
being the envy of his brother tenants throughout all
the east of England. An admirer of good sheep, he
took up the Leicesters, giving them that unremitting
care and thought which has made Britain so famous
for its fleecy wonders. His heart, however, was ever
with the Shorthorns, and after due deliberation he
decided to cast his fortunes with the house of Booth.
His real career as a cattle-breeder began when in
1 844 he leased the famous Leonard, one of the best
stock-getters of his day, and to the very last he re-
mained a devoted and determined adherent of that
line of breeding. Like all other great constructive
breeders, he put ultimate results above temporary
expediency. He had a definite end in view from the

110 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

very first, and swerved not from the path marked
out. He bred especially for the oblique, well-laid
shoulder, great foreribs, broad loins and heavy flesh,
possessing mellowness without undue softness, and
prized especially a furry coat. Substance and con-
stitution too were cardinal considerations, and the
uniformity in these particulars which he succeeded
in establishing in later years provides the proof of
his genius in the manipulation of animal form.

Greatly enamored as he was of the massive old
Killerby and Warlaby stock, Torr had seen the Duke
of Northumberland at his best, and often spoke of
him as the finest show bull he had ever seen, and
it appears that he conceived the notion that a dash
of Bates might possibly prove helpful in the course
of his own experiments. He once journeyed to
Kirklevington in the earlier days of his Shorthorn
work with a view towards hiring the 4th Duke of
Northumberland, which he regarded as even a better
bull than the first of that name. The deal was
practically closed, but Mr. Bates undertook to stipu-
late that the bull should be bred to only 25 cows,
whereupon Torr rejoined, "Very well, Mr. Bates, you
have your bull and I have my money." At a later
date some of the blood was secured, however. At
the Kirklevington dispersion Torr had particularly

THE FIRST FARMER OF ENGLAND . Ill

admired the Waterloos, and decided to go on with a
branch of that family which he had introduced into
his own herd five years previously by the purchase
of a cow called Water Witch, sired by the 4th Duke
of Northumberland out of Mr. Bates' Waterloo Sd
by Norfolk. By the use of Booth bulls upon this
sort he produced one of the most prolific and one
of the best groups in the Aylesby Manor herd. His
pet family, nevertheless, was the Flower tribe, de-
scended in the maternal line from Nonpareil, for
which Earl Spencer had paid 370 guineas, the
highest figure reached at Robert Golling's sale of
1818.

It will be remembered that Thomas Booth, un-
like Bates, had builded up his original herd by using
Colling bulls upon females of his own selection.
Torr pursued a similar policy; that is, he resorted
to the Booth blood only for his sires, buying his
foundation breeding cows wherever he found types
to his liking. True, his Ribys and Brights went
back to Booth's Anna; but they had crosses of
extraneous blood put in after Whitaker's purchase
of a cow of that derivation at the Studley sale of
18S4. The reuniting of the Booth blood in this
case proved a pronounced success, so much so that
when the herd was finally dispersed Mr. T. G. Booth

11.2 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

took the cream of the lot back to Warlaby, as will
presently be noticed.

It is with the outcome of Mr. Torr's operations
that we are here concerned, rather than in the details
of his breeding operations; and as the verdict placed
upon his work by his appreciative fellow-countrymen
was one of the most flattering that ever fell to the
lot of a breeder of improved live stock in any land,
we hasten now to present it. He had once said,
"It takes SO years for any man to make a herd
and bring it to one's notions of perfection." For-
tunately he lived to devote that space of time to
the Shorthorn cattle. He died in 1876, and the
cattle went to the auction block in September of
that year. Dun more had just made his $3,800
average on 39 head of BATEs-bred cattle.

Warlaby had been suffering severely for some
time from the effects of long-continued high feeding
for show. A tendency to shy breeding had already
developed, when a virulent visitation of foot-and-
mouth came along, bringing disastrous consequences
in its train. The stock stood, therefore, at this
time sadly in need of vigorous rehabilitation. The
herd that William Torr had created at Aylesby was
confessedly not only the best collection of Booth-
bred cattle in the kingdom, but the best herd of

THE FIRST FARMER OF ENGLAND 113

any line of breeding at that date on either side
the Atlantic. Hence it came to pass that when its
dispersion was announced, visitors from far and
near gathered literally by the thousand, and with
Tom Booth at their head.

Luncheon had been set for 1,500 guests, a great
canvas accommodating 2,000 people was provided,
and yet the crowds overflowed all Aylesby and
vicinity. Great landed proprietors and peers of the
realm mingled with eminent breeders, all intent upon
showing their respect and love for the man who
had accomplished so much for his country's good.
Factors, herdsmen and agents mingled with the
throng, eagerly examining the cattle and making
notes on the various lots preparatory to laying bids
for absent principals. It was, in brief, a scene that
has had few parallels in agricultural history; and
the disposition of eighty-five head of Torr's own
production for the great sum of $243,1 44. 5T must
be regarded, all things considered, as the most re-
markable result ever yet worked out by an individ-
ual breeder of Shorthorns or any other class of
cattle.

Mr. Booth improved to the utmost this opportu-
nity of laying hold of sound old Killerby and Warlaby
blood, and gave the top price, $12,900, for Bright

114 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Empress, and the second highest, $8,900, for Bright
Saxon. For Bright Spangle he paid $6,300. Riby
Marchioness went to Ireland at $7,530, and the
beautiful Highland Flower to Rev. T. Staniforth
at $8,960. The top for bulls was $4,185, reached
three times, Riby Knight going at that figure to
New Zealand. The 22 Annas averaged $4,180
each, and 21 Waterloos made but $1,275 each.
No such sale of cattle of one man's own produc-
tion is on record. The point is, that a tenant
farmer by devoting thirty years to a single purpose
bred up a herd that was appraised at public vendue
at nearly $250,000!

What has been done can be done again. His-
tory repeats.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Decidedly a man of action, you will not be long
in locating the particularly striking portrait of
Barclay of Ury, who first stirred Aberdeenshire on
the subject of better cattle. Robertson of Ladykirk
in Berwickshire and Rennie of East Lothian had at
an early date carried the "Durham" colors across
the Tweed, but their portraits are yet among our
missing. When turnip culture came at last to be
introduced into the far north, the time was ripe for
advancing the standard of quality in the local herds.
The result of that awakening is now a familiar
chapter in live-stock history. Wherever an Aber-
deen Shorthorn or a poll is to be seen — and there
are few portions of North America where these are
not in evidence — there is occasion for removing one's
hat in memory of Gapt. Barclay, one of the most
unique personalities, one of the most extraordinary
characters, to be met with in live-stock literature.

Descended from a prominent old Kincardineshire
family, he inherited the estate of Ury, situated along
the little River Gowie, near the unpretentious village
of Stonehaven on the North Sea coast. You pass
through it now by train on your way up to Aberdeen.

115

116 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

In Barclay's time you would mount the box or
take a seat inside of the ''Defiance," in which famous
old-time coach the Captain had a financial and deep
personal interest. He was a claimant of the earl-
dom of Monteith, and writing of him the late Wm.
McGoMBiE of Tillyfour, one of the founders of the
Angus "doddie" breed, once said:

"No one would have made any mistake as to
Gapt. Barclay being a gentleman, although his dress
was plain — a long green coat with velvet collar and
big yellow buttons, a colored handkerchief, long yellow
cashmere vest, knee-breeches, very wide top-boots
and plain black hat."

So much has been written of Barclay's exploits
as perhaps the greatest all-around sportsman of his
day, that his place as a contributor to Scottish
national wealth, and, incidentally, to the world's
riches, cattle-wise, has never quite been fully ac-
knowledged. He was himself an athlete of renown,
and it is marvelous that he should have been able
to actively indulge his keen delight in the domains
of coaching, coursing, the prize-ring, fox hunting,
military training and other exercises demanding
physical strength and endurance, and at the same
time devote so much attention to the introduction
of good blood into his native Northland, and to the
production of cattle which formed the beginnings

NORTHERN LIGHTS 117

of the Aberdeenshire herds that afterwards met
with world-wide recognition. But he was no
common mortal, this lion-heart of Scotland. He
once walked one thousand miles in one thousand
hours upon a wager! He once drove the "Defiance"
through from London all the way to the city of
Aberdeen — a distance of fully five hundred miles,
without leaving the box — to win a bet of £1,000!
At the end of the journey, upon a friend remarking,
"Captain, you must be tired," he rejoined: "I have
£1,000 that says I can drive back to London again,
starting in the morn;" but there were no takers.
He was an officer in the local regiment. He loved
boxing, and trained several noted professionals for
important bouts. He had a famous breed of game
fowls, and would always back his birds to win in
the pit. But above and over all was his steadfast
devotion to Ury itself. Big himself, he did every-
thing on a scale that seemed huge to most of his
countrymen. Speaking of this "The Druid" says in
"Field and Fern":

"Everything he had to do with, down to his glass
tumblers, was always on a gigantic scale. His cattle
must be up to their knees in grass, and his wheat-
wagons — with four or six horses and the drag on —
seemed like an earthquake to the Aberdonians when
they rumbled down Marischal Street to the harbor.

118 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Well might the surveyor tremble by reason of them
for the safety of the Old Bridge. His bull Champion
was cut up for refreshments at one of his sales,
and when he thought there might be some mistake
about the arrival of the regular beef supplies, he
had twelve geese killed and spitted on an ashet
before the fire. He would have his rounds of beef
of a certain circumference, and it was because he
despaired of finding a bullock of the regulation size
that he made Champion stand proxy."

Confirmatory of all this is McCombie's assertion
that "his horses were the strongest and his fields
the largest in the country. He once said that he
'did not like a field in which the cattle could see
one another every day.' "

The estate of Ury proper comprised about 4,000
acres, of which the Captain had about 400 acres in
his personal control. It was naturally a poor, sterile
soil, littered with the stony debris of the ancient
glaciers from the Grampians; but his father at
prodigious outlay of labor had reduced, by the free
use of lime and the culture of roots, 200 acres to
a good state of fertility. Two hundred more were
reclaimed from the heather and 1,200 acres planted
to timberl At such a cost did these pioneer North-
of-Scotland farmers make productive lands of their
ancestral barrens.

NORTHERN LIGHTS 119

Capt. Barclay began with Shorthorns about
1822, and when the herd of Mason of Chilton was
sold off in Durham in 1829 he bought probably the
best cow in that far-famed old-time collection.
This was the celebrated Lady Sarah, which he took
out at 150 guineas, and she proved a fine invest-
ment. She produced, after her arrival at Ury, the
bull Monarch (4495), and here comes in again the
appeal to Bakewell. Monarch, bred back to his
own dam, sired the bulls Mahommed and Sovereign.
The former was sold, but turned out such a capital
breeder that he was bought back and kept in ser-
vice by the Captain until 1841. Lady Sarah left
three heifers that gave rise to good families.
Amos Gruickshank, who got his first bulls from Ury,
once said: "I question if ever there was a better
breed of Shorthorn in England, Scotland or any-
where else than the Lady Sarah tribe."

Barclay was a friend and intimate of four of
the best cattle judges of their time: William
Wetherell, William McCombie, Hugh Watson and
Jonas Webb, upon whose judgment and advice he
is said to have frequently relied. The former
bought old Lady Sarah when 13 years old at one
of the Ury sales, and sold her to Watson. The
latter shares with McCombie in Scottish history the

120 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

honor of being one of the originators of the Aber-
deen-Angus "humlies."

The first Ury herd was closed out at auction in
1858, the eighty head bringing £5,000. The bull
Mahommed was retained, and shortly another herd
was in process of formation. This was sold in
1847, Wetherell being the auctioneer, and it was
upon this occasion that Campbell of Kinellar laid
the foundation by purchase for his afterwards
famous herd.

Ury was undoubtedly the corner-stone of the
Scottish Shorthorn structure. The bulls from the
Barclay herd were used originally to cross upon
the native black cows, and the improvement wrought
was so apparent that probably a majority of the
herds of the district received an infusion of Ury
blood. The result was a demand for Shorthorn
bulls that finally turned the attention of such men
as Grant Duff of Eden, Hay of Shethin, the Gruick-
SHANKS of Sittyton, and many others to the pro-
duction of purebred Shorthorns.

The Gaptain once kept a pack at a neighboring
estate called Allardyce, and hunted in Turiff and
Kincardineshire. It was due to this connection that
he acquired the habit of signing himself "Barclay
Allardyce." It is related that he would often ride

NORTHERN LIGHTS 121

forty miles to a meet. He was wont also to go to
Leamington, a fashionable English watering place
near Warwick, for the hunting season, where he
made something of a sensation by appearing at one
of the grand balls in his old green coat and black
knee-breeches. He was a supporter also of the
turf, commonly attending the Epsom Derby.

One of his friends characterized him as *'a great
eater, a man of fine, simple faith and always in
condition." Dixon says that "when he first met
Hugh Watson at a coursing meeting, and seeing
that he was a man after his own heart, asked him,
as if it was a highly intellectual treat, 'Would you
like to see me strip tonight, and feel my muscle?' "

Dixon has also left this picture of the redoubt-
able Captain:

"At home his own habits were very quiet and
simple. He was always ready with his subscription
for any good object, and every Monday twenty or
thirty people would be waiting for him about the
front door after breakfast for their sixpences, of
which he carried a supply in his waistcoat pocket.
On New Year's Day he had always his friends
to dinner, land he sat obscured to the chin behind
the round of beef which two men brought in on a
trencher. Mr. Kinnear was the perpetual Vice,
and everybody made a speech. The Captain's was

122 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

quite an oration, or rather a resume of the year, and
concluded with special eulogium on those who 'have
died since our last anniversary.' Not infrequently
he killed one or two before their time, perhaps more
from a little dry humor than by mistake; and then
he begged their pardon and said, *it didn't matter
much.' For some time before his death he had suf-
fered slightly from paralysis; but a kick from a pony
produced a crisis, and two days after, when they
went to awake him on the May morning of '54, he
was found dead in bed. He lies in the cemetery of
Ury, about a mile from his old home^ — the trainer of
pugilists with the gentle apologist for the Quakers —
and his claim to the earldom of Airth and Monteith
seemed to die out with him."

Let us hope that in due course of time Hugh
Watson and William McGombie will find their proper
places in the inner circle of the Club alongside
Barclay and Amos Gruickshank. It must be borne
in mind that there was a native race of polled
cattle in Angus, Aberdeen and contiguous counties
long before Barclay introduced the Shorthorn,
Hugh Watson of Forfarshire was the man who had
done most to develop the doddie type within itself,
and his success with the blacks was commensurate
with that of the Gollings with the Shorthorns. He
commenced at Keillor in 1809, and never deserted
the type to the date of his death. He was on

NORTHERN LIGHTS 123

terms of close friendship with such congenial spirits
in the south as John Booth, Anthony Maynard,
Wetherell and Torr, and is said to have followed
closely in his wonderful manipulations of Angus
form the methods of those eminent English breeders,
including resort, at times, to close inter -breeding.
Booth's Bracelet and Charity were Keillor's beau
ideals of beef form, and he directed his operations
with the blackskins to the attainment of a similar
type.

McGoMBiE was the man who saved the "doddies"
from virtual extinction in Aberdeenshire at a time
when the Shorthorns were threatening to engulf
the indigenous type on its native heath. He began
about 1830, and for full fifty years devoted his
rare skill and judgment to the improvement of the
"bonnie blacks." The story of his triumphs would
fill a volume.

I once spent a day at Ballindalloch, that great
stronghold of the Angus high up in the valley of
the Spey the guest of the late Sir George Mac-
Pherson Grant, and the pictures seen that day are
mirrored plainly still in memory after the lapse of
more than twenty years. The ancient castle with
its narrow spiral stairway in the tower, the views of
distant hill and wood, the winding river, the pas-

124 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

tures leading up to where the purple heather grows,
the glossy- coated cattle, Sir George's brother
Campbell in his Highland kilts, Mackenzie of Dal-
more, a fellow-guest to argue with, and the baronet
himself for guide !

This was when the Ballindalloch Ericas were
to be seen in all the glory of their flesh, finish and
rotundity — neat, thick, low, wide and as like as peas
in the same pod. Sir George had attained the very
top of the tree as the foremost breeder of Aber-
deen-Angus of modern days, and frankly acknowl-
edged that the foundation of his success was laid
by the purchase and free use of the bull Trojan,
bought from McCombie in 1865. Thus are the
links forged in the chains of all these annals of
the breed. The whole splendid story of how the
great work of one generation has been carried for-
ward by the next, and the fruit of it all preserved
and handed down for the benefit of the farming
world, should be held up before the present gener-
ation at every opportunity and at any reasonable
cost.

Has the Saddle and Sirloin Club anything yet
to do? OhI ye who know not the paths of glory
in the animal breeding realm, ye who are not con-
scious of the miracles that have been worked in

NORTHERN LIGHTS 125

pastures and paddocks on both sides the North
Atlantic, familiarize yourselves with the historic
places that await you in a thousand beautiful and
secluded nooks and corners of this fine old world
and answer.

XVI
CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH

There are many instances in live-stock history
of "community breeding" carried to extraordinary
heights of success. Draw, for instance, circles hav-
ing radii of say twenty or thirty miles around the
cities of Hereford, Darlington and Nogent-le-Rotrou,
and you would circumscribe the districts wherein
great men lived out their useful lives preparing for
the world's everlasting benefit the Hereford cattle,
the Shorthorn cattle and the Percheron horse.
The case of the Clydesdale and the Ayrshire country,
the accomplishments of Aberdeenshire, of the Isles
of Jersey and Guernsey, the great contribution
by the Netherlands and various other outstanding
illustrations, all serve to point alike the moral, and
adorn the tale, of how splendid enduring sources
of world wealth have been worked out within the
boundaries of a restricted area through the per-
sistent co-operation of enthusiastic groups of men
bound together by the ties of keen, mutual interest.

If ever an ideal Saddle and Sirloin Club were
to come into existence, it would have separate rooms
devoted to the exploitation of the origin and devel-
opment of all the leading breeds that are now such
important factors in our national economy. Sup-

126

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 127

posing for a moment we enter what might be called
the "Darlington Room." In its center is seen a
topographical map. Its dominant feature would be
the Valley of the Tees, beginning, say, at Barnard
Castle and ending where Middlesbrough bids the
peaceful little river farewell as it passes into the
bosom of the German Ocean. Far in the north is
Durham cathedral's "majestic gothic shade." To the
east the vale of Cleveland. In the south Derwent
water, Northallerton and the grassy vale of the Swale.
And everywhere historic homes and steadings! Wyn-
yard, Wolviston, Acklam, Kirklevington, Sockburn,
Brawith, Brandsby, Marton-le-Moor, Studley Royal,
Skipton Bridge, Warlaby, Braithwaite, Carperby,
Marske, Ravensworth, Barningham, Stanwick, Gain-
ford, Dalton, Aldbrough, Smeaton, Cleasby, Eryholme,
Barmpton, Ketton, Chilton! Mark also those an-
cient and honorable "clearing houses" already men-
tioned in these tales, the "Black Bull Inn" and the
"King's Head" in the streets of Yarm and Darling-
ton— twin capitals of this district of great destiny.
On the walls of this imaginary room are portraits
of at least a score of presiding judges of the olden
cattle courts, and rare old prints of famous bovine
favorites. Mementoes of these breed-makers also
find here a fitting resting place, and as the people

128 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

turn from the International championship battles of
today to touch these relics of patron saints, their
faith and fast allegiance is indeed renewed. Some
day we may see this room, and from it pass on to
others wherein we shall find equally impressive
mementoes of the birthplaces and creators of other
pastoral assets.

Meantime, take as another type of these old
field marshals of York and Durham, William
Wetherell of the Ogilvie group. Unfortunately
we cannot now show you the prints that once hung
in his modest home at Aldbrough. Pictures of the
GoLLiNGs, Thomas Booth, Sir Tatton Sykes, Wiley
and Barclay of Ury were there; also the portrait
of a cow that Booth had sold as a two-year-old
and bought back later at beef price, producing three
heifers for which Rennie of Phantassie bid 500
guineas unavailingly. Weaver's painting of Comet
was also Wetherell's. In the presence of these
and other reminders it was easy to draw a wealth
of old-time cattle lore from this "Nestor" of the
great fraternity that wrought such marvels in this
little kingdom of Darlington. Wetherell, in his
time, bred four distinct herds. He first caught the
divine fire when as a mere boy he gazed with wide-
eyed wonder as the bidding went to a thousand

■h

■' i

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 129

guineas at Ketton in 1810, and at Robert Golling's
sale eight years later he made his maiden purchases.
He was active, vigorous, aggressive, persistent and
a walking cyclopedia of facts dealing with Short-
horn development. Recognized also as one of the
best judges of his time, fond of his friends and
ever ready to join in debate, he was a welcome
and frequent visitor throughout all the valley and
beyond. He combated the old craze for mere size,
and preached constitution first, last and all the time
as the bas-is of all success in animal breeding.

Wetherell was an auctioneer besides being him-
self a frequent and liberal buyer of top cattle, and
no amount of bad luck ever seemed to swerve him
from his devotion to the Shorthorn cause. Pleuro-
pneumonia once carried off 24 of his cows in a
single season, and the best bull he ever owned de-
veloped such a temper that he had to be shot for
fear of possible fatalities to the attendants. His
faithful herdsman, John Ward, was one of the mas-
ters of his profession in a day when showyard and
salering generals of the first-class were much in
evidence. The final dispersion sale was a memora-
ble occasion. The crowd had been liberally enter-
tained at the ''King's Head" the night before, and
the proprietor "in a white waistcoat on a pony"

130 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

personally directed the selling. He spoke feelingly
of *'auld acquaentance," and a blue bullock-van
with "The Cumberland Ox" in six-inch letters on its
side, did duty, according to Dixon, "as catalogue
and counting house." John Charge, then bowed
and feeble under the weight of years, was in the
throng, and, leaning on the arm of a friend, told of
how "nine and forty years before he had joined to
buy a leg of Comet," having been one of the four
to pay 1,000 guineas for the bull at the Ketton
sale. Lady Pigot, from her brougham, sent in the
300-guinea bid that took Stanley Rose, the highest
priced lot of the day.

Another fine type of these wonderful English
farmers, although belonging to a somewhat later
era, was Jonas Webb, of Babraham in Cambridge-
shire, one of the recognized builders of the beautiful
Southdown breed of sheep. You will find his por-
trait also in the Ogilvie lot. Mr. Webb was another
man of decided originality. It is indeed extraordi-
nary that England should have produced so many
big-brained men capable of mapping out independent
courses, and following up schemes of breeding,
usually along Bakewell lines, leading to fame and
sometimes fortune. One can readily imagine what
zest must have animated those sessions of the long

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 131

ago when these strong-minded, virile personalities
came in frequent mental contact.

The creation of the Southdown must be classed
as one of the notable achievements of a century
phenomenally prolific in great gifts to agriculture.
What a Thoroughbred racer is to the road, track
and saddle horse stock of the world, so is the South-
down to most of our great modern middle-wooled
mutton types of sheep.

JoNAS Webb merits a monument for his work
with Southdowns alone. For years his fiock was
drawn upon by the best breeders of England as
well as by royalty. Choice specimens were often
sent to leading shows, and the Babraham pens
were ever a center of attraction. A particularly
fine group was forwarded for exhibition to one of
the earlier Paris Universal Expositions, and in con-
nection with this a story is told that proves that
Jonas Webb was quick as well as deep. One day
during the Exposition the Emperor, Napoleon III,
drove through the live-stock section. It was of
course a gala day. The carriage, drawn by four
white horses richly caparisoned, was halted at the
ruler's request in front of the Southdown pens. Mr.
Webb chanced to be on hand. The distinguished
visitor after admiring the sheep with every indica-

152 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

tion of enthusiasm asked to whom they belonged.
Like a flash came back the reply, "Yours, your
majesty, if you will accept them." The gift was
graciously received, and some weeks later there
came to Babraham, with the compliments of Napo-
leon III, a magnificent chest of silver, said to this
day to be one of the finest in all England.

Although not in the Teeswater district, Mr. Webb
began with Shorthorns in 1858,. and bred them with
success along paths of his own choice until his death
in 1862, at which time his herd numbered about
150 head. At this date it was one of the best
large herds in England, and a brilliant future was
assured for it had the proprietor lived longer to
carry out his plans. When dispersed at prices rang-
ing up to 400 guineas for the bull Lord Chancellor,
quite a number were bought for export to Prussia,
Austria and Australia. Mr. Jonas Webb Jr., a grand-
son of this distinguished breeder, became associated
with the late John Thornton — the successor of
Strafford, the great English live-stock auctioneer
— and will be pleasantly remembered by many Amer-
icans who had the pleasure of meeting him upon
the occasion of his visit to the States some years
since.

The late Sir Walter Gilbey of Elsenham Hall,

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 133

Essex, during his lifetime was made a baronet, on
request of the Prince of Wales, by a stroke of
Queen Victoria's pen, in recognition of distinguished
services rendered to British agriculture and horse-
breeding. Americans may consider that an even
greater honor has come to Sir Walter dead. A fine
copy, by Nyholm, of Sir W. Q. Orchardson's pres-
entation portrait, adorns our Saddle and Sirloin
walls. At his own sweet will a monarch may make
a belted knight. Something more than that is a
condition precedent to admission to this our Amer-
ican Academy. The original of this fine portrait was
paid for by subscriptions from more than 1,200
different people — a fact that illustrates the subject's
wide popularity — and the presentation speech was
made by the prince, who was afterwards crowned
King Edward VII. This event took place in 1891,
at the Royal Agricultural Hall in London, the
ceremonies being presided over by the Duke of
Portland, Master of Horse to the Grown.

Sir Walter's father was a stage-coach driver
on the run from Essex to White Chapel, and the
son rose from poverty to enormous wealth. He was
ever fond of a good horse, and a great fortune
made in trade was freely used in forwarding the
cause of agricultural advancement and in promoting

134 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

interest in the production of Shires, Hackneys,
Hunters and ponies. As a boy he was sent out to
render some non-military service in the Crimean
campaign. It is related that he exchanged his ration
of rum with the soldiers for candles to enable him
to sit up late at night and play cribbage, of which
card game he was very fond. In later years he
often told the story of how the first horse he ever
owned be bought with money won at this pastime
in Crimea. While we may not encourage our own
youth to get a start in live stock in this particular
fashion, it was at least to young Gilbey's credit
that he traded off the rum instead of drinking it
himself. Probably that is one reason why he won
at cribbage over those who disposed of their pota-
tions with less wisdom. He lived to develop a
business as a wine merchant which paid into the
royal exchequer taxes aggregating one million pounds
sterling annually! So much for his capacity as a
business man.

At Elsenham he devoted his great talents and
his ample fortune to arousing England to a realiz-
ing sense of the importance of maintaining and
still further improving the native breeds of horses
and ponies. He was at different times President
of the Shire Horse Society, the Hackney Horse

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 135

Society, the Smithfield Club, the Hunter Improve-
ment Society, the Polo Pony Society, the Shetland
Pony Society and the Essex Agricultural Society.
It was through his efforts that the Royal Commis-
sion on Horse Breeding was created. He was also
a Jersey cattle fancier, the herd at Elsenham being
accounted one of England's best.

Like most other men who have accomplished
things worth while in animal breeding. Sir Walter
was a profound student. He was learned beyond
most of his contemporaries in respect to the origin
and development of the British types, and was the
author of numerous addresses and pamphlets deal-
ing with various aspects of horse breeding in the
British islands. Some of these, notably **The Great
Horse," and "Thoroughbred and Other Ponies," were
published by Vinton & Go. in book form. '*The
Great Horse" deals largely with the remote ances-
try of the English Shire or Cart horse. In fact Sir
Walter is commonly credited with having rescued
not only the Shire and the Hackney, but the Hunter
from deterioration and decay. He paid $4,300 for
the stallion Spark at a time when the Cart horse
type was losing favor, and gathered a group of
public-spirited men together and put the Shire Horse
Stud Book of England upon its feet. In 1894

136 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

he bought the Hackney stallion Danegelt, the best
horse of his type in all Britain at that date, for
$25,000, in order to prevent his sale for export, and
put him in service at Elsenham. He got but three
seasons' use of that celebrated sire, but always
claimed that, notwithstanding that fact, this was
one of the best investments he ever made. The
Danegelt blood has ever since fairly dominated the
Hackney world. Sir Walter was also the originator
of the annual London Cart Horse Parade, one of
the most imposing affairs of its kind ever inaugu-
rated. The equipment at Elsenham was one of the
most complete in existence, the extensive and well-
arranged paddocks, as well as the riding and driving
schools, being recognized as among the best in
Great Britain.

At one time Sir Walter erected a lot of model
cottages for his tenants. And here one little inci-
dent happily illustrates his understanding. He saw
to it personally that no washing was to be done in
the house. He built the washhouse apart from the
cottage, and the ugly coal-hole likewise. Said he:
"No man wants to come home to his dinner or his
supper and find the place full of steam and soap-
suds." Volumes of rural uplift are summed up in
that phrase. The world needs more men of the

CREATORS OF PASTORAL WEALTH 137

GiLBEY type — men whose sympathies with the agri-
cultural masses take practical turns.

Is it any wonder England became the nursery of
so many rare types of improved domestic animals,
with the finest minds and greatest fortunes in the
kingdom so actively interested in their welfare?

XVII
"THE HERDSMAN OF ABERDEENSHIRE"

As a companion picture to that of Charles and
Robert Colling there should be a similar canvas
portraying Amos and Anthony Cruickshank. You
may see the portrait of grim old Amos hanging
there just now alongside Thomas Bates, whom he
in nowise resembled; but I have seen no picture of
the brother who really had a large part in the
founding and upbuilding of the great Scottish herd
that turned England and America topsy-turvy after
the Booth and Bates manias had finally run their
course. Amos was the resident farm and herd
manager, and is generally credited with the concep-
tion of most of the plans that yielded such splendid
ultimate results; and yet it was Anthony's steadfast
financial and moral support and active, intelligent
co-operation that made possible the fame of that
"farthest-north" of all great cattle-breeding farms
— Sittyton of Straloch in Aberdeenshire.

Mr. Bates and the Booths and their contempo-
raries in the Shorthorn ranks had beaten all other
breeds of cattle to the goal of a lucrative inter-
national fame through their prompt adoption and
persistent practice of Robert Bakewell's methods;
but the time at length arrived when their followers

138

'THE HERDSMAN OF ABERDEENSHIRE" 139

were not only unhorsed, through an overindulgence
in the theory of close breeding, but were brought
face to face with the palpable fact that while they
were riding their pet hobbies to an inevitable fall,
men possessed of penetration like unto that which
had worked such wonders in Yorkshire, had been
quietly duplicating the triumphs of Kirklevington
and Warlaby in other quarters. The Tomkins, John
Price of Ryall, the Hewers, Rea and Philip Turner,
MoNKHOUSE,*'the blind breeder of The Stow," Rogers,
TuDGE — the Hereford fathers in brief — were laying
the foundation for the future conquest of the western
American range in the grassy vale of the Severn.
Beyond the Tweed, Barclay of Ury, Robertson of
Ladykirk, Rennie of Phantassie, Hay of Shethin,
Grant Duff of Eden, Sylvester Campbell of Kin-
ellar, the elder Marr of Uppermill, the Gruickshanks
and their contemporaries had worked out along inde-
pendent lines the secret of how to profitably produce
prime beef in a land where straw and "neeps" and
a bit o' cake had to take the place of luxuriant
permanent southern pastures in the agricultural
economy. And there were others far beyond the
hills of Lammermoor who contributed heavily to
the cause which finally landed "Prime Scots" at
the top of Smithfield market. Wm. McGombie of

140 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Tillyfour and Hugh Watson of Keillor were evolving
the *'bonnie blackies." In the farming of the Aber-
deenshire granite there was no place for cattle that
could not pay the rent. They must be a fast-ripening
sort, quick to convert the roots and scant herbage
of the Northland into thick-cutting beef at earliest
possible age. And so, side by side, the builders of
the Aberdeen polls and the Aberdeenshire Short-
horns, each pursuing the same end under different
flags, gave the world at last the types that have
divided with the Herefords the honors that are
falling in these latter days to the beef breeds in
our Chicago shows and markets.

It is to Amos and Anthony Gruickshank that
the Shorthorn breeding world is primarily indebted
for the cattle that have enabled them to meet the
great invasion of the "doddies" and the Herefords.
After the cup of the Booths and of Bates had been
drained to the very dregs, when the burly white-
faces and the richly-furnished, high-dressing blacks
were pressing the colors of the "red, white and
roan" to the very wall, it was to the seed obtainable
only from good old Amos Gruickshank that a panic-
stricken army of Shorthorn supporters on both
sides the sea turned, and found that which saved
them from the great enveloping movement of the

'THE HERDSMAN OF ABERDEENSHIRE" 141

rival breeds in the early eighties. The silent sage
of Sittyton deserves his place upon Saddle and
Sirloin walls.

It was in a little back room in Anthony Gruigk-
shank's place of business in the Aberdonian capital
that Barclay of Ury, Grant Duff and a few others
of that stamp met to found the Royal Northern
Agricultural Society. Anthony took to banking and
merchandising in the city, but Amos remained out
on the hills. He began in 1837 with bulls from
Ury, and until the month of May, 1889, a span of
more than fifty years, he was wedded only to his
cattle. Antedating Torr, he also outlived the Wizard
of Aylesby, reaping in his own lifetime the reward
of the good and faithful servant that he was. "The
herdsman of Aberdeenshire," the phrase often ap-
plied in loving compliment by his contemporaries,
meant as much to him in a region that became
world-famed for its cattle wisdom, as Torr's title
of "the first farmer of England" did to the great
tenant farmer of a land more highly favored by
nature.

Like the elder Booth, the Gruickshanks were
omniverous in their quest for foundation stock. They
did not think that the future of the breed in their
country hinged upon the purchase of any particular

142 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

animal or animals. If Amos had possessed a clear and
fixed opinion at the start as to what was required
by his environments as had Bates when he began,
possibly their success might have been more imme-
diate. But he was the canny Scot. He would feel
his way. He would follow no man's lead. Bates
might boast as much as he liked of his week's
butter and his Duchess-Princess style, refinement
and prepotency. The nobility and gentry of the
south might stand in line begging Booth to sell a
female or lease a favorite sire. He came from a
far country, where the soil was not deep, the re-
wards of husbandry not lavish, and where the bumps
of caution, tjxrift and conservatism were fully devel-
oped. He had little to say, but he did a deal of
thinking. And wherever they found a beast that they
thought might serve their purpose, they bought it.
And so from widely different sources both north
and south o' Tweed were purchased the cows, heifers
and bulls with which they wrought until around 1 860.
Among these were such excellent bulls as the
ToRR-bred Fairfax Royal; Matadore, bred in Lincoln-
shire and an own brother in blood to Mr. R. A.
Alexander's celebrated cow Mazurka; Plantagenet,
bred by Towneley and bought from Douglas of
Athelstaneford; the pure Booth Buckingham, for

"THE HERDSMAN OF ABERDEENSHIRE" 145

which 400 guineas was paid; The Baron, selected
by Anthony Gruigkshank at a sale of Tanqueray's;
Lord Bathurst; Master Butterfly 2d, son of the
1,200-guinea bull Master Butterfly; Lord Raglan
and Lancaster Comet. Prizes galore were won by
these bulls and their get, but it was not until the
advent of Lancaster Comet that the star of Sitty-
ton began its marked ascendency.

XVIII

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON

We talk a lot about scientific breeding and the
various accepted laws alleged to govern the trans-
mission of individual characteristics. From time
immemorial the phrase "Like begets like" has been
in a general sense a commonly accepted proposition.
There is sometimes added to this expression the
words, "or the likeness of some ancestor," and in
this latter statement we open wide the door to all
sorts of variations from immediate paternal and ma-
ternal characteristics. Stock-breeding is by no means
the simple mathematical proposition represented by
the equation 2+2=4. The whole theory of the
paramount efficiency of close breeding grows out of
a consideration of this "some ancestor" proposition;
the case being summarized in the hypothesis that
the more we reduce the number of unrelated for-
bears, the fewer chances we are taking on a mere
leap in the darkness of a multiplicity of varying
individualities. The greatest results attained thus
far in the establishment of reliably prepotent groups
have come through this process of eliminating a
large percentage of the unknown factors and substi-
tuting a frequent recurrence of identical or homoge-
neous elements reflecting the desired characteristics.

144

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON 145

Prior to 1860 the Gruickshanks were floundering
in a sea of uncertainty, in so far as the production
of a uniformly good lot of cattle was concerned.
Some progress had been made in this direction by
adherence in the selection of new material to ani-
mals approximating as individuals the type sought,
regardless of consanguinity; but the mating of two
animals of similar type but of widely variant bloods
does not always yield four. On the contrary, the
addition may turn out in that case almost anything
from 0 to 9. The situation at Sittyton in this re-
spect, after more than twenty years of effort, did
not differ materially from that in a thousand other
herds of pedigreed cattle where similar methods
were being pursued. The cattle were all of regu-
lation herd-book pattern, all qualified for the great
work of regenerating the roadside stock of the
country, but had not yet reached that point to
which all enthusiastic breeders aspire, where the
surplus shall be eagerly sought at good values by
owners of other purebred herds.

A study of the life-work of Amos Gruickshank
reveals one fact of great importance and signifi-
cance to the student. His real success did not
begin until he did, in a way, what Thomas Bates had
done. He was by no means so sure he was right

146 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

from the beginning as was the great manipulator of
the Duchess-Hubback-Favorite line; but that was
temperamental. His admiration for the Lavender
( or Lancaster) family in the hands of Wilkinson of
Lenton paralleled in a degree Mr. Bates' historic
attachment of a generation previous. But mark the
difference. Bates was cocksure of his position, and
forecast with marvelous accuracy the results he
notified the world he was about to achieve. Re-
member the story of the purchase and use of Bel-
videre, and then read of Gruickshank halting on
the very brink of complete success with the blood
which he undoubtedly believed to be the best for his
use in the entire kingdom. Fortunately, his love
for the Lavenders triumphed over his inborn wari-
ness before it was too late. We come to the turn-
ing point of his career, the use of Lancaster Comet.
Our good friend Robert Bruce, formerly of
Darlington, but now superintendent of the Royal
Irish Show in Dublin, is one of the best-informed
men, cattle-wise, now living. I once crossed the
Atlantic with him many years ago, and he it was
who planned my first itinerary of the British herds
of a quarter century ago. He was the intermediary
in the final sale of the Sittyton cattle in 1889,
and not even William Duthie, upon whom the

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON 147

mantle of the Aberdonian Caesar finally fell, enjoyed
a more intimate or more cordial relationship with
Mr. Gruickshank. In the course of certain reminis-
cences Mr. Bruce once hit upon the incident that
helps to unlock the secret of Sittyton's success.
One has to bear in mind Mr. Cruickshank's usual
imperturbability to appreciate how deeply he must
have been moved upon the occasion to which we
will now refer. Robert Bruce relates that in speak-
ing of his first visit to Lenton to inspect Mr.
Wilkinson's herd Mr. Gruickshank said: "After
seeing the cattle I was so excited that when I tried
to write to Anthony at night I could not use a pen.
I had to write with a pencil." This little incident
proves two things: First, the fact that in spite of
his habitual self-control, Amos Gruickshank pos-
sessed a latent enthusiasm capable of being thor-
oughly aroused. It indicates also that there was
something in the Wilkinson stock not found in
other contemporary herds.

In the autumn of 1858 it was thought desirable
to purchase a stock bull for use at Sittyton. A
good young red one was desired at that time. Mr.
Gruickshank wrote to Wilkinson, inquiring if he
could furnish such a bull. He replied that he
could not, but recommended old Lancaster Comet

148 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

(11663), then in his eighth year, which he offered
to sell at a nominal price. After first examining
the herds of Mark Stewart, S. E. Bolden, Richard
Booth, Col. Towneley and Messrs. Budding without
success, Mr. Gruickshank wrote to Wilkinson that
he might ship Lancaster Gomet. He was forwarded
to Sittyton in November, 1868. Mr. Gruickshank
went to the station to meet the bull, and his first
glimpse of "his great head and horns lowering upon
him over the side of the truck" caused him to turn
away in disappointment. Lancaster Gomet had a
large head, with horns of great length. They were
well enough set onto the head and curved toward
the front. They were not very thick nor were they
pointed at the tips, being more uniform in thickness
from base to point than is ordinarily observed. One
sarcastic neighbor, of the type often present upon
such occasions, remarked: "If he wanted a High-
land bull he might have got one nearer home."
Notwithstanding the horns, however, Lancaster
Gomet was a good bull. He stood near to the
ground, had a beautiful coat of hair, a round barrel,
straight top and bottom lines, level quarters, nicely
filled thighs, carried plenty of flesh and was active
on his feet. In size he was about medium. He
had been a great favorite with Mr. Wilkinson and

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON 149

was closely bred, being the product of mating a bull
called The Queen's Roan to his half-sister, both
parents being sired by the good bull Will Honey-
comb that had been used for some years by Mr.
Wilkinson, and was deemed worthy of illustration in
one of the early volumes of Coates' Herd Book.

Lancaster Comet was scarcely as massive as
Mr. Gruickshank would have liked and was relegated
to the Glyne farm, it is said, *'to hide his horns."
The following spring he was turned into a pasture
along with a lot of cows that had not settled to
the bulls by which they had been served. He ran
out quite late in the field that fall, and contracted
rheumatism so severely that it became necessary to
send him to the shambles. About a dozen calves
resulted, but all but one were allowed to pass out
of the herd in the ordinary course of trade. There
was a bull among these, however, that possessed an
indefinable something that appealed to the master's
hand and eye. He made no boasts and indulged in
no prophecies. He just put the youngster one side
and carefully noted his development. This calf of
destiny was dropped on the 29th of November, 1859.
By 1861 he had grown into a bull deemed good
enough to be shown at Leeds and Aberdeen, but he
was handicapped for age at the former exhibition,

150 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

and left the ring without a ribbon. This was a
Royal competition where the best herdsmen of
England had entered their most highly-fitted cattle.
At the Royal Northern the young Sittyton entry
was apparently not so well thought of by the judges
as by his breeder, and he was set down to third
place. This was somewhat discouraging, more
especially as Anthony, who had most to do with the
naming of the youngsters, had bestowed upon the
lone son of the big-horned old Wilkinson bull the
somewhat ponderous title "Champion of England."
But the race is not always to those who get away
first. Then as now, however, showyard honors were
the prime basis of reputation, and reputation is what
brings buyers with full pocketbooks. The Aberdeen
verdict was, therefore, somewhat disconcerting, and
for a time it was questioned whether the unsuccess-
ful candidate should be retained for service or passed
along. It was at this critical juncture that Amos
saved the day. He went over young Champion of
England carefully, inch by inch, and declared, with
characteristic mental reservation, in favor of his
tentative reservation and cautious use. The bull
was particularly strong on his fore-ribs, developed
remarkable feeding quality, and scon began to assume
more massive proportions than had been displayed

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON 151

by his sire. He was not so level in his quarters as
Lancaster Comet, drooping a bit from the hips to
the tail, a fault which he probably inherited from
his dam. His calves soon evidenced rare promise.
They were robust, thick-fleshed, near to the ground,
and possessed a propensity for putting on flesh
such as had not been shown by the get of any of
his predecessors in service. His owners now
resolved to use him freely and not risk impairment
of his usefulness by putting him in high condition
for the shows. Meantime, the settled policy of test-
ing the best bulls obtainable from contemporary
stock was not abandoned.

The BooTH-bred Windsor Augustus and Prince
Alfred, the great show bull Forth, called "the grand-
est Shorthorn of his time," Lord Privy Seal, Baron
Killerby, Rob Roy, Count Robert, Knight of the
Whistle, and other bulls of high repute were intro-
duced into the now extensive herd while the
Champion of England's get were coming on. And
when they began to mature, the Cruickshanks knew
their long quest for the best stock bull in Great
Britain had been ended by poor old crippled Lan-
caster Comet. The Champion of England's calves
came up to the mark which had for so long eluded
these determined, enterprising men. A fortune had

152 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

been spent on bulls, and lo! they were nursing
unawares a calf from a plainish mother that had
been left by the inbred Wilkinson sire on their own
farm. One after another of the sons and daughters
of this the greatest stock bull Scotland has ever
known, grew up into cattle of the real rent-paying
sort. Pages might be filled with the names, pedi-
grees and performances of his descendants in the
showyards and breeding-pens of Britain and America,
but space will not here permit. Such cows as
Village Belle, Village Rose, Princess Royal, Morn-
ing Star, British Queen, Carmine Rose, Silvery,
Mimulus, Surmise, Gircassia, Violante, Finella and
Victorine would alone suffice to make the reputation
of the most ambitious breeder. Not only were these
and other of the best of the Champion's heifers
retained for breeding purposes, but his bulls were
given a trial along with sires obtained from other
herds.

A long and costly experience had by this time
impressed the uncertainties attending the intro-
duction into a mixed-bred herd of bulls, no matter
how satisfactory their individuality, of widely diver-
gent bloodlines, and although it was contrary to
their predilections the Cruickshanks were so satis-
fied with the hair and flesh and feeding quality of

WHEN SUCCESS CAME TO SITTYTON 163

Champion of England's stock that they determined
to begin a policy of concentration. This they did
through the use of such bulls as Grand Monarque,
Scotland's Pride, Pride of the Isles, Caesar Augustus,
Royal Duke of Gloster, Roan Gauntlet, Barmpton
and Cumberland.

There is not in Shorthorn history a record of
greater success attained in the production of valu-
able cattle for practical farm and feedlot purposes
than that which attended the breeding operations
at Sittyton after the practice of using these home-
bred bulls was adopted. The herd began at once
to take on a uniformity in essential points which it
had not hitherto possessed, and the further the
concentration of blood was carried — up to a certain
point — the better the results. The fruit of Mr.
Cruickshank's appeal to the practice of inbreeding
was the establishment of a well-fixed type of short-
legged, broad-ribbed, thick-fleshed cattle feeding to
satisfactory weights at an early age; and the same
concentration of blood that served to fix these
desirable characteristics insured the prepotency of
the stock for reproductive purposes. The herd
became the fountain head of Shorthorn breeding in
the north. The Sittyton bulls became the standard
sires of Scotland. The value of the service the

154 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Messrs. Gruickshank had rendered was now univer-
sally conceded in their native land, and leading
American breeders gladly availed themselves of the
privilege of selecting stock bulls from this premier
Aberdeenshire herd.

And so extensively was the blood of Champion
of England doubled, redoubled and doubled yet
again throughout all the years down to 1890, and
so universal was the use of the Gruickshank bulls
for the twenty years following, that the bull which
the Leeds Royal judges of 1861 did not see at all,
lived to become quite the modern regenerator of
his race; England herself, following America's lead,
finally falling into line in the patronage of the
Aberdeenshire herd when William Tait leased the
great Field Marshal for service in the herd of Her
Majesty the late Queen Victoria, at Windsor.

Mr. Gruickshank's agent for the distribution of
young bulls and heifers in America for many years
was the late James I. Davidson of Balsam, Ont.;
but the man who did most to hasten the replace-
ment of the long-suffering BATES-bred bulls on this
side the water by the fleshier, quicker- feeding
Sittyton sorts was the late Senator W. A. Harris;
but that is another story.

THE SAJNCTUM SANCTOIUJM OF 111!. s\l)DLE AND
SIRLOIN CLUr>

^ i. ',

Hi*

BARONIAL HALL. SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

XIX

A BARONIAL HALL

The Club had not been long in operation before
it became apparent that the original cafe was wholly
inadequate to accommodate the distinguished guests
that thronged the Club rooms during show week,
and to provide for this, plans for what has since
come to be known as "the baronial hall" were
developed. The opening of the International was
near at hand, and it was regarded as doubtful if
the work could be expedited sufficiently to have the
room in readiness at the appointed hour; but a
few grains of the "I will" spirit injected into the
proposition insured prompt and satisfying results.
Carpenters and joiners were set to work. Great
hewn timbers were quickly fashioned, and placed in
position to support the lofty Gothic pointed roof of
an old baronial hall. Plasterers, electricians and
decorators made short shrift of a transformation
scene remarkable for its success and effectiveness,
and when the International's gates were thrown
open to the public that year, the apparently impos-
sible had been accomplished.

In this hall now hang many portraits. So many,
in fact, that we may not here attempt to tell the
stories that center around each one. Rest assured

15S

156 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

that history and romance did not end with the days
of mail-clad warriors. There is material here for
books and books detailing splendid work in the
foundation and upbuilding of our western states.
We may call the massive frames upon the Sanctum
Sanctorum walls the "seats of the mighty." It is
there that we bow down more especially to the
creative genius of a glorious past. We know those
deities by their works and gladly render them our
homage. When we come into the baronial hall,
however, we stand in the presence of a later
generation. A few there are who had performed
their service to the state and to their fellowmen
before my day, but a large majority of these public-
spirited men were at one time very near and dear
to me. In my youth, in the sombre days when
help to me meant everything, these men were kind
and generous. When but a mere student of the
mysteries of which they were masters, trying to fit
myself to serve them, I had ever a welcome warm
and cordial at their firesides. They were among
the great men of the American cattle trade, men
of wealth or brains or both, and wisdom abode with
them. I grew up among these men, a few of whom
are still honored members of the communities in
which they reside, but with these exceptions they

A BARONIAL HALL 157

have passed from earthly scenes. Would that I had
the time to tell, and the reader the patience to
listen to, the stories of each and every one !

The mere names of such men as Gapt. James N.
Brown, Gol. James W. Judy, Hon. Lafayette Funk,
J. H. PicKRELL, Gol. W. A. Harris, Richard Gibson,
N. P. Glarke, Henry F. Brown, Emory Gobb, John D.
GiLLETT, George Harding, Frank Prather, Gharles
E. Leonard, Lewis F. Allen, Ben F. Vanmeter and
S. F. LocKRiDGE may mean but little to the average
passer-by, but a story goes with each that would start
ambition's glow in almost any young man's breast.

Once there was a great show of splendid animals
established in the historic Exposition Building that
stood where the Art Institute of Ghicago now houses
a different, and in some respects a less valuable,
class of exhibits. The home of the original Amer-
ican Fat Stock Show disappeared before the city's
growth. An exhibition that had registered a com-
plete and in every way desirable economic revolution
in cattle production in the United States was driven
upon the streets. It had been nurtured, managed
and kept alive largely by the self-sacrificing labor
of these baronial hall veterans and their contempo-
raries of the Hereford and Aberdeen-Angus faiths,
with Lafayette Funk usually at their head. But

158 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

fate had decreed the old show's demise. First it
was allowed to drift into the street -car barns at
Washington Boulevard and V/'estern Avenue. A de-
termined few, however, insisted that so great a boon
to the west was worth saving — someway, somehow;
and so, when it was all but abandoned to its fate,
it was my own good fortune to seek and obtain
permission to invite the exhibitors the succeeding
year to send their beautifully fitted bullocks to the
old sheds of Dexter Park, at the Union Stock Yards.
However, the obsequies were not very well attended,
and the once great show perished from lack of that
support to which it had every moral and financial
claim. But upon its ruins there has since been
builded that of which we are all exceedingly proud.
I am sorely tempted here to talk of Gol. Judy,
and his convincing oratory on the auction block; of
Henry Pickrell and Baron Booth of Lancaster; of
Ben Vanmeter, the Young Marys and the Roses of
Sharon; of N. P. Clarke's splendid contribution to
northwestern Shorthorn, Galloway and Clydesdale
wealth; of "Charlie" Leonard's financing of the Herd
Book purchase from Lewis F. Allen; of "Sim" Lock-
ridge and all he has done for Indiana and the west;
of the Prathers and Gillett; but when should I
ever finish?

A BARONIAL HALL 159

Whenever you dine in, or wander through this
high-roofed hall and note the portraits here displayed,
remember simply this: each and every man helped
to scatter far and wide the gospel of good farming,
better breeding, the salvation and re-creation of the
soil through animal husbandry as an absolutely
essential phase of American agriculture. And here
again, as in the "inner shrine," we may say they
are but types. Hundreds like them have lived and
labored along similar lines to the permanent better-
ment of the states of their birth or their adoption,
and their portraits ought to be here. There seems
nothing to do in the face of this embarrassment of
riches but to submit typical recitals of things done
by a few of those who dwell in spirit within these
precincts, and from the sketches now to follow let
Saddle and Sirloin visitors judge as to what the
collection as a whole must represent in American
agricultural progress.

I have spoken of there being portraits here of
men who had finished their work before my time.
We will, therefore, first endeavor to outline the
career of a pioneer who did for Illinois what Charles
E. Leonard's father did for the state of Missouri.
We will then speak of two of those who at a later
date were important figures in proceedings that left

160 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

their impress deep upon the agriculture of two con-
tinents. After hearing of Gapt. James N. Brown,
Gol. W. A. Harris and Richard Gibson, an applica-
tion of the doctrine ex pede Herculem may enable
one to form some idea of the wealth of high
accomplishment with which this Valhallan hall is
filled.

BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-
BREEDING

Illustrative of the pioneer type — men who helped
make these middle western states, and who left a
great impress for good upon our cornbelt agriculture,
as well as sons to carry forward their beneficent
plans — I can conceive of no better case than that
afforded by Capt. James N. Brown of Grove Park,
Sangamon Co., 111. What is said to be a very good
likeness of this contemporary and friend of Abraham
Lincoln hangs in the baronial hall.

Amidst scenes famous the world over for their
pastoral beauty, James N. Brown was born in Fay-
ette Co., Ky., Oct. 1, 1806. In the green pastures
and by the still waters of this central Kentucky
home he early imbibed that love for good cattle,
good horses, good sheep, good blue grass, good corn-
fields and good farming that was to prove of so
much value to the newer west in the years that
followed. He was educated in the common schools
of Kentucky, finishing at Transylvania University at
Lexington. While he followed his father to Illinois
in 1834 at the age of 28, it appears from a copy of
the Lexington (Kentucky) "Observer and Reporter,"
printed Sept. 16, 1835, containing among other inter-

161

162 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

esting news matter of the period an account of a
fair held a short time previous — that the young man
was awarded first prize for his two-year-old Short-
horn heifer Helen Eyre, in competition with some of
the most eminent cattle breeders of the day. He
had obtained his first Shorthorns from his uncle,
Gapt. Warfield, and surely he could not have made
a better beginning, for the names of Benjamin,
Elisha and William Warfield will be forever famous
in the annals of Kentucky agriculture. He had
seen enough of the broad-backed, deep-ribbed, thick-
fleshed and heavy-milking cows in the woodland
pastures of his native state to realize that stock of
that description would necessarily prove a valuable
asset in the subduing of the prairies of the west,
and he determined to advance the flag that had
already been successfully carried from Virginia to
Kentucky still farther into the interior; and so the
"red, white and roan" came by his hand into the
land called Illinois.

Whatever may have been the achievements of
Gapt. Brown in his other relations of life, the most
enduring basis of his fame in the records of his
adopted state will be found to rest upon the fact
that he was the first to recognize the fact that the
best way to get the most profit out of good grass

BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 163

and good corn, without robbing the land of its
fertility, was to stock it with good cattle. He was,
therefore, our first great advocate and apostle of
conservation. And when he departed this life, in
1868, he left behind not a run-down, worn-out,
ready-to-be-abandoned farm that had been worked
as a mine and stripped of all its native treasures,
but the three thousand acres of blue-grass pasture
known as Grove Park, tenanted by well-bred animals,
with every acre richer than when it came into his
possession!

Full details as to his earliest operations in pure-
bred live stock are unfortunately wanting. All we
know is that he was the first to bring the Short-
horns from the blue grass of Kentucky into central
Illinois, and that as fast as the early settlers were
able to avail themselves of the benefit of his exam-
ple, they profited by it. They came to him from far
and near, and went away convinced that he had
shown the way to be pursued. As fast as they were
able they bought the seed that was to blossom into
the harvest that lies today at the bottom of many
central Illinois fortunes.

In the early fifties he made a journey to Ohio,
and brought back the noted bull Young Whittington,
that had been imported from England by the Sciota

164 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Valley Company in 1852, and about the same date,
in partnership with his brother Judge William Brown
of Jacksonville, bought a number of valuable cattle
from leading Kentucky breeders. Meantime, he had
been elected to the state legislature in 1840, 1842,
1846 and 1853, serving in that body as a colleague
of Abraham Lincoln. During this service he intro-
duced and secured the passage of a bill creating a
State Board of Agriculture, and was elected its first
president. At the first exhibition, held at Springfield
in 1853, he was met in competition by Henry Jacob y,
Stephen Dunlap and G. M. Chambers of Sangamon,
and others who by this time had become interested
in the introduction of good blood into the state.
Upon that historic occasion Capt. Brown carried
away six prizes — the beginning of a long, successful
and always honorable career as an exhibitor at this
show. The following year he returned to the fray
at Springfield, and in 1855 made his way to Chicago
to meet old and new antagonists. At Alton, in 1856,
he broke a lance for the first time with James M. Hill
of Cass County, a man destined to prove from that
time forward a foeman worthy of his steel. On Sept.
11, 1856, a public sale of Shorthorns was held at
Grove Park, the top price paid being $715 for the
six-y^ar-old cow May Dacre, descended from the

BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 165

Sanders importation of 1817. Other good specimens
brought from $400 to $600.

By this time, thanks largely to Gapt. Brown's
persistent enthusiasm, interest in the work of live-
stock improvement was spreading rapidly, and in
1857 he helped to organize the Illinois Importing
Company, formed for the purpose of bringing out
fresh blood from the fountain-head in Great Britain.
Dr. H. G. John of Decatur, Henry Jacoby of Spring-
field and Gapt. Brown were selected as a committee
to carry the purpose into effect. Of the weary
weeks of travel by land and sea at that date it
is scarcely necessary to speak. Money was freely
risked and time and comfort sacrificed in a supreme
eifort to place Illinois in the front rank of this essen-
tial branch of husbandry. The herds of England and
Scotland were seen, selections made, shipment ar-
ranged for, and the commissioners returned. Weeks
elapsed with no tidings of the good ship ''Georgia"
that carried the precious cargo, and it was only
when fears were bordering upon despair that she was
finally reported safe at anchor at Philadelphia, sixty
days out from Liverpool, with several valuable cattle
and a fine Thoroughbred mare lost at sea. The ship-
ment included, besides cattle, a choice selection of
Southdown and Gotswold sheep and Berkshire swine,

166 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

and Gapt. Brown afterwards became a successful
breeder of these as well as of high-bred horses of
the roadster type.

In accordance with the practice established by
various companies of similar character in Ohio and
Kentucky, the imported animals were sold at auction
soon after their arrival, and the success of the sale
was largely due to the vigor and confidence with
which values were supported by Gapt. Brown. He
realized that at this crucial period in the introduction
of the breed into the prairie states those who were
most actively espousing the cause of live-stock im-
provement as a means to a prosperous agriculture
must show their own faith by their works. He knew
the advertising value of good prices. He knew that
Lewis Sanders had ordered out the great importation
of 1817 by reading an account in an English paper
of the sale of Gharles Gollings' famous bull Gomet
for one thousand guineas, his reasoning being that
if such a public valuation were possible, it indicated
a degree of merit in the breed that rendered such
animals an essential element in the proper advance-
ment of American farming. And so we find Gapt.
Brown, at the great sale of the Illinois Importing
Gompany of 1857, taking out the choicest animal
of the entire offering, the two -year- old heifer

BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 167

Rachael 2d, against the bids of a syndicate of cen-
tral Illinois breeders, at the then very large price of
$3,025. This was the second highest price ever
paid up to that date for a Shorthorn female in
North America. The sale was a great success,
27 head bringing $31,455, an average of $1,165.
Henry Jacoby and Gapt. Brown jointly acquired the
bull King Alfred at $1,300. The heifer Western
Lady also went to Grove Park at $1,325, and be-
came the ancestress of a very valuable family of
cattle.

It is of interest to note that this great importa-
tion included the first specimens of the afterwards
famous Aberdeenshire type of cattle ever brought
into the state — four head from the then compara-
tively unknown, but subsequently world-renowned,
herd oi Amos Gruickshank.

During the years that followed, the Grove Park
Shorthorns gained a national reputation. A constant
competitor at the State Fair, and a regular exhibitor
at the Gounty Show of his own beloved Sangamon,
Gapt. Brown's entries were always presented in the
pink of condition, and in the famous showyard battles
of the ensuing twenty years with Pickrell, Spears,
Duncan, Hill, Sodowsky, Taylor, and all the invading
hosts from other states, there was never a time

168 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

when his exhibits failed to evoke admiration and gain
judicial recognition. To undertake to set forth the
names and breeding of the Grove Park showyard
celebrities would be to place an unwarranted tax
upon your time and patience. One needs but to
mention the names of Grace Young, Illustrious and
Tycoon to conjure in the minds of the old-time
fair-goers almost all that heart could wish in the
line of bovine beauty and perfection. From 1856
to 1867 inclusive, for eleven years in succession,
the grand herd prize at the Illinois State Fair was
won by Capt. Brown's cattle. At one of the great
St. Louis fairs, after Robert A. Alexander's imported
Duke of Airdrie had won a special one-thousand-
dollar prize, the regular championship of the show
was awarded to Capt. Brown's imported King Alfred.
No man can calculate the money value to Illinois
and other western states of the example set by
James N. Brown as a farmer and cattle-breeder.
He not only won fame for his fine cattle, but as
early as 1856 Grove Park was awarded the prize
offered by the Illinois State Board of Agriculture
for the best arranged and most economically con-
ducted grazing farm in the state. He was a great
lover of trees, and his black locust groves and lines
of black walnut called forth the admiration of all

BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 169

visitors. He was also awarded a prize for a valuable
treatise on raising and feeding cattle on the prairies
of Illinois. This will be found on page 572 in volume
2 of the Transactions of the Illinois Agricultural
Society.

Gapt. Brown was the foremost advocate of the
value of blue grass in this state. He always claimed
that one hundred acres of it were equal in value to
sixty-six and two-thirds acres of corn, in the rearing
and management of live stock. Would that his voice
could be raised today by way of protest against the
wholesale destruction of pastures that has attended
the grain-growing craze of recent years in our lead-
ing agricultural states!

During the later years of his life the three sons,
William, Charles and Benjamin, were in partnership
with their father in the management of the estate,
and under the firm name of James N. Brown's Sons
they continued the breeding and feeding operations
with profit to themselves and the live-stock interests
of the west, a marked instance of their influence
for good being their insistence, at the foundation of
the Chicago Fat Stock Show late in the seventies,
that the big four and five year-old bullocks then so
popular were really unprofitable and should not be
encouraged. Capt. Brown had always insisted that

170 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

early maturity was the keynote of success in meat-
making, and his sons succeeded in inducing the
State Board of Agriculture to include in the prize
list for the initial show a class for yearlings and
calves. This they followed up by winning first prize
on a yearling steer weighing 1,400 pounds. They
thus pioneered a proposition that has revolutionized
the American cattle trade.

Adjacent to Grove Park is a hallowed spot called
"Woodwreath." There the blue grass he so fondly
loved runs riot perennially around the grave of
James N. Brown. The state of Illinois is the better
for his having lived.

ROMANELLI'S BRONZE BUST OF THE LATE UNITED STATES
SENATOR WILLIAM A. HARRIS. ERECTED ON THE
CAMPUS OF THE KANSAS AGRICULTURAL
COLLEGE AT MANHATTAN.

XXI
"SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND"

The Club's portrait of the late Senator Harris
— Col. William A. Harris of Linwood — is far from
satisfying. Romanelli's bust, a replica of which
may be seen in Robert Ogilvie's office on Exchange
Avenue, reveals vastly more of the real character
of the man who was apparently raised up by destiny
to overthrow the broad walls of a bovine Babylon
and set a great industry once more in the paths
of rectitude.

He was my friend. Possibly I should stop at
that. So far as I myself am concerned, volumes
could add nothing to those four words. There were
others, many others, who have felt the charm of his
wonderful personality — who also loved him. Possibly
few of these knew him as I was privileged to know
him — knew all that I knew; but many surely caught
a glimpse at intervals of the spirit that dwelt within.
Perhaps I may express in some degree the sense of
loss they feel, as they wait in vain for him to take
his accustomed place; but my own must remain
unspoken forever. He knew what I thought. I never
told him, nor had any need to tell him. This is the
story of how he leaped into leadership almost over
night.

171

172 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Upon another wall you will find a picture of that
pugnacious old pioneer, Lewis F. Allen — the George
GoATES of America — the man who first collected
and published the pedigrees of our "Durhams," and
indeed this was no light task. Weary were the
journeys and long were the quests that preceded
the appearance of the initial volume of the American
Herd Book in 1854. It represented, as have all sim-
ilar efforts, before and since, the assembling of the
best possible information available concerning animals
and breeding operations of which but fragmentary
records had been preserved. Gonducted as a private
enterprise, the Herd Book, small and wholly profit-
less for years, finally became a valuable property,
and the subject of long negotiations and bitter
exchanges between the founder and those who in
later years perforce became his patrons. It might
be noted here in passing, that a struggling young
lawyer in Buffalo, N. Y., named Grover Gleveland,
a nephew of Mr. Allen's, once found employment
in checking the pedigrees of cattle forwarded for
entry in this Herd Book.

Breeders generally favored taking over the record
from Mr. Allen after it had become an important
public institution; but the old man, stiff-necked
always, gave them no encouragement. Then they

SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 173

began to pick flaws in his earlier work, and at length
openly revolted against what they denounced as his
unbearable tyranny. Under the leadership of Judge
T. G. Jones, who was quite as belligerent and forci-
ble a character in his day as Mr. Allen, the Ohio
breeders established a pedigree record of their own.
Kentucky went still further, and under the powerful
patronage of Robert A. Alexander developed the
American Shorthorn Record Association, with a
membership distributed all through the Upper Mis-
sissippi Valley States, and began the publication of
a register which subsequently proved to be the lever
necessary for prying Mr. Allen off his high Herd
Book horse. But that is another story.

In March, 1882, a regular meeting of this new
Kentucky organization was being held at Lexington.
"The Breeder's Gazette" had just been established,
and I was sent to report the proceedings. There I
met for the first time Gol. William A. Harris, then
of Lawrence, Kans., a Director in the Record Asso-
ciation. Among his Kentucky friends and admirers
he was at his best. Born at Luray, Va., the son
of a former member of Gongress and one-time Min-
ister of the United States to Rio Janiero, Harris
was a student at the historic Virginia Military
Institute at the outbreak of the Civil War, a pupil

174 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

of the professor so swiftly to rise to fame as Gen.
"Stonewall" Jackson. The senior Harris was
opposed, as were so many other Virginians of that
fateful period, to secession; but when the Old
Dominion decided to ''go out," his son was one of
the first to respond to the call of his beloved
native state. Proof of his rare gifts were not of
slow development. His splendid mental and physi-
cal endowments marked him early as a born leader
of men, and by the time Gettysburg was reached
he was Chief of Ordnance of a Division in Long-
street's corps in the Army of Virginia under
Robert E. Lee. In later years a study of Lee's
characteristics led me to discover many points of
resemblance between the idol of the Confederacy
and Col. William A. Harris. After Gettysburg the
young officer went home on furlough, and with
prophetic vision declared that the war was over.
The beginning of the end, he could clearly see, had
been reached upon that bloody battlefield. The war
left the Harris fortune a wreck, and the young
engineer went out into the great new west to seek
his fortune. Employed in locating the Kansas
Pacific R. R. line from Kansas City to Denver —
now a part of the Union Pacific — Col. Harris, with
his inborn love of country life and well-bred animals,

SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 176

was impressed one day by the beauty and obvious
fertility of a tract of land converging near the sur-
vey for the line as it skirted the north bank of the
Kansas River some 25 miles west of Kansas City.
He took out his notebook and made a memo-
randum as to its location. Months passed. The
rails were going down and trains were put in ser-
vice. A capable man was wanted to take charge
of the sale of the railway's land holdings that were
a part of the Government's subsidy to the builders
of the road. Harris was chosen and went to the
beautiful little city of Lawrence to make his home
and headquarters. The entry in his notebook had
not been forgotten. The tract of land — afterwards
to acquire fame under his control — was purchased,
and as rapidly as funds could be spared for the
purpose, purebred Shorthorns were accumulated and
put upon what Goburn always fondly called "the
sunny slopes of Lin wood."

Several busy years then supervened, and the
first great campaign for settling up the dry lands
of west Kansas was inaugurated. For awhile
Harris handled it; but as the criminal character,
from his standpoint, of the proceeding of enticing
"butchers and bakers and candlestick makers" away
from comfortable homes farther east, and luring

176 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

them out to their inevitable ruin, became more and
more manifest, his conscience asserted itself and a
lucrative position with exceptional opportunities for
enriching himself at the expense of innocent and
trusting immigrants was voluntarily abandoned. For
a considerable time he continued to maintain his
Lawrence office. The Government gave him charge
of the closing out of the Delaware Indian Reserva-
tion lands. Needless to say, no tainted penny ever
found its way into his none-too-comfortable personal
bank account during his incumbency of that office.
Meantime, he was preparing Linwood Farm for his
own home, with his heart set upon cattle-breeding
as a vocation worthy of any man, and particularly
demanded in the midst of a new and but partially
developed agriculture in a land specially blessed by
nature. He was just entering upon this fruitful
period of his career when I had the great good
fortune to meet him that day in March at the Blue
Grass capital in 1882.

In his room at the old Phoenix Hotel in Lexing-
ton, after the adjournment of the Record meeting,
I told him that I intended making a tour of the
leading Kentucky herds before returning to Chicago.
He replied that he was just then looking for a new
bull to put in service at Linwood, and was to begin

SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 177

his search on the following day, proposing that we
make the rounds of the larger establishments to-
gether. I had been strongly attracted to him from
the first, and of course gladly assented to his prop-
osition. That was the commencement of as firmly
rooted an attachment as could well exist between
men. Together we tramped about those wonderful
woodland pastures by day, and together we roomed
at night. The evenings passed all too quickly around
a roaring, open fire with gracious hosts and charming
hostesses, and when we would retire to our room
for the night we would compare notes and exchange
ideas as to the merits or faults of what had been
seen in the fields and boxes. Horses and dogs came
into the discussion, but Shorthorns — always Short-
horns. Grasses, orchards, homes, stone walls, roads
and gardens, the whole life of the people in that
American Yorkshire, in fact, all came in for a share
of consideration, and presently the glow of a great
enthusiasm in reference to all those things took full
possession of my youthful spirit. Some faint reflec-
tions of that first great wave of interest in the
better things that go with country living still possess
my soul, but the primal inspiration came with all-
compelling force under the tutelage of this great
Virginian. We were in the land of my fathers.

178 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Born and reared on the Iowa prairies, this was my
first introduction to the "old Kentucky home,"
where early in the nineteenth century a grand-
mother of saintly memory had become the bride of
one of the pioneers that crossed the Blue Ridge
to begin life in the valley of Kentucky.

One night we had been the guests of the late
Mr. A. L. Hamilton, whose wife was a daughter of
one of the makers of Kentucky cattle history — Ben
F. Vanmeter. What memories are indeed recalled by
the mention of that name! Gol. Harris, like practi-
cally all other western breeders of that period, had
stocked up with BATES-crossed cattle. Unlike many
of his contemporaries, however, I soon discovered
that he was not merely in quest of that which
might fairly be expected to prove immediately prof-
itable. Others were buying and selling very largely
at that time on the strength of the reputation of
the ancestors of the cattle they were handling,
rather than upon the real excellence of the animals
themselves for practical farm and feedlot purposes.
And this easy course seemed a royal road to suc-
cess. **Buy a Barrington for $3,500, because some
other fancier looking for the Bates blood will come
along and give you as much, perhaps more, for the
first calf." That was the recognized basis of values,

"SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 179

but Harris did not approve of it. Moveover, he
did not hesitate to say so, even in the very hotbed
of that propaganda. Upon "Archie" Hamilton's
library table there chanced to lie a copy of a
pamphlet entitled "Catalogue of Shorthorn Cattle,
the property of the Messrs. Cruickshank, Sittyton,
Aberdeenshire, Scotland." During some lull in the
conversation Col. Harris arose and walked about
the room. He chanced to pass the table, and with
a slight show of interest noticed this foreign-looking
catalogue, and picked it up. Turning to me he
asked: "Have you ever seen any of these Aber-
deenshire cattle?" I knew instantly what was pass-
ing in his mind. He had not yet found a bull in
the herds we had examined that met his ideas of
what was needed to enable the Shorthorn to com-
pete with the Hereford on Kansas grass and corn.
He had admired many of the cows and heifers we
had seen. The heifers by the 20th Duke of Air-
drie in particular I remember attracted us by their
uniformity and finish, but as yet no bull had been
found that was short enough on the leg, deep
enough through the chest, low enough in twist and
flank, and we had almost finished our tour.

Bound to these genial Kentuckians by ties of
blood, kindred spirit with them in all that is meant

180 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

by residence south of Mason and Dixon's line, flat-
tered by them, honored by them, how natural for
the Colonel to work hand in glove with them in
this cattle business, as most other men with south-
ern connections had done, and, in fact, were still
doing, in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas.
They could not understand why they had been
unable to sell him a bull. Had they not offered
him their bluest blood, and at special prices? Even
then they were shrewd enough to discern in this
gracious but determined man a character to be
reckoned with. But he was about to go home, as
the auctioneers say, "bull-less" in spite of their
best endeavors.

"Yes," I replied to the query about the Scotch-
bred cattle, '1 have seen a few of them, but you
know they are not numerous. You know what the
imported Duke of Richmond has done for J. H.
PoTTS & Son; and an old Scotchman, Robert Milne,
near Lockport, III, has had the blood for a long
time." The next question was, "What do you think
of them?" My answer was that they were much
thicker-fleshed than the cattle we had seen in Ken-
tucky, standing nearer to the ground, and that the
get of the few Aberdeenshire bulls in the country
were beginning to win most of the prizes at our

SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 181

northern fairs; but I hastened to add, "they are not
looked upon with favor by leading breeders, because
they say that these cattle, while good beef animals,
are too plainly-bred to be introduced into first-class
herds."

Sounds funny now, doesn't it, in the light of all
that has since transpired? but it was a truthful
answer then. At that moment our host re-entered
the room, and the Sittyton catalogue, with all that
it meant at that hour to the future of the breed in
England and America, was for the time being dis-
missed altogether from our minds. At length our
delightful pilgrimage had reached its termination.
Although Gol. Harris was at this time my senior
by many years, we were both at the threshold alike
as students of the existing situation in respect to
pedigree cattle-breeding. This chance meeting had
revealed to my mind a new viewpoint. It had not
up to this time occurred to me that the headlong
BATEs-ward drift in the Shorthorn trade could or
would be checked. I took it for granted at that
time that ''whatever was" in the Shorthorn world
at that date "was right." It was Gol. Harris' in-
sistent reiteration of the absolute necessity for cattle
of greater constitution and feeding capacity and his
absolute refusal of the Bates bait so alluringly set

182 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

before him in Kentucky, together with his evident
determination to try and find something better
adapted to Kansas needs, that opened up to my
mind for the first time a vision of a way out from
the thralldom which was slowly but surely relegating
the Shorthorn of song and story to the bovine
scrapheap, so far as the needs of ordinary farmers
and feeders were concerned. The mere traffic in
pedigrees was having its inevitable result. Commer-
cialism had completely displaced constructive breed-
ing. The old excellence was dying hard, however.
Such a cow as old imported Lally 8th by 7th Duke
of York in the Hamilton herd was a great Short-
horn in any age, and she was not alone. Still the
bulls that were up to standard were few and far
between, and so when this great man of whom I
write left Kentucky in the early spring of three and
thirty years ago for his Kansas home, a new era in
the world's Shorthorn cattle-breeding had been
unconsciously ushered in. His parting words were:
"If you can locate any good young cattle of this
Gruickshank blood for sale, wire me at once."

In an earlier sketch I have alluded to various
debts, agriculturally speaking, we owe to our neigh-
bors of the north. Canada was now to become the
source of the blood that was about to revolutionize

"SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 183

the fortunes of our most widely disseminated breed.
James I. Davidson, whose portrait you will enjoy
studying when you find it upon the Saddle and
Sirloin walls, an old friend of Amos Gruickshank,
had been for some time past bringing out small
selections of young bulls and a few heifers from
the Sittyton surplus. Aside from the celebrated
Hillhurst and Bow Park establishments, the Bates
cult had never attained as much headway in Canada
as in England and the ''States." Ontario is a western
Scotland. Scotch names, Scotch thrift, Scotch thor-
oughness in tillage and Scotch insistence on practi-
cally useful animal types are much in evidence.
Toronto is its Aberdeen. There its farming and
stock-breeding activities center. There is held an
agricultural show not excelled, if equaled, in many
respects, elsewhere on the continent. There, as we
have already said, our own "International" was first
conceived.

These good Ontario farmers had for a long time
quietly absorbed such importations as were made
from Aberdeenshire. Such men as John Dryden
and the Millers were alive to the value of the
North Country rent-paying sort; but until Col. Wil-
liam A. Harris arrived upon the scene in the
western states, the introduction of the type had

184 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

not been pressed with any vigor or with any partic-
ular success. Potts and a few showmen here and
there were breeding from Aberdeenshire anteced-
ents, but had not succeeded specially, as George
Ade would say, in "breaking into polite society"
with their low- headed, compactly- fashioned, beefy
favorites, many of which had plain horns and
*'dumpy" quarters. They were 'plebeian" by birth,
and the bulls could not see over a fence! They
had big middles, that was true, but they were bad
at both ends! Moreover, they would not milk! They
were all right for a plodding farmer perhaps, but as
ornaments to a gentleman's park or pasture not to
be seriously considered. Such were some of the
comments of the entrenched powers of that time.
The large holders of the Bates blood looked upon
them with undisguised contempt, or at least so
pretended. Down in their hearts many of them
realized that the fine cattle they had received at
the hands of the preceding generation had not been
fairly or judiciously handled. They had indeed sown
the wind, and were now about to reap the tornado
invited by their own indifference, and in due course
it came from Kansas.

Among those who had protested earnestly against
the rapidly accelerating loss of stamina and practi-

"SET YE UP A STANDARD IN THE LAND" 185

cal utility in our western cattle, due to excessively
incestuous and illy-considered close breeding, was
James H. Kissinger of Glarksville, Mo.; and, by the
way, where is his portrait? As yet, echo only
answers, "where!" He had once been in partner-
ship with the late J. H. Pickrell of Harristown, 111.
— whose picture we are glad to say is in the Club
collection — and together these two broad-gauged,
old-time cattlemen had brought into Illinois, Iowa
and Missouri some of the best Shorthorns yet pro-
duced. Kissinger had already been in close touch
with ''Uncle Jimmy" Davidson, and was buying Aber-
deenshire cattle from him. Shortly after my return
from Lexington with a virtual commission from Gol.
Harris, I was advised that Kissinger proposed
offering a few recently imported Gruickshank cattle
which he had just brought in from Davidson's.
This information I promptly put in possession of
the laird of Linwood. The sale date was announced,
and Harris was early on the ground. He was out-
spoken in his praise of these blocky, sturdy-looking
imported cattle, declaring them to be in his opinion
exactly what was needed to correct the growing
tendency toward lightness of flesh, and loss of feed-
ing quality, in cornbelt cattle stocks. He was
already looked up to by many of the most practical

186 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

cattle-growers in the splendid blue-grass country of
which Kansas Gity is the capital, and those who had
not large sums already invested in the prevailing
popular type were more than ready to range them-
selves under his progressive and virile leadership.
Before the Kissinger sale was opened, Harris
had seen and admired a young red bull of the
Gruickshank blood which had been retained by the
seller for his own use. He was the type that had
been sought, but not found, during the Kentucky
quest. Approached in the forenoon of the day of
sale upon the subject of parting with this good
yearling, Kissinger at first declined to consider
selling him; but wisely enough he finally decided
that here was a chance to interest and identify
with the slowly-moving cause in which he was so
deeply concerned, a man who was certain to have
many followers, and he agreed to let the bull go
into the ring, provided the Golonel on his part
would undertake to see that the youngster made
not less than $1,000. The bull was Baron Victor.
He went to Linwood at $1,100, and within three
years had turned the Shorthorn business of the
Kansas Gity territory upside down. Along with him
from this same sale went the three thick imported
heifers, Violet's Bud, Victoria 63d and Victoria 69th.

XXII

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD

The bull lots at Lin wood were ideal — woodland
richly set in blue grass, surrounded by substantial
stone walls and each provided with an open shed
for shelter. My first visit was made shortly after
the original Sittyton quartet arrived at their Kan-
sas destination. In the lot skirted by the highway
leading down to Linwood station stood young Baron
Victor. He has been dead for many a year, and
his great sons and grandsons have also long since
gone the way of all flesh; but the picture of the
Baron as he stood there in the midst of rare
sylvan surroundings in June, 1882, has but one
companion-piece in my memories of similar scenes.
One day at Tillycairn William Duthie's Scottish
Archer, standing knee-deep in an Aberdeenshire
pasture, was flashed upon my vision. That has not
yet been forgotten. And so with the son of Barmp-
ton that had come to Linwood to start western
American Shorthorn breeding upon a new and saner
course. He looked every inch a bull, masculine
from the tip of his none-too-attractive horns to his
heels. Wiseacres shook their heads as they looked
at that strongly individualized front. "Bad horns!"
Yes, it is true, they were heavy and they had a

187

188 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

tendency to bend upwards that was not altogether
pleasing to those who sought beauty first in looking
at a Shorthorn. At that time Gol. Harris did not
know the story of old Lancaster Comet, as referred
to elsewhere in these sketches. If so, he would
have had readier answer to these critics. The
Baron was a richly- colored red, not the blackish-
red that so persisted in the descendants of the
$ 17,900 14th Duke of Thornedale, but verging on
the yellow side — that golden skin that was once
one of the crowning glories of Abram Renick's
Roses of Sharon. He had the short, broad face, wide
between his full bright eyes, that is the almost
unerring sign of the quick feeder, the good "doer,"
and as he grew to maturity he developed a wealth
of curly hair about the horn-base and across the
forehead. In after years Gol. Harris — who was one
of the closest students of hereditary power I have
ever known — often spoke of this latter characteristic
as an almost infallible sign of prepotency. Of
course if these locks grew upon the head of a bull
not satisfactory in point of general conformation,
that would count against rather than for him, be-
cause in the case mentioned it would forecast the
stamping of undesirable points; but Gol. Harris
always held the long, curly frontlet to be a marked

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD , 189

indication of constitutional vigor, and if the curls
extended back along the neck, so much the better.
Hereford bulls usually have it. Bison bulls always
carry it in profusion, and there are none to question
their iron constitutions.

Baron Victor had a thick, short neck running
quickly into a chine of exceptional width. The
shoulders were heavy as in the case of all really
masculine bulls, but well placed, and there was a
world of lung and heart room beneath his wide-
flung foreribs. The back was broad, and loin deeply
covered with good mellow flesh. Back of the hips
he showed a little of the traditional Gruickshank
weakness, but the quarter was long and heavy,
flanks full and twist well let down. He had ample
bone, the shortest of legs, and in his prime moved
with singular freedom and precision. One often
hears the expression that certain animals possess
"strong character." In human kind the word may
have reference to morals, or at least to things
rather more esthetic than are contemplated when
the term is employed in bovine description. In the
case of a bull it means that he has an individuality
of his own as distinguished from the common herd;
that there is something in his head and eye that
says: **I am I myself; not any old animal." There

190 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

have been bulls, for example, like the enormous
flesh-carrier Young Abbotsburn of Canadian and
Columbian Exposition fame, that carried wonderful
carcasses of thick-cutting beef. His head was the
head of a feeder, short and broad, but there was
little or no expression in his countenance; none of
that commanding clear- the -way presence that dis-
tinguishes the "I am here" type of the vigorous
male. All over his physiognomy was written docil-
ity and "I don't give a rap what happens so long
as I get my meals." And he sired but few out-
standing cattle. History must give him credit for
the champion show cow Mary Abbotsburn; but she
came near being the one exception that proved the
rule. Not so, however, with Baron Victor. His
was a lordly port. A glance from him, like the
royal request, was an understood command. Not
that he was ugly, for he was not, but he knew
what he had come into the cattle kingdom for, and
insisted upon his proper rights and prerogatives as
master of the harem. A few younger bulls were
usually allowed to run with him for company.

It is now near thirty years ago. It may be that
memory is not as trustworthy as in my earlier days;
it may be that the sharp contrast of type presented
at that date heightens the effect; but I am bound

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD 191

to say here, that while I have in my time visited
^ many of the greatest beef-cattle breeding establish-
ments of the world, I recall no such extraordinary
groups of youngsters as those sent into leading
western sales and shows from Linwood Farm,
the first fruits of the use of Baron Victor in the
Harris herd. The cross upon the BATES-topped
Marys, Josephines, Roses of Sharon and other
typical American tribes of that era was as amazing
as it was instantaneously successful. The aggres-
sive, rich-fleshed, blocky Sittyton Victoria bull nicked
in such startling fashion that the west looked on
in wonder. Such hair, such depth of covering, such
breadth of beam, such shortness of leg, such early
maturity — the cornbelt's dream of baby beef realized
at last!

Breeders from far and near were overjoyed. The
long-looked-for leader, and the long-sought cross,
had arrived. "The Gruickshank bull's the thing.**
That was the unanimous verdict of all unprejudiced
beef-producers who saw those first famous line-ups
of the Baron Victor progeny at the Kansas City
sales. The half-bloods went like hot cakes at remu-
nerative prices, and just to show how the pure blood
had worked out in comparison with the "crosses,"
Victoria 63d's sappy heifer, Linwood Victoria by

192 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Baron Victor — the first Scotch-bred calf dropped
at the farm — was put through the initial sale,
and the scramble for her did not cease until "Uncle
Sammy" Steinmetz, a thrifty Missouri breeder, nod-
ded his head for "another five" after the $1,000
corner had been turned. It must be remembered
that this was in the days when nothing save Bates-
bred cattle were supposed to be worth four figures.
The sale, therefore, of this choice heifer at such a
figure marked the virtual beginning of a demand
for Aberdeenshire blood that has not yet run its
course.

The readers of these notes will not be taxed
with a presentation of details as to the assembling
of the great herd to be seen in the Linwood pastures
from, say, 1883 to 1890. Expense \^as not spared
in the purchase of the best material with which
Amos Gruickshank could be induced to part. The
choice of the American imports from Sittyton were re-
served for Linwood's option. The genius of the great
Scotchman himself was invoked in the selection of
young bulls and heifers likely to advance the cause
of the Gruickshank stamp in the United States.
William Duthie alone, Mr. Gruickshank's closest
adviser and contemporary in his declining years, had
the pick of a bull ahead of Linwood. Lot after lot

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD 193

of broad-ribbed, furry-haired, compactly-fashioned,
wonderfully -matured yearlings and two-year-olds
came out from Aberdeen to Kansas. I remember
well one shipment that chanced to arrive upon the
occasion of one of my frequent visits in the early
eighties. All hands, including Francis Thompson
and his brother "Will" — Scotch boys sent out by
Mr. DuTHiE to help develop the North Country pil-
grims in the sunny west — were at the station to
help unload and get the precious freight safely
home. Pressed into service myself, the Colonel
asked me which one of the lot I preferred to lead.
My' fancy fell upon a particularly sweet roan heifer,
which I was informed was Lavender 34th. I was
told that she was of Amos Cruickshank's own
choosing, and I held her halter in a memorable
parade that began at Linwood siding, and ended in
the blue-grass enclosure that lay between Linwood
house and the Baron Victor paddock. This heifer
was just such a type as Bapton Pearl, afterwards
renowned throughout American cattle-breeding
circles as the mother of Whitehall Sultan; and
she lived to produce a number of very valuable
calves.

A rare good cow of Campbell's Kinellar Golden
Drop sort, carrying Bates crosses, had been added

194 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

to the herd. She had the grand air, carriage and
finish of the old-time Duchesses, and the flesh that
was such a cardinal point with Mr. Gruickshank
and his Aberdeenshire neighbors, and by crossing
her with Baron Victor, possibly the best individual
cattle ever seen at Linwood were obtained. Then
came Lavender S6th, noblest of all the Gruickshank
cows of her day on this side the Atlantic, and
Princess Alice — marvel of thickness, finish and milk
— a paragon of double-deckers. And as the seasons
came and passed, under the masterful guidance of
the owner Linwood came to be the home of the
best herd of Shorthorns on the American continent
— the Mecca towards which the most progressive
breeders directed their steps in quest of bulls to
head their herds. The tide was definitely turned to
the Aberdeenshire blood. The proprietor was hailed
as the regenerator of a breed. His services as
judge were in request at all the leading shows. In
the councils of the American Shorthorn Breeders'
Association his judgment was all but supreme.
Younger breeders found in him an honest, trusted
adviser, and many dated the beginnings of their
success from days spent in his pastures. Eloquent
and convincing always, his addresses and his inti-
mate conversations were an absolute inspiration.

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD 196

and he had no warmer friends and admirers than
in the ranks of his contemporaries of the Hereford
and Aberdeen-Angus camps.

Throughout this, beyond question the happiest
period of his life, the betterment of the cattle
stocks of the United States had his entire attention.
All the wealth of his great intellectual gifts were
showered upon the problems connected with the
improvement of our western herds. By day and by
night he ministered personally to his favorites.
Like Thomas Bates, he knew and habitually fondled
all his favorites. The animals themselves under-
stood his devotion, and courted his hand as he
approached. In the midnight hours he would re-
spond to any unusual call from about the cattle
barns. The lantern would be lighted, and he would
make the rounds to ascertain the trouble. Fit to
grace, as he afterwards did, the Senate chamber at
Washington, once the choice of several great states
as nominee for the Vice-Presidency of the Republic,
this great, simple-hearted man did not deem it be-
neath his dignity to do these things. He had no
patience with those of his neighbors who complained
of "bad luck" with cattle. The only luck he
recognized was that which came as the reward of
unselfish, unending devotion to that which he loved.

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Hard times overtook us all. He saw the Kan-
sas farmers suffering, despite their most strenuous
labors. The rewards of husbandry were hazardous
and inadequate. The usurer was abroad in the
land. Those who recognized the Colonel as a
worthy champion of the cause of all who toiled
early and late to create the harvest, went to him
as children to a kindly father. He was invited to
meet with and talk to them. He could not refuse;
and here was the beginning of the end of Linwood
Farm and all its bovine wonders.

In the summer of 1892 we went together to
Great Britain, landing at Liverpool. Our very first
day in rural England drew from him after a consid-
erable silence the simple comment, "This makes
me sick!" I knew what he had worked out. The
settled, all-pervading air of comfort, the matchless
greenery of the well-kept fields, the fine old homes,
the ivy -covered walls, the beautiful roads, the
hawthorn hedges: the inheritances of the centuries —
everything that appealed strongest to his senses
and temperament here unfolded in an apparently
endless panorama, and these people occupying this
Garden of Eden had been born into it all! Here
was a land where somebody else had done something.
The best years of his own life had been spent in
helping subdue a virgin wilderness.

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD 197

We landed at New York some weeks later, and
a tslegram that awaited him at the old Fifth Avenue
Hotel robbed him then and there of a peace of
mind which I am absolutely certain he never after-
wards quite regained, even up to the final hour.
This message notified him that at a political con-
vention that had been held at Wichita, while we
were upon the Atlantic, he had been unanimously
nominated amidst great enthusiasm for congress-
man-at-large, under an apportionment at that time
effective, for the state of Kansas.

"Why," said he, "did this have to come to me
just as I was returning home from this splendid
trip, my mind fairly filled with new ideas, hopes
and plans for the future of my home, my farm, my
herd?" This was the natural protest of a man
who had never sought public office and wished only
to live out his simple life among "green fields and
running brooks." I verily believe he had at that
hour a premonition that this really meant farewell
to all he valued most on earth. All the way to
Chicago he could not shake off" the pall that seemed
to fall upon his spirits. A good soldier always,
ever ready to respond to what he felt might be the
call of duty, he buckled on his armor and made
the fight. People may have differed with him in
his views upon various questions vitally aff'ecting

198 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

the farming community, but no man ever questioned
the honesty of his purposes. Ten years of turmoil
supervened. Linwood never knew him more. Gin-
cinnatus had been called from the plow to fight the
battles of his countrymen, and he was mortally
wounded in their service.

The election and re-election to the House of
Representatives; his powerful influence upon im-
portant legislation; the inevitable neglect of lands
and cattle; the death of the mother of his children;
the grim struggle politically and financially; the
election to the Senate of the United States; con-
tinuous business depression requiring the sale of
his Shorthorns and the farm at bottom prices — all
these followed in fast succession, and at last the
inevitable turn of the wheel that left him once more
in private life.

Too honest to accumulate money in politics, too
proud to ask for help in the hour of adversity, too
brave ever to show the white feather, he came
back from Washington to the west at my solicita-
tion— broken in purse and spirit — to begin anew
his old-time relationship with the stockmen of the
nation; so that we found him in his declining years
on the rostrum, or judging and assisting in the
management of shows, prominent in state and

THE SUNNY SLOPES OF LINWOOD 199

national conventions wherever his great experience
and his acknowledged talents could be invoked for
the uplift of those who live upon the land. It is
fitting that his last public service should have been
as Managing Director of the International Live
Stock Exposition, and it is peculiarly appropriate
that his last public address should have been to
the Shorthorn breeders of America, assembled in
annual meeting at the old Grand Pacific Hotel on
the night of Dec. 1, 1909.

Senator Harris was, in my judgment, the ablest
man who has been identified with cattle-breeding
in the United States since my acquaintance with
that industry began, and had he not been called
from the farm to the forum, would have attained
a reputation as a constructive breeder second to
none of those who have written their names highest
in the Hall of Agricultural Fame. Broad-minded,
liberal and just, he was planning a blending of the
best Herd Book bloods in such fashion as could
scarcely fail in his hands to set a new milestone
in Shorthorn history. He did enough from 1882
to 1892 to demonstrate his power, and those who
aspire to great deeds in the realm of animal hus-
bandry will find in his life and teachings the sound-
est of all foundations to build upon.

200 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Truth, integrity, sincerity, courage, originality
and capacity, and an abiding love of nature and
his fellowmen! All these were his, and during
those last pathetic years, when he was a constant
frequenter of the Saddle and Sirloin Club, he
endeared himself by a thousand characteristic words
and deeds to all with whom he came in contact.

The corn is ripening as we write, in the autumn
sunshine in the land he understood so well. Soon
the drifting snows will follow. The endless pano-
ramas of the seasons will continue in their courses;
the miracles of life and death will still be wrought
in the future as in the past; men will come and
reputations go; but here was a man we cannot afford
to forget. Speed the day when a really satisfying
portrait finds place in the most sacred niche to
which it can be assigned by loving hearts and
willing hands.

XXIII

AFTERMATH

Amos Gruickshank was a bachelor and a Quaker
— a man little given to speech at any time. His
brother Anthony had two sons, John W. and Edward,
who for some years maintained a good herd at
Lethenty, Inverurie, in which Booth blood was
extensively used. John Dryden of Canada and
Edward were on rather close terms of friendship,
and many good Shorthorns of mixed Sittyton and
Warlaby extraction came over to the Dryden farm
from Lethenty. The latter herd was closed out,
however, many years ago. After Anthony's death
Amos carried on the great herd at Sittyton until
1889, when, bending under the weight of years, the
old veteran let it be known that he would retire.
There was talk for a time that the entire herd
would be taken over by a syndicate of Americans.
Davidson, Dryden, Harris, Potts, Kissinger, Wil-
liam Miller and others conferred in reference to
this; but before action looking towards definite steps
could be had a deal was closed by Robert Bruce
with Thomas Nelson & Sons of Liverpool, which
contemplated a transfer of the entire world-renowned
collection to Argentina. Fortunately, however, two
men who were destined to preserve and carry for-

201

202 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ward admirably the excellence of the parent stock,
William Duthie of Gollynie, Aberdeenshire, and J.
Deane Willis of Bapton Manor, Wiltshire, England,
came to the rescue and saved the most of the
more valuable material for the northern hemisphere.
It was not until several years after this had
taken place that I was able to indulge a long-cher-
ished ambition to personally meet and talk with Mr.
Gruickshank. Mr. Duthie accompanied Senator
Harris and myself to Sittyton, and there we met
not only the master of the house but his nephew,
John W., above mentioned, the latter a man of high
intelligence and refinement. The old man sat in
the chimney corner, wrapped in a warm gray woolen
robe with a red skullcap upon his head, and although
he gave us hearty welcome he permitted neighbor
Duthie to do most of the talking. Now those who
knew both men will readily understand this situation,
I am sure. Gollynie is ever ready with his words —
and there is commonly both wit and wisdom in
them. Sittyton was always chary of them. From
the two one good average conversationalist could
have been readily made. However, I managed at
last to put a few pointed questions to the reticent
old man, to which monosyllabic answers only for the
most part were returned. In fact, I was reminded

AFTERMATH 205

of a similar effort I had made some years previous
to draw out another octogenerian cattleman who
was also more given to making history than talking
about it. I allude to "Uncle" Abram Renick of
Kentucky. The first, last and only time I ever saw
him was at one of the Vanmeter-Hamilton sales of
1882 or 1883. He was then quite feeble and when
I asked, "Mr. Renick, did the 4th Duke of Geneva,
as a matter of fact, really do your old Roses of
Sharon any good?" he simply said, after thinking it
over for a moment, "I don't know that he did, but
he helped to sell them." That was all I could get;
but there was a deep significance, as a matter of
fact, in those few words. And so with Mr. Gruick-
SHANK. When I asked if he considered that his
herd in its later years had stood in need of an
outcross — some reinvigoration through fresh blood
elements — he merely shook his "frosty pow" and
said, "It may be so, but I was too old to do it."
By inference he recognized the fact that some loss
of size and substance had set in, but the great and
always difficult task of seeking to revivify a strongly
inbred type must, in his case, be left to younger men.
How DuTHiE and Willis — the one working in the
north of Scotland and the latter in the south of
England — set about this undertaking, and how clev-

204 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

erly they manipulated the heritage they had from
Amos Gruickshank, forms one of the most brilliant
chapters in modern live-stock history.

William Duthie and Deane Willis are still living.
Both deserve all the lavish praise that has been
bestowed upon them. Willis has a most delightful
home in a land where winter as we know it never
comes, where the grass is always green, and where
there is a garden I shall not soon forget. The old
stone house at Bapton has pictures and trophies
galore that tell the story of accomplishments in the
modern cattle-breeding world that sustain the best
traditions of ancient York and Durham. He came
out to the States several years ago to judge, and
is one of the many distinguished guests who have
been entertained at the Saddle and Sirloin Club.
While in America he had the satisfaction of seeing
some of the wonderful effects of the widespread
use of a great bull he gave to us — Whitehall Sultan.

Mr. Duthie was out judging at Toronto some
seasons since, but his time was so limited that he
did not get into the west. So, as the mountain
could not come to Mahomet, some Saddle and Sir-
LOiNERS journeyed over the border to greet him.
Mr. Duthie is in many respects the most remarkable
man I have ever known. In his native district he

AFTERMATH 205

is father-confessor to the whole countryside: banker,
trustee, guardian, farmer, merchant, pillar of the
"kirk," chairman of half the Boards in Aberdeen-
shire, factor for Lord Aberdeen of Haddo House,
and prince imperial of latter-day Shorthorn cattle-
breeders in the Anglo-Saxon realm. A very dynamo
for energy, outpointing any Yankee in native shrewd-
ness, learned in the lore of northern cattle-breeding
beyond all his contemporaries, successful as a pro-
ducer of champions, a salesman of high-bred animals,
ranking with our own Mark Dunham of international
fame in draft-horse breeding circles, patronized by
royalty and the leaders of the Shorthorn trade in
both North and South America — he has builded for
himself a record of success that insures his fame for
all time to come in the annals of British agriculture.
Many a happy hour I have spent with this virile,
keen-minded successor to Amos Cruickshank, driving
about northern Aberdeenshire. His two main breed-
ing farms are Collynie and Tillycairn. Here and
upon the neighboring farm of Uppermill — so long
occupied by the Messrs. Marr — Shorthorns have
been bred that have made showyard and salering
records that shall be memorable for generations yet
to come. To this most companionable genius I have
to confess my obligations for many valuable histor-

206 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

ical facts utilized in my work in the past twenty
years; but the thought of how much Duthie really
knows that has never yet been got from him in the
interest of the cattle-breeding world makes me regret
that I have not accepted a repeated invitation,
cordially pressed, to occupy for a season the com-
fortable farmhouse at Gollynie, where we could have
time to get his recollections of Aberdeenshire history
covering a span of half a century. Some day such
a dream might come true; but he has already passed
three score and ten, and it's a far cry these awful
days from Chicago to those bonnie Aberdonian banks
and braes.

Mr. Duthie is a man of wonderful conversational
powers, possessing an inexhaustible store of Scot-
ticisms, and once kept everybody entertained so
long over the afternoon tea at the late Mrs. Muir-
head's — a sister of Mr. John Glay and then wife of
Lord Aberdeen's estate manager — that we almost
missed seeing the Shorthorns at Tillycairn entirely,
although I had journeyed across the Atlantic partly
for that particular purpose. In view of the effective
grouping of the best things there to be seen, that
awaited our final arrival late that afternoon, I have
always had a sneaking notion that there was ''method
in his madness" in beguiling us so long with his
stories over Mrs. Muirhead's tea.

AFTERMATH 207

One of these only I happen to remember. U ran
something like this:

"Over near Tarves a good, honest, hard-working
chap was about to be married. He invited all his
friends and neighbors to the festivities, and the
evening was passing off in jolly fashion. Sandy
finally thought it was about time he made some
public acknowledgment to the parson who had
honored the company by his presence, and in fact
had tied the marriage knot, so he raised his glass
to propose a toast. He had premeditated this, of
course, and in reality had prepared for himself a
very neat little speech, the main point in which
was to be the fact that they all knew and appre-
ciated the good man so thoroughly that nothing the
speaker could say would add to their repect for him,
etc., etc., etc.; but in the excitement of the moment
he lost his bearings a bit, winding up, somewhat to
the dismay of his guests, with: *Gude friends, ye a'
ken the meenister so verra weel, he has lived among
us a' sae lang, that the least said aboot him the
better.' "

One night during the week that Mr. Duthie was
judging at Toronto the management tendered their
guest from across the seas a grand banquet, attended
by many of the highest dignitaries of the Dominion.
It was a large affair, and nearly everybody in due
course was called upon to make a speech. Some-
where around midnight the chairman pounced upon

208 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

me, and I had a grain of satisfaction, in sparring for
an opening, in retailing that same little yarn, using
DuTHiE, however, as the hero of Sandy's wedding
party instead of the minister. The company was at
that hour in a mood to relish the idea of "the least
said about Mr. Duthie the better," and in the fun
that followed I absolved the gentleman from the
sin of having delayed my game once upon a time
v/hen wanting to view Shorthorns rather than listen
to his good North Country jokes.

XXIV
A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS

On the 20th of February, 1840, there was born
not far from the massive walls of Belvoir Castle —
one of the seats of the ducal house of Rutland in
Leicestershire, England — one who was destined to
play an important role in the progress of some of
the great events already detailed. He was one of
a family of fourteen, the eldest of eight sons. His
surname was Gibson and his parents called him
Richard. Throughout a long and eventful life his
intimates knew him as "Dick." He became one of
the pillars of the International Show, and one of
the best loved members of the Saddle and Sirloin
Club. His portrait is not as satisfactory as might be
wished, but this little book would be wholly incom-
plete without some reference to his life and work.

The Gibsons removed from Leicestershire into
Derbyshire when Richard was but six years old.
He received his education in the grammar schools
of Derby and Lincoln, and spent two years in the
office of a grain merchant in the city last named,
after which he returned to his father at Swarkeston,
and spent four years familiarizing himself with the
farming and stock-breeding operations as conducted
upon a holding of some 600 acres, which was so well

209

210 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

managed as to win several prizes for exceptional
results in cultivation. At the age of 21, accompanied
by his brother John, he took passage by the steam-
ship "Jura" from Liverpool for Quebec, determined to
try his fortune in the new world. He had a letter
of introduction to a Mr. Gox of Barrie, Ont. On the
occasion of his visit to present his credentials at
this farm the young Englishman was somewhat
startled to see wild deer in the "bush" as he gazed
from the bedroom window. This was his first intro-
duction to the ultimate land of his adoption. Pro-
ceeding from Barry to Hamilton he was advised to
go to Spring Grove Farm (near Ilderton, some 13
miles north of London, Ont.), then owned by the late
George Robson. Here Richard remained until he
had thoroughly learned Canadian agriculture, after
which he accepted an offer to go to Long Island
and take charge of an estate of 1 ,500 acres belong-
ing to Mr. Delamater, a New York shipbuilder. After
the lapse of two years in this service his activities
were transferred to the management of a 1,400-acre
farm near Utica, N. Y., owned by Messrs. Walcott
& Campbell, proprietors of the New York Sheeting
Mills, an extensive cotton manufacturing plant.

There was no live stock of consequence upon the
place when Gibson took hold of it. The owners

A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 211

were ready enough to receive suggestions as to
investments in that line, but possessed little prac-
tical knowledge of the business. Mr. Campbell, a
"canny" Scot, suggested Ayrshires, and a herd of that
time-honored Scottish dairy sort was duly founded.
With these, however, Gibson was not satisfied. From
his early youth he had been a lover of the Shorthorn,
and he still had visions of the "red, white and roan"
in all the glory of their furry coats, broad ribs, deep
chests and capacious udders, as seen in the show-
yards and pastures of his native land. As a mere boy
he had listened with rapt attention to the stories of
Lancaster and Comet as told in the quaint language
and with all the enthusiasm of illiterate but observ-
ant herdsmen. The Shorthorn was at this time the
pampered favorite of the British nobility, as well as
the mainstay of the English tenantry. Prominent
New Yorkers like Col. Morris, Samuel Thorne and
J. O. Sheldon had already made importations of the
popular Duchess and Oxford blood. Tom Booth was
setting the English showyards wild with the mar-
velous creations of Warlaby. The way was being
paved for the most stupendous speculation in blooded
cattle the world had ever known.

Mr. Campbell's objections were finally overcome
and a few Shorthorns, which he always referred to

212 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

as "Gibson's things," were allowed upon the place.
Richard did not mean to be content, however, with
anything short of "tops," and after explaining at
length the highly interesting situation then existing
abroad as between the Booth and Bates tribes, and
after having pointed out that practically no speci-
mens of the former were then in the United States,
he was commissioned to proceed to England and
select ten head for importation.

Tom Booth was then at the very climax of his
reputation as a breeder of champion cattle. The
famous bull Commander in Chief and the extraor-
dinary cow Lady Fragrant — regarded by the critics
of that day as the most marvelous specimen of the
breed produced up to that date — had just been made
British champions. It had never been the practice
at Warlaby, however, to part with females, and it
was only with the understanding that those put in
oifer to Mr. Gibson were to be taken out of the
country that any price could be had. Mr. Cochrane
had just paid the unprecedented figure of $5,000
for a Duchess heifer from Col. Gunter, and as the
rivalry between the two great Shorthorn houses
was then at its very height Mr. Booth would take
no less than the same price for the fine show
heifer Bride of the Vale, that was particularly desired

A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 213

by the American buyer. She was accompanied by
nine head, nearly all of Booth extraction, and two
years later another importation of a like number
was made for New York Mills.

Mr. Sheldon, who had acquired all of the Thorne-
dale Duchesses, scented danger to his speculation
in Bates cattle by this invasion of the Booths; so
he resolved to make terms, offering to sell one-half
of the Geneva herd. Gibson advised its purchase,
but Mr. Campbell replied, "But you don't know the
price!" The answer was, ''Never mind the price;
buy." The deal was closed, and the division made;
the Duchesses cost an average of $5,500 each,
and the Oxfords $2,800 each. A year later the
entire Sheldon herd was taken over at an agreed
price of $100,000 for about 50 head. The Booths
were disposed of and some of them found their
way back to England.

There were then no Duchesses living on either
side of the Atlantic descended direct from Mr. Bates'
herd without admixture of blood from other sources,
excepting those owned at New York Mills, so that
when, in 1873, the time was deemed right for such
an event the entire herd was advertised for sale at
public auction. Shorthorn breeding at that date was
engaging the enthusiastic attention of large numbers

214 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

of wealthy and enterprising men in both Britain and
Canada, and the announcement of this dispersion
was the signal for the beginning of negotiations on
both sides of the water looking toward an inter-
national contest for the possession of this blood so
highly prized. The golden guineas of the British
were pitted against the "almighty dollar" of the
Americans, on the tenth day of September, 1873, in
a contest for the possession of these cattle, which
resulted, as has already been related, in the as-
tounding total of $381,990, an average of $3,504,
for the 109 head, with a top price of $40,600, bid
by one of the English commissioners for the 8th
Duchess of Geneva!

The sensational success of this venture brought
Mr. Gibson into a prominence on both s;ides of the
water that rendered him thenceforth a conspicuous
figure in stock-breeding circles at home and abroad,
and enabled him to engage in various important
enterprises of his own. He embarked for a time
in the importation and exportation of Shorthorns,
selling 33 head at Chicago in April, 1882, for
$24,300, and 20 head a year later at the same
place for $20,330. On removing his family from
the United States he had leased a farm at Ilderton,
Ont., and in 1883 purchased Belvoir, on the River

A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 215

Thames, near the village of Delaware, and built it
up with the aid of sheep, cattle and judicious crop-
ping into one of the prize farms of the Dominion.
The star of the BATES-bred Shorthorns, of which
Mr. Gibson was so fond, had begun to wane even
at the time of his Chicago sales. The invasion of the
west by the heavy-fleshed Herefords and Aberdeen-
Angus had already begun to turn the Shorthorn
tide into other channels. It was for many years a
source of much concern to this valiant defender of
the Kirklevington blood that the American public
insisted upon drifting away from what he regarded
as the true Shorthorn faith to wander far afield
after strange gods. He did not believe in the
Aberdeenshire type of Shorthorns, and did not hesi-
tate to denounce them roundly as destined to ruin
the breed in this country. That he sincerely be-
lieved this to be true no one could question. He
was often called as a judge at leading shows in
Canada and the States, and if one of the lordly,
high-headed, broad-loined, level-quartered sort, which
he regarded as the true Shorthorn type, came
before him in competition with one of the low-
headed, heavy -bodied, shorter -legged Cruickshank
stamp, there was rarely a doubt among the by-
standers as to where Gibson would hang the ribbon.

216 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

In this connection a personal incident may not be
amiss.

The writer hereof in the early eighties endeavored
to introduce into American agricultural journalism
the English system of critical comment upon the
work of the judges at the great national competi-
tions. This was an untried field in this country,
and an early abandonment was freely predicted.
In the face of the bitter rivalry, then becoming
acute, as between the old and the new showyard
Shorthorn types, the effort was peculiarly difficult
and indeed at times impossible of successful accom-
plishment. Upon one notable occasion a decision of
Mr. Gibson's came in for sharp criticism, to which
he replied through the press with vigor and the
free use of sarcasm. We had up to that time been
the best of friends, but this incident seemed to
foreshadow an estrangement. In the meantime,
however, work had been commenced on the ** His-
tory of Shorthorn Cattle," brought out in the spring
of 1900, and in the course of the preparation of
the manuscript occasion arose for consulting Mr.
Gibson in reference to certain facts resting spe-
cially within his personal knowledge; so, swallowing
a bit of pride and ignoring the friction that had
arisen, a letter of inquiry was duly posted. For

A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 217

some time there was no response, but finally a
well-filled, large envelope put in its appearance.
The letter, which was from Mr. Gibson, began, con-
trary to previous practice, in a very formal manner

— "Sir: Yours of received. I am not sure

that I can answer your question. I" — but here the
ice suddenly melted. Dropping abruptly conven-
tional forms, Richard was himself again. "Oh, the
devil, Alvin! What's the use! I'll tell you all
about it." Whereupon he fell straightway into one
of his delightful reminiscent moods and related
one of the most interesting Shorthorn stories
ever told. This was in 1899, and from that time
until the closing hours of his life we were firm
friends, serving together for nearly ten years upon
the Board of Directors of the International Live
Stock Exposition, maintaining all the while a cor-
respondence into which he poured all the wealth
of an astonishing fund of recollection, as useful in
our editorial work as it was entertaining. It is unfor-
tunate that these letters have not all been preserved.
They were usually too personal in their nature for
publication; but the one just quoted affords a fine
insight into his generous character, carrying with it
the lesson that life is too short for friends to quarrel
over mere matters of individual judgment.

218 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Richard Gibson had an extraordinary appreciation
of the fascination of the breeder's art. He loved
all forms of high-bred animal life. Shorthorns and
Shropshires were probably the chief objects of his
affectionate study and regard; but his keen delight
in all that revealed skillful manipulation of the
mysterious forces of nature by the guiding mind of
man extended throughout the entire range of the
four-footed and feathered creation. Like "Jorrocks"
of old, he was a devout believer in the efficacy of
"a bit o' blood, whether it be in a 'orse, a 'ound, or
a woman." He could be equally interested in a
Christmas bullock, a **classy" Clydesdale, a Derby
winner, a game-cock, or fox terriers. There was
something of kinship in his love for country sports
and animal life with such worthies as old Barclay
of Ury. Fond of all that appeals to those who love
the open country, he could see as much beauty in
a hedge-row or an oak as some people can find in
metropolitan galleries of art. And speaking of oaks,
many years ago he asked for and received some
acorns from one of the royal domains in England —
in fact, the product of one of the most venerable
and historic trees in the mother country. These he
planted successfully at Belvoir, and shortly before
his death donated some of the seedlings to the city

A KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN DAYS 219

of London, Ont., which were planted in Victoria
Park in commemoration of the coronation of King
George, then impending.

Mr. Gibson served as president of the Dominion
Shorthorn Association and of the Canadian Kennel
Glub, besides holding numerous other offices in con-
nection with various organizations of stock breeders
on both sides the line. He served as a member of
the Agricultural Commission appointed by the On-
tario Government in 1880. He was survived by his
wife — a sister of Capt. T. E. Robson — and by three
married daughters and by one son, Noel, a young
man of the highest promise — indeed, a sterling rep-
resentative of a family that has contributed largely
to the extension of popular interest in improved
farm stock on this continent. The Gibsons have
in fact written their names indelibly in the litera-
ture of improved stock-breeding during the past half
century. Richard's name is forever linked with New
York Mills. His brother Arthur was one of Eng-
land's best-esteemed herd managers, and the work
of William and John on this side the water is
known to all who follow the course of the trade.

Rich in sentiment, the mind of Richard Gibson
was filled with an inexhaustible store of incidents
illuminating the splendid story of the achievements

220 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

of great men in the stock-breeding world. An easy
and interesting conversationalist and possessed of a
fine sense of humor, when surrounded by congenial
companions, kindred spirits — such as were wont to
congregate at the Grand Pacific Hotel in the old
fat-stock show days and latterly at the Saddle and
Sirloin Glub — he was at his best. Among those
who loved the tales of the olden days there exists
since his demise a sense of loss that finds no ade-
quate expression.

XXV
THE INSPIRATION OF THE INN

"As a tree planted by the waters and that spread-
eth out her roots by the river, and shall not see
when the heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green;
and shall not be careful in the year of drouth, neither
shall it cease from yielding fruit."

When, one night in the month of January, 1912,
the old hotel disappeared in a chariot of fire, an
opportunity for doing something monumental as well
as practical was presented, and it was a moral cer-
tainty in advance that this would be improved to the
utmost. The inspirations of the Saddle and Sirloin
Club could produce but one result. Essentially
educational in its conception, and wholly utilitarian
in its character, the Inn stands today — and let us
hope will stand for generations yet to come — a
splendid tribute to the land and the era that supplied
the seed, the harvest of which is the stupendous daily
business at the Yards ! A modern fireproof structure
provided with all twentieth century comforts within,
its exterior aspects preserve and perpetuate the
quaintly picturesque and exquisitely artistic lines of
the architecture of rural England of the long ago —
the present masquerading in the garments of a glo-
rious Elizabethan past ! A bit of the old world set

221

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down in the very heart of the new ! A fascinating
memento of an age when men had time to think, and
cultivate the arts of friendly intercourse, the Inn
looks calmly down upon the rush and roar of city
rails and motors, and bids the breathless pause and
find perspective.

A wall 220 feet in length is presented to the city
street, but a generous passageway admits man and
beast and vehicle of whatever kind through a modi-
fied type of the old-fashioned Scottish wynd into a
quiet court. Over the main entrance is the porte-
cochere that graced the old Guild House of the
ancient city of Hereford. In the southwest wing you
see the front of a fine old Yorkshire manor house
woven into the long and beautiful facade. At still
another point may be made out the lines of what was
once John Harvard's home. Stop and study it. You
have only just left the whirl of metropolitan life out-
side the wall, and instantly you have come upon a
scene whose dominant note is peace and real repose.
You feel yourself suddenly halted in your accustomed
race; and if at all responsive to the picture, you will
presently begin to feel something in the nature of a
benedic/tion. The slings and arrows of today are
flying only beyond the gates.

Practically all of our most widely -distributed

THE INSPIRATION OF THE INN 223

modern flesh -bearing breeds originated in England.
John Bull has ever had a weakness for the toothsome
viands. There is nothing much the matter with his
stomach or his appetite. He has for generations
preferred life in the open country to a mere existence
in the midst of crowds. He loves his horses and his
hounds. The horn of the hunter is to him the sweet-
est of all sounds next to the full-throated music of
the pack. He lives much among his four-footed
friends. He understands them. He learned long ago
how to develop them to a high state of perfection.
He keeps a good table. He is a generous and par-
ticular provider. His beef and his chop must be of
the sort that satisfies. He objects not at all to the
liberal proportion of fat that ever lies alongside the
juicy cut that nourishes the body and makes glad
the heart.

He demanded something wholesome, something
substantial, something good to eat and drink, not only
in his home, but at the hands of ''mine host" of the
village inn. His business took him frequently to his
nearest market town, and after the bargaining was
over for the day, it was his wont to join his colleagues
of the countryside, men of similar type and tastes,
at the ''King's Head," the "White Horse," the "Black
Bull," or other local public house. Here, over bread

224 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

and cheese or chop or joint — and too often perhaps
the generous mug of "brown October ale" — the grand
debate would start. It might take wide range, but it
would inevitably turn to horses, dogs and bulls or
"tups," with many a wager placed for subsequent
adjudication. Out of these tap-room sessions grew
the early shows where results were measured and
experiences exchanged; and as the product of this or
that procedure became of interest to the whole com-
munity, notes were made and the foundations of
pedigree registration at length established. Why not
commemorate such scenes and thus remind ourselves
occasionally of the debt we owe to those who gave
us our good breeds and founded the trial by jury in
the open showyard? Such was the reasoning of
Arthur G. Leonard, to whom the west is indebted for
this truly artistic memorial structure.

Facing as it does the home of the International,
connected as it is by steps and corridors with the
Saddle and Sirloin Glub itself, and serving daily
the patrons of the greatest live-stock market of the
world, the Stock Yard Inn is America's one enduring
monument to these grand old men and the times in
which they lived, placed in the one spot, above all
others on the continent, where such a work should
stand.

XXVI
HISTORY IN THE MAKING

In our tour of the club rooms we now arrive in
Havana — that is to say, the smoking room, so
called, of the Saddle and Sirloin Glub. They are
all smoking rooms, so far as I have ever observed.
But, anyhow, drop here into an easy-chair, and if
you enjoy the weed pull away at your Perfecto if
you like, while we seek through the floating cloud-
wreaths the lines of certain extraordinary scenes.
The well-trained eye can see these pictures stand-
ing out in bold relief behind the canvas that carries
the features of Mark W. Dunham. Note the pass-
ing panorama.

Under a gray old castle's frowning walls a draw-
bridge falls across the moat. The trumpets sound.
A glittering cavalcade emerges. Pennons gay and
guidons flutter in the breeze. Steel and silver —
corselet, hilt and morion — glisten in the morning
sun, and noble chargers, mostly white and gray,
prance proudly, bearing out into the medieval world
brave belted knights and their retainers faring forth
to meet what ere betides.

Generations pass: in the far distance the rhythmic
beating of heavy hurrying hoofs! It is a highway

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builded by the kings of France. To the sound of
the horn and the sharp note of the lash, the great
diligence bearing the royal mails and laden deep
with passengers and their gear comes into view. A
rush, a roar of wheels, and the great freighted coach
is gone.

Agriculture calls: down the long furrows see the
shining plowshares deeply driven. The mellow earth
awakens, and lo, the stored up riches of a fertile
field await the seed. Long is the journey and re-
peated oft. From ''early morn to dewy eve" the
living shuttles travel, back and forth; but weight
that wearies not is harnessed.

And yet again, last scene of all: a busy modern
city street. Huge vans and trucks are rumbling
ever on the granite blocks. Big grays and blacks
march proudly to the music of a nation's commerce.
Power, patience, dignity personified. Glory be to men
who can produce such prodigies!

Such is the prologue. Now for the drama proper.

First an old brick farmhouse underneath great
oaks. The town of Elgin, 111., some five miles dis-
tant. North, east, west and south well-managed
fields as far as the eye can reach. A country that
knows and never loses sight of the value of golden
hoofs in husbandry. Live stock has kept the dis-

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 227

trict rich for fifty years, and live stock will keep
it rich forever.

The time is about 1870. A gray stallion with
a long white mane is seen approaching. His name
Success — happy omen of what was even then in
the womb of fate — is a household word for miles
around. He is given a box in the Dunham stables,
and the foundation of the greatest triumph ever
known in draft -horse breeding in the world is laid.

Presently we see groups of big gay Percherons
unloaded at the little railway station, Wayne, that
adjoins the farm along its northern boundary. They
are freshly arrived from France. A big new barn
goes up. Visitors come. Then more horses, more
big red barns, more visitors. Then one by one the
stallions are led away to Wayne, and shipped.
Some go east, some go west. The best remain at
Oaklawn. Each time we look greater numbers of
horses are arriving, larger throngs of buyers, and a
bigger, ever bigger equipment!

On the hill overlooking the best-tilled fields in
Illinois a Norman castle with towers and battle-
ments appears. The old brick house becomes an
office. Clerks and typewriters work from January
to December trying to keep track of new impor-
tations from the Perche and of Mr. Dunham's

228 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

tremendous trade with every section of the Union.
Special trains pull in from time to time from Chi-
cago. Statesmen, captains of high finance, cabinet
ministers, envoys of foreign powers, dignitaries from
the ends of the earth and students from abroad, as
well as from our own farming communities, count
it a pleasure and a privilege to spend a day at the
great show place of the middle west.

And then one sad day a long funeral cortege
passing down the Elgin road. Death ever loved the
shining target. A band of coal-black Percheron
fillies tramping in single file alongside in the pasture,
stopping only at the fence that marks the end of
their late master's landed possessions — an uncon-
scious farewell from the fields!

But how shall we supply the wealth of detail
necessary to complete these pictures? Impossible.
We can only sketch.

As a young man I spent several short vacations
at the old brick cottage — the birthplace of Mark
Dunham, as well as of his son and successor,
WiRTH. The latter was then a child romping under
the oaks with a little red wagon. I grew into my
own vocation during the period of Oaklawn's
astounding creation, and I know of kindly acts and
spoken words that angels in heaven must have

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 229

entered up to Mark W. Dunham's eternal credit
long before the fateful day when his noble spirit
winged its way homeward to the skies. Of these,
however, I may not speak.

There is no mistaking the place held by the
Percheron in American commerce and agriculture.
There is no way of even estimating in millions of
dollars the additions to the national wealth directly
due to the introduction of this exceptionally sound
and serviceable horse of heavy draft. And wherever
the Percheron is known, not only in the United
States, but in France as well, there is recognition
of the fact that the man who really made the
breeding and rearing of big-type Percheron horses
an important national industry in both countries
was Mark Wentworth Dunham. He had colleagues
and competitors in the work of advising America
upon the subject of the peculiar adaptability of the
French horses to our soil, our rural highways, our
city pavements, our climate and our general agri-
cultural conditions; but he had infinitely greater
grasp of the possibilities involved to the peoples of
both nations than any of his contemporaries, and
brought to the task of educating American farmers
up to an appreciation of Percheron blood a mind
that would have made its possessor a man of high

230 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

distinction in any calling to which he might have
devoted his outstanding talents.

Up to the time Mr. Dunham became interested
in this business there had been only sporadic im-
portations of stallions of heavy draft from various
parts of northern France, and nobody in the west
had given any special consideration to the matter
of locating the particular district from which the
material best fitted for our western uses might be
most satisfactorily obtained. Many of the pioneer
stallions had been picked up near Rouen or in other
communities adjacent to the English Channel by early
American live-stock importers, who had finished buy-
ing cattle or sheep in Great Britain and ran across
to the French coast to see what might be observed,
agriculturally speaking, without making any special
journeys of exploration into the interior. There was
then, and is yet, in the north of France a good big
horse known as the Boulonnais, and undoubtedly
some of the original French horses brought to
America — and indeed also others brought over after
the era of stud books set in — were of that race;
but as buyers extended their purchases southward
through the territory which once constituted the
province of Normandy, they found good colts being
developed by farmers and dealers that had been

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 231

bought in a region of which the ancient city of
Nogent-le-Rotrou was the commercial center. And
so it transpired that the Perche proper — famed in
song and story as "the land of good horses" — was
"discovered."

Mark Dunham was a student. He took nothing
for granted. He wanted to know more about the
horses of the different regions, and while little in
the way of authentic information was available at
the time, he began, in person and by proxy, important
investigations. He was not long in convincing him-
self that the heavier types produced in the Perche
were bottomed upon blood that gave them a value
for American uses beyond any other race of drafters
in France. The district had for generations been
noted for its big, long-distance trotters and diligence
horses, capable of drawing heavy loads at a rapid
pace. Tradition has it that the activity and endur-
ance of these animals was due largely to the use
of Oriental blood, but recent investigations indicate
that at least some of these legendary Arabian an-
cestors were more or less mythical.

Gen. W. T. Walters, a wealthy resident of Balti-
more, who had spent some years in France and
was a great admirer of a good horse, had already
made up his mind that the Percheron of the lighter

232 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

sort would not only be unequaled for draft purposes
in Maryland, but that well-matched pairs were ideal
for carriage work. He imported a considerable
number of these about 1866, and his private con-
veyances, horsed by these strong-going grays, were
for some years one of the attractive features of
Baltimore streets and parkways. Prior to that date
practically all of the big horses brought from France
had been called by their American owners "Nor-
mans"; not that anybody in the land from whence
they came had ever thought of applying that title
to them, but simply because they had been found
and bought for the most part in the district adja-
cent to the Perche, called Normandy.

These "Normans" had already more than made
good in the middle west. And no finer demonstration
of the value of agricultural shows has to be recorded
in live-stock history than is afforded by the fact that
it was at an Illinois State Fair of the early seventies
that this Dupage county farmer, M. W. Dunham, saw
for the first time an imported "Norman" stallion, and
was so greatly impressed that the beginning of his
own subsequently sensational activities in this field
has to be dated from that exhibition. The "Fletcher
Norman Horse Go." was organized, with Mr. Dunham
as one of the stockholders. Old Success and French

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 233

Emperor were purchased, and from that transaction
dates the foundation of the most extraordinary
achievement based upon draft-horse breeding the
world has ever known.

Mr. Dunham was first of all a good farmer.
Efficiency was demanded in the management of his
land and crops. He knew the rewards that wait
upon thorough tillage, joined with stock- keeping.
The "Norman" half-bloods in front of plows, harrows,
cultivators and harvesters made things move. They
would be a boon inestimable to American farming.
A great future loomed before them. An illimitable
field opened. Others were plodding along in the
business of developing what his keen eye saw could
be made an important matter from a national eco-
nomic standpoint, and, incidentally, a profitable form
of enterprise. He bought his partners' interests,
utilized his bank credit and went to his life-work
with a courage and determination born of complete
faith in the certainty of success, and when he had
finished he had not only amassed a personal fortune
in a legitimate field, but the Percheron was placed
in almost every nook and corner of the northern
states, and France was the richer by reason of
the enormous American demand that still pours a
steady stream of ''Yankee" gold into the savings

234 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

banks patronized by those shrewd, home -loving,
thrifty farmers of the valley of the Huisne.

The Percheron Stud Books of France and America
had from their first inception the powerful support
of the wizard of Oaklawn. In fact, they were almost
his own children. He knew that pedigree records
must sooner or later be demanded in the develop-
ment of these horses, as they had already been
found essential in other lines, and with characteristic
enterprise and breadth of outlook he set the forces
in motion that led to the printing of the initial
volumes in Nogent and Chicago. None knew better
than he that these could be at best the mere crude
beginnings of registration. Criticism, therefore, di-
rected against errors and omissions in this pioneering
work fails to detract in the least from the soundness
and value of the idea which those early publications
reflected. There were naught but traditions and
data of a wholly unsatisfactory character to serve
as a starting point. The situation in that respect
differed little, however, from that which has con-
fronted the founders of all existing pedigree regis-
tries. Those who were charged with the thankless
task of assembling the foundation material in this
undertaking simply did the best they could with
the meager information then available. The use of

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 235

the misnomer "Norman" was first of all properly
abandoned. Mr. Dunham and his confreres had no
objection to anyone buying and bringing to America
horses from the Boulonnais or other breeding dis-
tricts; but he believed that the Perche was the home
of the best of the French local types, and concen-
trated his efforts upon establishing the truth of his
contentions. Had he known positively what has
since been established by recent researches in the
archives of the French Government and of the
Haras du Pin, he would doubtless have been even
more forceful in his claims for his favorites.

In another volume recently prepared under the
writer's direction, this and other matters of co-ordi-
nate interest have received such full attention that
they will not here be further pursued. Neither will
even an outline of Mark Dunham's own story be
here attempted. His importing and breeding opera-
tions were too extensive. His ambitious and patri-
otic attempt to make the west more independent
of the old world by the purchase and transfer to
Oaklawn of a great number of the best mares of
the Perche, the disappointments attending that
historic venture, his demonstration that the breed
must ever depend upon the progeny of farm mares
at work in the fields rather than upon large collec-

256 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

tions maintained in idleness, the marvelous effects
of the Brilliant blood, the incursion into the coach
horse field, the building of Oaklawn House, the enter-
tainment of innumerable parties of distinguished vis-
itors, the tragic death of the great architect of the
Percheron fortunes — these and collateral matters
of incidental interest cannot be drawn in detail into
this reference. He was probably the greatest sales-
man the horse-breeding interests of America have
ever known.

Mr. Dunham's death in February, 1899, at 67
years of age, in the very prime of his mature man-
hood, was a distinct calamity to his country. It
occurred as a result of blood-poisoning from infection
communicated in the course of an examination of
an infected hoof. I was alone with him for an hour
the afternoon before his death. His mind was clear;
his facing of his fate heroic. He could not lie down,
so great his suffering. Propped up in an invalid's
chair he talked not of himself, but of my own little
concerns, and I might here give an instance of his
always self-sacrificing way, when anyone in whom
he was interested was involved.

Secretary Wilson during the winter of 1898-9
had asked President McKinley to appoint me a
member of the United States Commission to the

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 237

Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. The Commis-
sioner-Generalship of the Commission had, however,
already been offered to Ferd. W. Peck, another Chi-
cagoan, and the President was finding it difficult, for
political and geographical reasons, to comply in my
case with Wilson's request. Mr. Dunham had spent
most of the season in France on business, and when
he returned found no end of work demanding his
attention at Oaklawn. He happened in "The Gazette"
office one day shortly afterward, and inquired if I
expected to receive the compliment of the exposition
appointment. I told him I did not think it possible
under the circumstances, and that I had given up all
idea of it. He was silent for a moment, and then
asked, **Do you suppose that it would do any good if
I were to go to Washington myself?" Grateful, of
course, at this manifestation of interest, I replied, **I
doubt it, and what is more, I wouldn't think of asking
you to do it, for you have only been home a few
days." His eyes twinkled — those who knew him will
know just what I mean by that — as he replied: "Well,
it's probably hopeless as it stands, isn't it?" I acqui-
esced, but added that it was not a matter of any
special importance anyhow. "Well," he rejoined, "I
am going." And he did. Three days of his own val-
uable time were given, and at his own expense he

238 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

visited the national capital in my behalf merely
because he thought it would be worth something
to me to receive this recognition.

Meantime, he was stricken, and the announce-
ment of my appointment, which followed some little
time after his death, had not yet been made.
It was of this, not of his own fast-ebbing life, he
persisted in talking, even as he was descending into
the darkness. Presently he ceased speaking, and
held out his hands for me to grasp. And then, after
a little interval, he said, "I am not afraid to go."
Our last interview had ended. He died next day,
this man with the courage of a lion and the heart
of a little child.

Your cigars, I see, have long since turned to
ashes, and thus also now dissolves our fleeting vision
of a great career back into the elusive element from
whence it sprang. The portrait, however, hangs
there, just as when we saw it first. Possibly if you
scan it closely now you may detect a glow that was
not there before.

XXVII
SOME PURELY AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS

The portraits of William S. VanNatta and Tom
Clark look lonely now in this collection because, up
to date, they are the sole representatives of one of
the greatest groups of cattle-breeders yet developed
by the live-stock industries of the United States.
The Hereford alone among all the valuable British
types of improved 4omestic animals has been im-
proved over his English form by American minds and
methods.

One exception should be made to this general
statement. The Berkshire swine have been decid-
edly bettered in this country, from an American
point of view, very largely through the genius of Hon.
N. H. Gentry of Missouri. **Nick," as his friends
love to call him, is beyond question one of the great-
est constructive forces ever identified with American
stock-breeding activities. His work with the Berk-
shire is fairly comparable with the best efforts of
the most successful breeders on either side the
Atlantic, and if those who are interested in the
American hog as a prime factor in cornbelt pros-
perity do not see to it that his portrait is placed in
the Saddle and Sirloin rooms, they will be failing
in an obvious obligation. The story of Mr. Gentry's

239

240 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

production of the big, broad-ribbed, heavy-hammed,
deep-sided, mellow-fleshed, early-maturing and finely-
finished Berkshire hog by the concentration of the
blood of old Longfellow and other porcine celebrities,
will, when written, prove to be worthy of ranking
with the best achievements of brainy men in other
realms of stock-breeding. Here again the Bakewell
scheme in the hands of a master in its application
proved the touchstone of a triumphant success.

The Hereford is playing such a stellar role in
the range cattle business in North America that it
is high time that this fact find more adequate
recognition in our embryonic national gallery. In my
judgment there could be no greater service rendered
those who are perpetuating the great Hereford-
shire grazing breed than the immediate authorization
of portraits of Ben Tomkins, John Price of Ryall,
the Hewers, Monkhouse, Rogers, Tudge, Turner,
His Grace of Coventry, Arkwright, and other Here-
ford fathers. And when we recall the wonderful
work done in our own middle west by Gulbertson,
Gudgell and Simpson, Funkhouser, Adams Earl,
Charles B. Stuart, and their contemporaries and
successors, it is self-evident that a grand Hereford
room is to be one of the inspiring features of the
Saddle and Sirloin Club of our imagination!

SOME PURELY AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS 241

I do not hesitate to advance the claim, realizing
fully its sweeping nature, that the evolution and
fixing of the modern American Hereford type,
through adroit manipulation of the imported mate-
rial, has been one of the most notable achievements
in all the annals of cattle-breeding, ancient or
modern. In their successful execution of a well-
conceived plan, in the extraordinary accomplish-
ments following the blending of the Anxiety, Gar-
field, Wilton, Sir Richard 2d and other bloods, the
Hereford cattle-breeders of the cornbelt have given
proof of a skill and capacity for original work in
type modification and development not surpassed
by any like group in the old world at any period,
and not yet equaled on this side the Atlantic, in so
far as the records of the flesh-bearing breeds of
cattle are concerned.

I have personal recollection of what the English
Hereford was in the late seventies and early eigh-
ties. I knew the Anxietys, "old Grove," Tregrehan
and "old Dick." I saw Garfield when first imported.
I saw the Wiltons in all their Royal showyard
beauty. Year in and year out I made the rounds
of the pastures and paddocks in which the English
ingredients were being mixed, and year by year I
watched the ever-rising standard of the American

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product as the beautiful show herds came forward
for public praise. The grace of Lord Wilton, the sub-
stance of old Horace, the mellowness of The Grove
3d, the quarters and loin of Anxiety 4th, fused by
the fires of an enthusiasm and zeal fairly unparal-
leled in animal breeding, gave the western world the
most uniformly excellent type of cattle adapted to a
particular purpose as yet credited to American
breeding.

True, we were indebted to Herefordshire for the
original seed, and truly we must credit something
of all this to Herefordshire men who became Amer-
icans in time to participate in this high achievement.
Likewise we cheerfully concede that even yet we
find it helpful to return now and then to the old
home for revivifying influences. It is meet, there-
fore, that the pictures of William VanNatta as a
rare type of the constructive American, and Tom
Glark, as a stamp of the English -born contingent
that so loyally supplemented American elforts with
the "white faces," should hang side by side upon
Saddle and Sirloin walls.

The development of the Glub along broad lines
will naturally call for a complete exposition of the
origin and growth of the range business. That phase
of the upbuilding of our biggest American industry

SOME PURELY AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS 243

is of course the most spectacular of all. The por-
traits of Conrad Kohrs and Murdo Mackenzie alone
now serve to remind us of this vital part of our
live-stock production. I hope that some day the
pen of a John Clay may be turned loose upon an
account of the introduction and dissemination of
the herds and flocks throughout the grassy empire
of the plains and mountain meadows, and that the
future will find a great Saddle and Sirloin hall
filled with reminders of the men who have subdued
the western wild, and made it a prolific source of
profit and supply to the American people. In so far
as the northern range is concerned Gonrad Kohrs
stands out like one of the snowy peaks of the land
he has helped to civilize. The Panhandle has known
no greater master of range cattle strategy than
Murdo Mackenzie. He is at present devoting his
mature judgment touching ranch management to a
big Brazilian syndicate, but a glad welcome awaits
his return to the Rocky Mountain states.

Fortunes have been won and lost in this western
land and cattle business. Some men had success
quickly thrust upon them only to see the glittering
prize slip as rapidly from their grasp. Others
attained the summits of eminence and wealth only
after long and trying experiences in the foothills

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and the deserts that barred their progress. Kohrs
and Mackenzie may well be taken as representative
men of the latter class.

What men of British descent have done in Aus-
tralia and New Zealand, what men of Spanish blood
have accomplished on subtropical ranges, is a part
of the history of live-stock progress of which all
may well be proud; but if we consider the original
discouragements and the steadily restrictive operation
of our national policies in respect to meat and wool
production in our own arid west, it must be said
that nowhere else have men wrested more in the
way of animal production, for the general good of a
great people, than have those who, at both personal
and financial peril, planted and still maintain the
standard of pastoral husbandry from the Rio Grande
to the Saskatchewan. Big men have been developed
in this big man's field, but the nation and the people
have dealt none too generously by them.

Speaking of things stock-wise that represent
distinctively American work of an original character,
it is never to be overlooked that the mortgage-
lifting, home-building lard hog is one of the natural
products of this fat land of the Indian corn. We
have already said that the Berkshire has been
palpably improved in the middle states from the

SOME PURELY AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS 245

point of view of adaptability to American purposes.
The Poland -China, the Duroc -Jersey, the Chester
White and the Hampshire are real American types,
and their products figure a huge total in any anal-
ysis of American sources of wealth. Great Britain
has evolved nothing in the animal kingdom more
nearly meeting a national need than these marvel-
ous swine of ours.

While it is not our purpose to exploit in this
connection all the triumphs of American stock-
breeding as contrasted with old Britain, we should
not in this relation fail to refer to our harness and
saddle horses — matchless in all the world for the
special purposes they were designed to serve — our
old-time work with the Vermont Merino sheep, and
our triumphs in the poultry world. Enough, and more
than enough, has been worked out upon American
soil to demonstrate that when necessity or impulse
spurs them on, our people can be quite as clever
and capable in the application of scientific principles
along untried paths as their brethren beyond the
seas.

This fact is here brought out to show that the
Saddle and Sirloin Club has at its very doors
a field in which recognition should be freely and
indeed lavishly extended. There can be no higher

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stimulus to the American stock-breeder of the future
than contemplation of the careers of the great
American stock-breeders of the past. Where is
there any fit collection of their portraits and suit-
able mementos of what they have created? Where
is fitting public record of their service to the
country?

XXVIII

THE LAIRD OF NETHERHALL

Since first its doors were opened the Saddle and
Sirloin Club has entertained no greater figure in the
animal-breeding world than the late Andrew Mont-
gomery of Netherhall. We are perhaps not yet far
enough removed from the field he occupied to take
the full measure of his greatness. A succeeding
generation with the right perspective will in all
human probability write his name near the very top
of the list of those who in comparatively recent
years have improved upon the work of the original
breed-builders of Great Britain. The "classy Clydes-
dale" that captivates so many showyard visitors by
his matchless grace is not the sole creation of any
one man's brain. Like the Aberdeenshire Shorthorn,
the Aberdeen -Angus, the Galloways, Ayrshires, West
Highlanders and the Black-Faced Mountain Sheep,
he is numbered among the many treasured types of
improved domestic animals given by Caledonia to the
farming world. The story of the Clyde has yet to be
written. It will match that of the other leading mod-
ern breeds, and it will be a long roll of honor that
lists the names of those who first differentiated this
Scottish type from the sturdy cart horse found south
of Berwick and Carlisle; but wherever the Clydesdale

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horse has gone during the present generation of men
— and that means wherever men of British birth live
upon the lands bounded by the seven seas — there is
the name and the work of Andrew Montgomery
already known and recognized.

In his selection of Macgregor as a yearling at
£65 and his immediate insistence that he had
acquired possession of the one best asset of the
breed at that date in Scotland, we have practically
a repetition of the case of Bates and Belvidere.
Asked by David Riddell of Blackhall, owner of
Darnley — Macgregor's sire — what he would take for
the newly-purchased colt, Andrew promptly replied,
"£1,000 and Darnley." And then began that dou-
bling in of the blood of Darnley and old Prince of
Wales that has since been little less than a reve-
lation to the Clydesdale breeding world. At about
the same time he picked Macgregor, Mr. Mont-
gomery had the discernment and good fortune to
buy for £100 a yearling filly called Moss Rose
that was destined to acquire a celebrity second to
no other draft mare known to equine records. His
contemporaries were not long now in discovering
that a new Richmond was indeed in Bosworth field,
and that all had to reckon not only with his show-
yard entries, but his judgments. Lawrence Drew

THE LAIRD OF NETHERHALL 249

of Merryton and Prince of Wales were names to
conjure with in the Valley of the Clyde prior to
Andrew Montgomery's powerful advocacy of **a thick
horse, richt at the grun." The upstanding type
with short ribs, no matter how nice in their "kits"
and hoofs, never appealed to him except as good
crossing material for the heavier-bodied Darnleys.
And Andrew, like Amos Gruickshank, had a
brother who gave him stanch and ever intelligent
support. The partnership that became a familiar
one the world over as "A. & W. Montgomery" was
formed, and the purchase of the famous Baron's
Pride, which proved the real foundation of the great-
est successes scored by the Montgomerys, is credited
by Mr. Mac Neil age, the keeper of the Scottish
Clydesdale seals, to William. Doubtless, however,
this happy selection really represented a joint judg-
ment. Together they pressed actively the Clydes-
dale claims in every direction. They succeeded in
interesting certain of the nobility and large landed
proprietors of England. They personally visited and
made sales in continental Europe, Canada and the
United States, assisting conspicuously in the pro-
curing of great geldings to be exhibited at Toronto,
Chicago and elsewhere. Horses of their production
were fitted and shown for years at all the leading

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British and North American shows, and were always
in the very first flight.

Personally a man of fine presence, a born judge
of animal form, skilled perhaps beyond all his con-
temporaries in the blending of Clydesdale types,
shrewd and diplomatic enough to have graced any
chancellery in Europe, Andrew Montgomery easily
stood at the head of his profession at the time of
his death at 64 years of age, in 1912. To him
Scotland is indebted more than to any other one
man for the great Clydesdale activity and advance
that set in during the early seventies. The study
of how the best Clydesdales have been produced
since the Montgomery era was inaugurated is one
that is at the present time interesting deeply a large
number of devoted admirers of the breed, who find
the latter-day accomplishments in this field intensely
fascinating.

XXIX

A LOVER OF THE LAND

In a preceding sketch entitled "From Sire to
Sons" attention has been drawn to a typical English
case of inherited farm properties splendidly carried
on by a succeeding generation. This following of
the son in the footsteps of the father comes as
nearly being the rule in Great Britain in all walks
of life as it is the exception in the United States.
Our notes on the career of Gapt. James N. Brown
remind us, however, that we too have some striking
instances of filial carrying out of paternal plans in
our own country. In fact there can be no finer
illustration held up to the rising generation of farm-
ers' sons than that of Gapt. Brown's son William,
whose death occurred in 1908 at the age of 69
years. His case fairly falls within the purview of
this work, not perhaps by reason of any striking
individual achievement in the realm of farming and
cattle-breeding on the part of the deceased, but
rather because he stood out in bold relief as a fine
representative of a type the Saddle and Sirloin
Glub delights to honor — a type which unfortunately
has been all too rare along the trail that began in
the flowery prairies and woodlands of the early days

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and leads up to the vortex of contemporary western
business life.

Inheriting, along with his brothers Charles and
Benjamin, a princely domain in the very heart of the
cornbelt, gifted by nature with a fine mind and sub-
jected to the usual allurements of young men of
his class in the middle west, he yet clung to the
simple life, resisting steadfastly to the end the
ceaseless calls of the city. In the noonday and in
the evening of his years the soft, cool touch of the
blue grass, the rustle of the ripening corn, the chatter
of the squirrels in the giant oaks, the highly-bred
cattle in the park, the burly bullocks grazing in
luxurious pastures, provided for him a sure and safe
defense against all the vicissitudes inevitably attend-
ing the passage of man's allotted three score years
and ten. Happy indeed the man who is permitted
to live out a long life in sweet content, honored
and respected far and near in the midst of such
prodigal pastoral wealth and beauty as surrounded
William Brown at Grove Park from the cradle to
the grave.

He might have won success, as the world meas-
ures success, in law or medicine or politics. He
might have sought, as so many others born under
similiar conditions have done, "the bubble reputation"

A LOVER OF THE LAND 263

even at the cost of forsaking the ancestral acres;
but the lure of the land, an heritage perhaps from
his soil-loving parents, saved him from what would
have been to one of his tastes a fatal error. Some
people have said he was lacking in ambition and
enterprise. Well, perhaps that was true in a way.
He did not possess that overflowing vitality and
restlessness that make a man "get up and go'*
in spite of all obstacles. To him the eternal mys-
tery of the variation of animals and plants was a
world close at hand well worth exploring. He may
have been something of a dreamer. If close com-
munion with nature in field, garden, forest or paddock
is idling, he spent hours which others might have
passed more actively, but not perhaps in the end
more profitably. He was wedded to the old home;
to his own vine and fig tree; to the wonders wrought
by the subtle alchemy of the elements; to the tran-
quil beauty of the star-lit night; to the glory of
the sunset and the dawn; to the roar of the wind
through the noble woods of Island Grove; to the
pageantry of the passing storm — a man of sentiment
as well as sense.

William Brown often bewailed the fact that corn-
state farmers did not breed more good cattle. As
high as eight hundred to one thousand head of bul-

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locks were annually required to consume the wealth
of grass produced on the estate, but it unfortunately
became impossible to buy these direct from the farm-
ers of Illinois, Iowa or Missouri. Believing, neverthe-
less, that it was the duty of those who occupied a
conspicuous position in the agricultural community
to set a proper example in this regard, pedigreed
cattle were steadily maintained in addition to the
extensive feeding operations carried on, and the herd
which had been the first to be founded in the state
continued to be a dependable source of supply for
those who appreciated the importance of good cattle
as an essential adjunct to proper soil conservation in
the middle west.

For forty years William Brown was a regular
buyer of feeding cattle in the Chicago market.
From 1870 until about 1890 the plan was to buy
three-year-old steers each autumn and graze them
for twelve months, no grain whatever being used.
It became apparent latterly, however, that it would
not pay on such high-priced land to compete with
the range on grass-fed beef, and so the plow was
put through some of the richest blue-grass sod
ever seen in the west and preparations made to
grow and feed corn. After grain-finished bullocks
began to be produced the number carried was

A LOVER OF THE LAND 255

reduced to about 400 per year. Good, well-bred
two-year-old cattle were bought in the fall and
carried in the stalkfields until spring. About March
1 they were put in pasture well matted with cured
grass, and the feeding of ear corn was commenced.
The grain was thrown out daily from the wagons
onto the grass, but never in the same place on
consecutive days. Hogs, of course, followed the
cattle. The beef thus made in the orthodox corn-
belt fashion was of prime quality, and the Grove
Park cattle were in eager request whenever they
were offered in the market.

It is perhaps unfortunate for the state and for the
farming community at large that William Brown did
not devote more of his time to public affairs. He
was too modest and unassuming to push himself for-
ward, and too fond of the clover blossoms and the
cattle to permit his friends to saddle upon him any
irksome responsibilities. A charming host, a reserved
yet genial companion, not readily drawn out, but talk-
ing easily and entertainingly, he was a man of great
natural refinement and mental grace.

In these days when men are so prone to lease
their lands to be farmed by tenants who usually leave
the soil poorer than they found it; when so many
fickle-minded folk are coming and going in the cattle-

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breeding world; when other industries are absorbing
so much of the best blood of our western land-owning
families, it may be well to pause a moment, as we
contemplate the trend from the farm to the counting-
room, to note this instance of one who throughout a
long and useful life proved that a man possessing
gentle birth, classical education and qualities fitting
him to shine almost anywhere in the busy haunts of
men, can be prosperous, contented and eminently
useful in his day and generation, even though far
removed from daily contact with those things which
so many seem to regard as essential to their hap-
piness.

XXX

FIAT LUX

We approach now another type. You will find
the pictures in the main corridor as you enter the
Club. I am not quite sure that journalists, scien-
tists, teachers, authors or even cabinet officers have
any special claims to the conspicuous recognition
here accorded them. That the breed-makers and
their disciples are entitled to first and best consid-
eration in this general scheme goes without saying.
However, as the object of it all is educational, I
suppose that active promoters and forwarders of
the cause fall legitimately within the general scope
of Saddle and Sirloin purposes. The darkness that
once dwelt upon the face of the agricultural deep
is disappearing. That the light is breaking is due
in large measure to the type of men here repre-
sented. Each of those whose portrait here appears
has helped to bear aloft the torch of knowledge
somewhere along the highways or byways of our
progress.

The first of our great collegians to stir the
country deeply upon the subject of animal feeding
along scientific lines was Dean Henry, whose por-
trait, as already recorded, was the beginning of the
Saddle and Sirloin memorial galleries. It is indeed

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diflficult to measure the far-reaching influence of
Prof. Henry's work. His writings have been for
years the subject of study and discussion in every
land. Earnestness, sincerity, honesty and a peren-
nially effervescing enthusiasm made him a tremen-
dous power in the field of higher agricultural training,
at a time when the cause had not yet felt the full
force of the popular support since accorded the
great movement which has been well reflected in the
corridor of which we speak by portraits of Profs.
Craig, Gurtiss, Garlyle, Davenport, Plumb, Waters,
Skinner, Babcock and their colleagues, presented to
the Glub through subscriptions made up by members
of the student body at the respective institutions
represented.

As a matter of fact, the state of Wisconsin has
been exceptionally prolific of men who have fairly
won the shoulder-straps of high distinction in the
service of the live stock and farming world. In the
old days George Murray of Racine, Jerome I. Gase,
George Harding, Rufus B. Kellogg, the Brockways,
H. D. McKinney, I. J. Glapp and their contemporaries
kept the fires of good breeding burning brightly, and
into the service of the people at large there came that
diamond in the rough, the Hon. Jere Rusk, first
Governor, and then Secretary of Agriculture under

FIAT LUX 259

President Ben Harrison. Then there is William D.
Hoard, editor, Governor and evangelist-extraordinary
in the world-wide realm of modern dairying. Dr.
Babcock, the great agricultural chemist of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, who gave millions of dollars to
the world when he discovered the test for butterfat,
is a late and welcome addition to this outer corri-
dor collection. His work has added immeasurably
to the prestige of applied science throughout the
farming world.

"Tama Jim" Wilson of Iowa needs no special
introduction at our hands. The three-time Secre-
tary is a native of Ayrshire, Scotland, and has had
exceptional opportunities of promoting scientific
agriculture, which he has utilized to the fullest
possible extent. Near him you will find the Hon.
John Dryden, late Minister of Agriculture of On-
tario, a man who was much more than an efficient
public official in a responsible position. He was
one of the best farmers in a district famous for its
tillage, its Shorthorns, Glydes and Shropshires —
that same part of Canada that gave the Millers
and the Davidsons to North America. His picture
may well be here preserved, and space awaits the
portraits of his countrymen, James I. Davidson and
rare old "Willie" Miller. These and other Gana-

260 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

dians played conspicuous roles during the revolution
in western cattle-breeding, discussed in the pages
devoted to the work of Senator Harris.

Dean Gurtiss of Ames has judged the draft
horses in harness at the International for so many
years, and with such universal satisfaction to the
talent, that nobody knows what would happen in
that sensational annual competition if he were to be
suddenly translated to some other sphere. Gurtiss
is one of the real ornaments of his profession. His
knowledge of the breeds is broad; his acquaintance
among breeders, feeders and dairymen nation-wide,
and his poise has carried him safely through many
a hot contention.

Poor patient plodding Graig! None was ever
better at planning scientific experimentation with live
stock. At Madison, at Ames and in Texas he left
his impress upon important animal husbandry work,
and died, a great but uncomplaining suiferer, in the
harness. As a member of the United States Tariff
Board in 1909 I had esteemed myself specially for-
tunate in engaging Graig to conduct the inquiry
into production -cost of wool upon the western
ranges; but troubles at that time were fast engulf-
ing him in their toils, and before the inquiry could
be started he was stricken cruelly, and gathered

FIAT LUX 261

to his fathers. If there was ever a self-sacrificing
moral hero it was this same brave, frail, crippled
John A. Graig.

Dean Davenport, of the University of Illinois,
the little giant of one of the hardest-fought battles
in the history of western agricultural college work,
will ever be remembered as the man who has made
the Illinois institution, over which he still presides,
one of the greatest of all existing schools of its
class. How he did it none but himself will ever really
know. Surrounded by such able, conscientious co-
workers as MuMFORD, Coffey, and a faculty of alto-
gether exceptional strength, he lives to enjoy his
richly -merited success as he plans still greater
things for Illinois.

The portraits of Dean Henry, Jere Rusk, John
Dryden and James Wilson look down upon me as
I pass and seem to say, "There is one of our
company here we would not wish you to ignore.
We knew him well, and in the old days labored often
side by side. Forget not the days of thy youth."
My father! Yes, it is true he is also here. To be
sure the artist has not done as well with this por-
trait as he did in the case of the one that hangs in
my own private office; but it serves. But what am
I to say and where am I to begin? I can only yield

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myself to the occult influences of the hour and
place, sink into that * 'comfy" corner chair, and
drift without compass or rudder into the circling
seas of introspection. Spirits of a day lang syne
are surely hovering round about. Mystic voices from
across wide waters seem to speak. The past rises
even as a dream, from which I awake in boy-land.

XXXI
THE GALL OF A DISTANT PAST

It was in the year 1868 that James Harvey
Sanders — then engaged in banking and railway
construction work designed to give adequate trans-
portation facilities to a comparatively isolated com-
munity in Keokuk county in the state of Iowa —
found himself in a position to indulge his inherited
fondness for farming and well-bred domestic animals.
Born in central Ohio from Virginia parentage, he
had not forgotten the impress made in the Sciota
Valley and in the ''Darby Plains" country in the
Buckeye State by the first stallions of heavy draft
brought into those regions from the ancient French
province of Normandy. The first cross of these big
horses upon the native mares had been so success-
ful in increasing the size and selling value of the
colts produced, as compared with the ordinary types
prevalent in those early days, that he determined
to introduce the blood into that part of the newer
west in which he had taken up his residence.

At that date there were but few horses of pure
French origin available. Old Louis Napoleon had
been brought out from Ohio into Illinois, and had
already laid the foundation for the subsequent pop-
ularity of the so-called "Norman" horse in the

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middle west. Revisiting the old home in quest of
a stallion carrying as much of the desired blood as
was obtainable, he was fortunate enough to acquire
by purchase a seven-eighths-bred horse called Victor
Hugo, sired by the famous old-time imported stallion
Count Robert, known locally in central Ohio as "the
Baker Horse," and shipped him out to Iowa. The
nearest railway station was some 30 miles distant,
but the big, good-tempered iron-gray was as active
as a cat, in fact, a prodigious "walker," and, led by
the halter along the country roads, there was no
difficulty experienced in landing him safely at the
little village county seat of Sigourney. I was a lad
of less than 10 at the time, but I have a distinct
recollection of the sensation Victor Hugo made
upon his arrival in the midst of a farming com-
munity where a 1,600-pound drafter was an absolute
revelation. Following the first introduction of
French horses into Iowa by A. W. Gook of Charles
City a few years previous, this was, so far as I can
ascertain, the second "importation" of this type into
the state. It may be of interest to Percheron
breeders to add that this pioneer horse was out of
a mare by "Old Bill," also called the "Valley Horse,"
and his grandam was a mare by old Louis Napoleon.
Victor Hugo at once became the pet and pride,

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 265

not only of the family, but of the entire country-
side. I have since that time had the pleasure of
riding and driving many a good horse. I have ex-
perienced since then divers and sundry "thrills"
incident to connection with various events of one
kind or another; but if I were to live to be a hun-
dred years old I do not imagine that I could ever
experience again anything approaching the sense of
supreme and of course exaggerated importance I
used to feel when as a small boy I was set astride
the broad bare back of this great horse, the reins
of his fine bridle — bedecked at brow-band with red
rosettes — placed in my hands, and started around
the village streets or public highways. He was as
gentle as a dog, and only once, on the occasion of
a county fair, was I ever unhorsed as a result of
my fondness for poor old Victor Hugo. I say "poor,"
because after several successful years, in the course
of which he was patronized to the limit by the
farmers of Keokuk and adjoining counties, he bled
to death as a result of the rupture of a blood
vessel in his head or nostril. I know I wept for
days and would not be comforted.

Then came the great imported horse Dieppe,
and also Diligence, both bought from the Dillons
of Bloomington, the former at $3,000 and the latter

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at $2,500; the former probably one of the greatest
sires of draft colts that ever crossed the Atlantic.
He had no imported mares, but he revolutionized
the farm horse stock of that part of Iowa in the
early seventies, and was the direct cause of the
subsequent embarkation into the draft-horse breed-
ing and importing trade on a liberal scale by the
Messrs. Singmaster.

Meantime, James H. Sanders had noted the vast
extension of good breeding that began sweeping
over the Mississippi Valley states during the years
following the close of the Civil War, and looked
about for some means of keeping himself informed
as to what was going on in that important branch
of western agricultural development. At the State
Fair he saw a few Shorthorns and certain other
types of well-bred cattle, horses, sheep and swine.
Still all this was merely incidental. He had been
successful in business, and the major part of his
time was still employed in buying right-of-way
and materials for a railway to connect Cedar Rapids
and Ottumwa. He had an interest in the local
printing office, and as a result of his reading of
Darwin's, Huxley's, Tyndall's, Spencer's and other
scientific works determined to found and edit with his
own hand a periodical to be devoted to the interest

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 267

of blood-stock breeding. The little monthly "West-
ern Stock Journal" thus came into being, printed
upon a hand-power press, and each individual copy
stitched with an ordinary thread and needle by the
members of his own household, of which I was a
junior with my first pair of long trousers. I couldn't
stitch as many copies in an hour as my seniors, but
I loved the little paper, and with my awkward fin-
gers did what I could to help get the precious little
messenger ready for distribution. It does not look
particularly imposing as I gaze upon those initial
issues now after the lapse of more than forty years,
but it "took" instantaneously in Iowa and neighbor-
ing states, because it satisfied a genuine demand for
reading matter of that description. It was the first
purely live-stock periodical ever issued in the world,
and never was enterprise launched from more dis-
interested or more essentially altruistic motives.

The first purebred bull introduced into Keokuk
county agriculture was a Shorthorn bought by my
father from W. J. Neeley, an old-time breeder at
Ottawa, 111., for account of T. A. Morgan. I shall
never forget the first impression made by this
straight-lined, level-quartered red yearling as I first
saw him being led from the unloading chute down
the roadway leading out to Mr. Morgan's place.

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When the American Indians first saw a white man
their wonder must have been somewhat similar to
my own at seeing my first beast of a highly improved
character belonging to the bovine species. Nothing
like this had ever before walked on earth — in my
judgment. The bull was as great a creation of his
kind as was Victor Hugo, but he did not belong to
us — much to my disappointment — and I went back
to our own cowyard to milk my quota of the native
"fill-pails" assembled every evening, wondering how
such beautiful animals as this proud young Short-
horn ever happened. I think now that this was
clearly the beginning of an admiration for fine cattle
that in after years led me into a lot of hard work,
in fact, into a vocation.

Having now started his community squarely
upon the road to draft horse and cattle improve-
ment, and having through the "Western Stock
Journal" called the entire west to arms in the cause
of better breeding, my father went after the lanky,
long-snouted swine of that period. This was in the
days when David M. Magie was building so wisely
at Oxford, O., the foundations of the Poland-
China breed. A. G. Moore, his great antagonist of
Canton, III, was also producing black-and-white
spotted hogs that were having a wide vogue among

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 269

the farmers of Illinois and Iowa. Father, with his
natural leaning towards Buckeye State productions,
sent to headquarters for a good boar, and Magie
shipped out a hog that I can still see as plainly as
though it were but yesterday he was uncrated —
long, deep, heavy-boned, great *'lop" ears and some
sandy spots along with the black-and-white. The
black predomijiated, but the white spots were far
more extensive than would have been accepted in
Poland-China circles a few years later. This boar
proved a good producer, and all of the half-blood
pigs were quickly bought up by the neighboring
farmers for breeding purposes. Later on a pair of
Essex were bought, but they lacked the size de-
manded by the feeders of that district, and the
blood never became popular. An English type of
whites, known then, and yet where bred, as
Cheshires, next engaged attention, and with these
was scored one of the most marked successes of
that period. They had finish, weight and quality,
and the fine fat litters captivated everybody on
sight. These "chubby" pink-skinned pigs were the
one special joy of my own youthful heart. The truth
is I have never seen anything quite so attractive
since. What a great thing indeed it is to be a live,
healthy boy with all the world yet a terra incognito,

270 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

with new marvels revealing themselves at every bend
in the river! And how my brother and I pampered
the chosen specimens selected for the county fair !
In clean pens, away from the midsummer heat, they
were stuffed several times a day almost to the
bursting point with cooked corn-meal "mush," boiled
potatoes and milk, and, to take the place of grazing,
the choicest weeds that pigs' palates ever knew
were gathered in the garden and supplied in great
profusion for their delectation. Grow ? Fatten ?
Such porcine prodigies had surely not been seen
before in that community ! And one great day, one
summer when our pig crop was uncommonly excel-
lent, it was decided to show at the State Fair at
Cedar Rapids, and "we boys" were to be taken
along ! Oh joy ! Oh rapture unconfined ! For weeks
we slept but little, and our waking dreams were all
of the grand experience ahead. I think I wore out
two or three of the premium lists that August
devouring them and all their contents daily. I knew
the list of officers and directors "by heart." I knew
who was to be grand marshal, although I did not
know exactly what duties that functionary had to
discharge. Had I known at the time that he was
to be a kingly figure on a noble charger wearing a
crimson sash, I should have died I fear of sheer

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 271

excitement. I knew all the rules and regulations,
and the money prizes in sight seemed to me enor-
mous. You can rest assured, dear reader, that
those pigs did not suffer for lack of food during
those wonderful weeks of preparation. Scrubbed?
Well, I should be almost ashamed to tell you how
many times a week we climbed into those pens
armed with brushes and hot "suds"! We ran a
regular "beauty parlor" for our coming champions.
And at last — it seemed to us the day would never
come — the building of the shipping crates began,
and then we knew that we were really going soon.
Our county was still without a railroad. Progress
from the south was slow, and delays and disappoint-
ments interminable supervened to impede the com-
pletion of the line in which the paternal fortune
had been invested. So when this Cedar Rapids
expedition was arranged it called for a thirty-mile
haul to the town of Washington on the Rock
Island's Kansas City line. Old Dieppe, the imported
"Norman," was to go. Also two or three alleged
trotters that had a trainer and sulkies and harnesses
and boots and blankets and bandages galore, and
could go just fast enough to lose every race in
which they were ever started. We all knew that
this outfit was unprofitable; but father loved a good

272 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

road team and harness racing, and indulged his
fondness for the sport at considerable cost. He
was entirely serious and altogether practical in his
efforts with the drafters, the Shorthorns and the
pigs, but warned everybody against the allurements
of the turf. Often I have heard him say, "If you
will go and buy a cow that has formed the habit
of sucking herself, you will have a piece of property
of about the same value as one of these trotters."
The great day dawned at last. The pigs had
all been crated the evening before, and at sunrise
the caravan started — one great wagon load of
swine, another filled with feed, camp equipment and
luggage of various kinds. The trotters drew the
high-wheeled ''sulkies" and Dieppe was led. It was
a merry party that took the road that morning, I
assure you, and the evening found us putting up
for the night at a wayside tavern a few miles from
the town of Washington. Early the next morning
we drove to the railway depot, and loaded the
whole outfit into a Rock Island box car. I have
since crossed the Atlantic and our continent many
times, but never was there such a great adventure
as this railway journey of the backwoods country
boy of eleven to the great city of Cedar Rapids and
the Iowa State Fair of 18^1. Father took a room

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 273

downtown at a "swell" hotel, and gave me my
choice of making headquarters there with him or
stopping with "the boys" out on the fair grounds.
I of course elected to stay with "the big show."
An extra stall was rented in the horse barns,
and an extra pen in the swine department. These
were well bedded down with nice clean straw, and
a bountiful stock of blankets served to convert
them straightway into sleeping quarters fit for
kings. I stayed with those pet pigs. A primitive
cooking outfit had been taken, and never were
there such banquets as were served that week. At
night we would sit around the camp fire and specu-
late on the morrow's doings. It was somewhat dis-
concerting, to be sure, to find that other folks had
good pigs also. In fact, we began to worry mightily
about what would happen when we had to meet in
the sweepstakes rings certain perfect Poland-Chinas
that looked as if they too had not lacked prepara-
tion. But we scrubbed our entries until they were
simply immaculate, curled their hair and set them
before the judges in such perfect condition that
most of the class prizes and a few championships
finally came our way, greatly to our relief and infi-
nite satisfaction. The trotters, needless to add, did
not give such a good account of themselves.

274 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Elliott & Kent of Des Moines had a herd of
Bates and BATES-topped Shorthorns on exhibition,
all red as cherries and nicely fitted, and I found
myself wandering around to their stalls every day
absolutely lost in admiration. P. R. McMillan &
Son of Washington were showing Poland-Chinas.
The son was a lad named Horace, destined in his
mature years to lead the Percheron horsemen of
the United States out of the mazes of a Stud
Book registration tangle such as no other important
breed ever had to face in the history of American
stock breeding. They had been as successful with
their pigs as we had been with ours. The Illinois
State Fair was to be held on the following week at
Peoria, and the feelings of both Horace and myself
can better be imagined than described when it was
announced that both herds were to be shipped and
shown there, and we were to be allowed to go!
Father and McMillan pere went on ahead to arrange
the entries and the necessary accommodations, and
we were to go by freight with the live stock. No
trip around the world ever yielded any human beings
greater excitements than did this expedition to these
two Iowa youngsters. I was not just sure that the
great steel bridge over the Mississippi at Burlington
was going to stand up under the strain of our

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 276

heavily-laden cars, but it did, and presently we
were in Peoria. All was bustle and confusion.
Adam Rankin of Monmouth was unloading a show
herd of Berkshires when we arrived at the fair
ground siding, and a lot of his pigs were uncrated
on the platform to be driven across to the swine
department by way of exercise. They got it. So
did our entire party. Overjoyed, I suppose, at their
unexpected liberty, with heads and tails up, they
broke away from all control, and steeple-chased all
over the fair grounds with our whole company in
hot pursuit. That was my first real demonstration
of Berkshire activity, cunning and real agility.
Needless to say it took the ringleaders in this
escapade three or four days to recover from their
"spree," much to their owner's disgust.

Such was my father's entrance into showyard
campaigning. Such was my own first taste of life
in the great world that had been discovered outside
of Keokuk county. Several happy and prosperous
years followed, so far as the stock-keeping ventures
were concerned; but the financial panic of '75
wrecked the St. Louis and Cedar Rapids railway
corporation, and the savings of twenty years went
by the board. Meantime, George W. Rust and John
P. Reynolds of Chicago, noting the possibilities

276 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

opened up by the field partially covered by the
"Western Stock Journal," had established a monthly
magazine called "The National Live Stock Journal,"
and now made overtures looking toward a consoli-
dation of the two publications. The deal was con-
summated, and James H. Sanders agreed to become
an associate editor of the Chicago periodical. At
first he prepared his copy at home and mailed it in
to the head office. He early pressed me into such
altogether minor and clerical service as I was able
to render in the matter of assisting with the collec-
tion of the news of the business and the handling
of his proofs.

Those were indeed trying days for one who had
until now been uniformly successful in other fields;
but the big horses earned enough to provide a re-
spectable support for a considerable family. A famous
Clydesdale show horse, Donald Dinnie, had been
bought from George Murray of Racine for $5,000,
and was added to the Percheron stud, and a liberal
patronage was accorded. Those were the days of
$20, $25 and $30 fees, and the aggregate bookings
of all the stallions totaled a very tidy sum. But
hard times now pressed heavily. Debts arising from
the railway crash hung like a nightmare with no
relief from their crushing weight in sight. George

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 277

Wilkes,, the brilliant editor and proprietor of the
great New York sporting weekly of that era, had
noticed father's editorial work, and engaged him to
attend and report the Grand Circuit races, begin-
ning at Cleveland and running for some weeks down
through Buffalo, Rochester, Utica and other eastern
cities. Those v/ere the halcyon days of harness-
horse racing in America. Fortunes were up in
purses, the attendance was enormous, the sport
royal, and an excitement and enthusiasm which can
now scarce be realized followed the great contests
of speed and endurance as the campaign progressed
to its apotheosis. I have heard it said that the
accounts of these memorable trotting meetings pub-
lished from week to week as Doble and Mace and
Marvin and other celebrated drivers fought their
various battles, have not to this day been sur-
passed. As examples of descriptive writing, they
were so generally appreciated that Mr. Wilkes im-
mediately offered the western writer the turf
editorship of the "Spirit of the Times." The prop-
osition was accepted, the old home in Iowa given
up, the live stock sold, and removal to New York
followed. While the salary was a liberal one, and the
work congenial enough, the idea of selling all his
time to someone else did not appeal specially to a

278 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

man who had been his own master throughout many
successful years, so that after the lapse of some
twelve months, negotiations were undertaken which
resulted in his acquiring an interest in the "National
Live Stock Journal," and assuming at the same time
its managing editorship.

Thus was James H. Sanders embarked upon the
work which ever after claimed his undivided atten-
tion. It was a hard struggle at first. The income
failed to meet the Chicago cost of living, and at 1 6
years of age a desk was set aside for me, in order
that I might begin an apprenticeship and incident-
ally bring home $10 every Saturday night. The
most active breeding interests at that date, 18Z6,
were those which centered in Shorthorn cattle and
trotting-bred horses. Father had the latter well in
hand, and set me the task of "checking" the proofs
of the many herd and sale catalogues being printed
at the "Journal" ofRce for the leading Shorthorn
breeders of the west. This was not only a "demi-
nition grind," on account of its particularly tedious
character, but called for most scrupulous and pains-
taking care, in order to avoid errors in names or
registration numbers. Those were the days of
"fashionable" and "unfashionable" pedigrees. It made
all the difference in the world, for example, in the

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 279

selling value of an animal if one of the "crosses'*
in the pedigree read "Duke of Airdrie 2743" or
"Duke of Airdrie (12750)." The one was taboo,
the other a name to be paraded with pride. Each
and every name and number in the body of the
pedigrees as well as in all the footnotes had to be
carefully verified by reference to the English or
American Herd Books before we put the "forms"
to press. The whole Shorthorn world had gone
stark mad on the subject of pedigrees and fash-
ion. No one who had any special pride in his
herd thought his equipment complete until he had
an elaborately worked -out catalogue compiled and
printed at the "National Live Stock Journal" office.
George Rust was their biographer and historian.
At first I could not, of course, be trusted to pre-
pare any "copy" for these important publications.
I could read proofs and "check" numbers, though,
until I was blue in the face. And so after many
weary months I perforce acquired a familiarity with
the pedigree records and the breeding of the differ-
ent herds that was subsequently to be turned to
some account. This work was only for the vaca-
tion months, however. During the winter I went to
school: first in Chicago, then — for one year only —
at Cornell University, and later taking a LL.B.

280 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

degree at the Union College of Law in the class of
1881, of which our present distinguished Chicago
congressman, Hon. James R. Mann, was a member.
I was to be a lawyer or a newspaper man — one or
the other; I did not know which. I preferred the
attractions of the law at that time, and pursued
its study accordingly; but fate ordered my course
otherwise. All through my law course I worked
"on the side" on the Shorthorn catalogues, and as
an assistant to the editor of the ''Journal," and one
day something happened.

It was the custom of the office to publish in
the paper an editorial review of each catalogue
prepared. These were, of course, written by the
editors; but it so happened that when one which
I had just finished compiling for the late Hon.
William M. Smith of Lexington, 111., was due to be
reviewed, no editor was on hand to do the work.
The paper was about to go to press, and what was
to be done about it? The business manager came
to me and asked if I thought I could do it. I was
naturally gratified, as well as very much surprised,
that anyone should think me qualified to discuss
such delicate questions as those touching the breed-
ing of the Shorthorns of that period. I would try.
The manager, Stephen G. Brabrook, knew nothing

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 281

whatever himself about such things, but he had a
very keen realization of the necessity of having the
work bomb-proof. The "Journal" was the great
authority by this time, and its editorial utterances
must be carefully weighed before being expressed.
I am quite sure that he at first looked upon the
proposal that I tackle this job as more or less of a
joke. And yet he evidently thought it possible that
in a pinch I might get out something that it would
do to print. So a few days later I handed in my
maiden effort. I was sure enough of my facts. I
had not slaved for several years over those inter-
minable rows of herd books all for nothing. I had
pedigrees drilled into my head so mercilessly that
to this day, after nearly forty years, the numbers
of all the more important breeding bulls from the
time of Hubback down to 14th Duke of Thorne-
dale come into my mind instantly at the mere
mention of the animal's name; and in most instances
I could fill in if required, without consulting the
books, both the English and American numbers in
cases where bulls were recorded on both sides the
water. This is mentioned, not as anything specially
remarkable, but merely by way of emphasizing the
thoroughness of the "grinding" process through
which I passed in this work from 1876 to 1880.

282 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

"The review reads all well enough," said Mr.
Brabrook, "but are you sure you have not made
any 'breaks'?" I had courage enough to assure him
that I believed it was 0. K., and so with some little
trepidation the business manager in the absence of
the editors put the stuff in type, and slipped it into
the last form going to press. As for myself, I was
frightened half out of my wits. There would be
the devil to pay, sure enough, if I had "fallen down."
The paper appeared, and a few days later in walked
"Uncle Billy" Smith himself. My desk was in the
business office, and when the dear old man took a
chair and said, with mock severity, "Brabrook, who
wrote that matter about my cattle?" I knew the
end had come. I felt myself growing smaller and
smaller every moment, and would have been truly
thankful if the floor had mercifully opened and let
me through where no one could witness my impend-
ing humiliation and Brabrook's wrath. The latter
was quite as sure as I myself that mortal offense
had been committed through his and my own stu-
pidity, and a good customer's further business lost
forever. So he turned red and then white, and
finally stammered, in tones absolutely apologetic in
their quality: "Well, I believe that in the absence
of our regular editors it was written by one of the

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 283

young men here in the office." And then we both
waited for the bolt to strike. It came swiftly
enough, and when it was delivered one man's
career in this world was settled.

William M. Smith was one of the big men of
his day in the state of Illinois, prominent in politi-
cal and financial circles, an inveterate joker and
retailer of good stories, beloved by everybody. His
laugh was worth going blocks to hear, so hearty and
so brimming with good nature. I suppose that the
comment he made that morning in the office of the
"National Live Stock Journal" in the old Honore
Block — pulled down years ago to make room for
the beautiful Marquette Building on the corner of
Adams and Dearborn Streets — should perhaps not
here be put on record. It meant nothing much at
the time it was uttered to anybody but a poor boy,
wavering as to what he should do with himself. It
is of no consequence now to anybody, and yet it
may serve to demonstrate anew the power of an
appreciative word, spoken at a psychological moment.
It may possibly lead someone else to turn on the
inexpensive current of a kindly encouragement at
some crucial period in some other boy's life. Such
situations, as a matter of fact, are not infrequent
in the lives of most of us as we journey through

284 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

this vale of smiles and tears. This is what hap-
pened :

"Mr. Brabrook, who is the young nnan who
did it?"

"There he is over there, up to his ears in the
Herd Books."

"Well, I simply want to say that this review of
my catalogue is the best one you have ever printed."

That was all. But it was enough. When he
had gone the ofRce manager came over to where
I sat, took me by the hand, congratulated ourselves
upon the wholly unanticipated denouement of our
little incursion into the editorial field, went to the
safe, opened a cash drawer — none too well lined —
took out a new ten-dollar bank note and brought
it to me as extra money earned. And, believe me,
any who may have had patience enough to follow
so personal a narrative thus far, that "X" looked
bigger to me that day than any money I have yet
seen in my business experiences up to date. I can
assure you that there was nothing at all wonderful
about the article itself, but, nevertheless, there-
after all the catalogue reveiws were given me to do,
and as each appeared in turn a "ten" was added to
my little monthly wage. And that is how one Ameri-
can came to take up and follow his father's calling.

THE CALL OF A DISTANT PAST 286

My old Latin school reader contained a lot of
Aesop's fables, the concluding paragraph of each
narration beginning with the expression, "hie fabula
docet." And so, with this little leaf from the book
of my own experience, the moral is plain: sooner or
later opportunity comes to us all — suddenly perhaps,
or quite by chance, and usually with no time to
prepare one's self to meet the test. And when the
hour arrives, then truly what has up to that mo-
ment seemed a dull and aimless round of drudgery
becomes the solid bridge upon which one has the
chance to cross at once to better things. Despise
not, therefore, the days of dry detail, the hours of
unconscious preparation. The responsible heads will
surely be away sometime when something happens,
and then you get your day in court.

XXXII

SOME STEPS IN LIVE-STOCK JOURNALISM

The years just prior to 1880 witnessed rapid
progress in the distribution of good blood throughout
the central states. The Herefords were winning
their way throughout the corn country, and becom-
ing the acknowledged regenerators of the range.
Shorthorns had the call with the "fanciers," and
were changing hands at high prices. Holstein-
Friesians, Jerseys, Guernseys and Brown Swiss
cattle were entering the dairy districts, and draft
horses of the various French and British types
were becoming popular. There was activity in all
importing and breeding lines, and the "National
Live Stock Journal" office was a sort of clearing-
house for the reception and dissemination of news
and ideas. Various organizations were formed to
promote public interest. Pedigree registry associa-
tions were projected, and in almost every case the
advice and co-operation of J. H. Sanders was
invited and secured. He participated actively in
the formation of various societies, and was espe-
cially prominent in the draft-horse breeding field.
When the matter of establishing a stud book for
the misnamed " Norman " horse was under con-
sideration, he was induced to undertake the prep-

286

SOME STEPS IN LIVE-STOCK JOURNALISM 287

aration of the initial volume. He had not delved
very deep, however, in this interesting field before
he learned that the heart of French draft-horse
production, aside from the Boulonnais district, was
the Perche, and at once pointed out the absurdity
of the word "Norman" in connection with the
French draft types, changing the title of the pro-
posed Stud book to **Percheron-Norman," retaining
the latter word only as a tub to the whale of
American usage. Subsequently this meaningless
hyphenated compromise was abandoned entirely, and
the Percheron Stud Book of America was builded
from the crude foundations thus laid in the late
seventies.

Mr. Sanders was ever a devotee of the turf,
and was, during this same period, President of the
Chicago Jockey and Trotting Club, which owned
and operated a well-appointed course upon ground
just west of the southern extension of Garfield
Park, Chicago. He was also elected President of
the Chicago Fair Association, which held great
live-stock shows on this property in 1880 and
1881. While all this was going on the business of
the "National Live Stock Journal" had been growing
rapidly. Its patronage came very largely from the
editor's personal friends and fellow-workers in the

288 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

realm of live-stock improvement, and in the fall of
1881, as he had been only a minority stockholder,
he decided to engage in the publication of a weekly
to be under his own ownership, devoted to these
same interests, and sever his former connection.
The Chicago Fair of that year rivaled in every
particular any state fair ever held in Illinois up to
that date. I had just been admitted to the bar in
Chicago, and was preparing to go west in the fall of
that year to grow up with Colorado; but it seems
that "the boss" had other plans, which were
shortly to be revealed. He resigned his position
as editor of "The National" during the summer
months, and devoted all his energies to the show
scheduled to be held in September. It had been
impossible all these years, after providing for his
family and the education of his children, to save
money out of his editorial salary, and now even
that was voluntarily relinquished! But he took the
chance. I spent my vacation months working as a
clerk in the Fair Association's office. After the
show was over I had some $85 of my wages still
in my pocket, and it so eventuated that this
slender fund was destined to help "start some-
thing." After conferences with friends during the
fair, he had decided to begin late in the fall the

SOME STEPS IN LIVE-STOCK JOURNALISM 289

publication of "The Breeder's Gazette." One lead-
ing breeder declared promptly that he would
advance a few thousand dollars when the time
came, with the understanding that the debt would
be liquidated by advertising space in the new paper.
Another promised $500 upon the same basis; in
fact, encouragement was met on every hand. The
general traveling agent of the old monthly, Henry
F. Eastman, had also expressed in the meantime
a desire to cast in his fortunes with the new paper.
A little prospectus was prepared, with a schedule
of proposed advertising rates, and it was planned
to put the whole venture to a test by sending
Eastman to the "great St. Louis Fair" with this
formal announcement, and if he succeeded in mak-
ing tentative advertising contracts sufficient to
serve as a basis of credit, then cash would be
borrowed to buy the necessary type and office
furnishings to set "The Gazette" up in business.
It was at this stage of the proceedings that my
little "eighty-five" came into requisition. It so
happened that at this particular juncture there was
no money in sight to pay Eastman's expenses.
Happily my own little savings were available, and
within a week he was back with several thousand
dollars' worth of perfectly good contracts. The

290 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

venture was evidently to be a success from the very
first. There was no longer doubt upon that point.
The founder then asked me to "call off" my west-
ern plans, and to stick to the ship. I assented
upon one condition, to wit: that when "The
Gazette " was once well upon its legs I should be
allowed to pull out and go on my way to some
fancied goal in the realm of jurisprudence. And so
the co-partnership of J. H. Sanders & Go. was
formed. The actual cash required for the first
lease in the old Merchant's Building on the north-
west corner of La Salle and Washington Streets,
and for the purchase of a modest equipment, was
advanced by the late Jerome I. Gase of Racine,
who took a chattel mortgage on the concern as
security for the loan. Mr. Gase was a millionaire
manufacturer of agricultural implements, a patron
of the turf and a warm friend of my father's.
Thus was the infant *' Gazette " first financed.

There was no question of father's ability to
command the patronage of the stockmen of the
country generally; but could we attract specially
to our support the cattle business in competition
with the older paper? That was the crux of the
situation, and again those grinding years, to which
allusion has already been made, began once more to

SOME STEPS IN LIVE-STOCK JOURNALISM 291

bear a little fruit. There was one, and only one,
way of getting the attention of the great powers in
western cattle-breeding at that period. In some
way **The Gazette" office must be made a neces-
sary source of information. Our equipment for
answering pedigree questions and compiling herd
and sale catalogues must be made superior to any
other available. But how was this to be accom-
plished? I thought I knew. When Georce W. Rust
was forced by failing health to sell out of the
"National Live Stock Journal" and remove to
Colorado, he had taken with him a rare, and to us
at this juncture, infinitely valuable collection of
books, historic catalogues, manuscripts and docu-
ments of various kinds throwing a flood of light on
cattle-breeding operations in the United States
from the earliest periods. Would he sell the col-
lection, and if so, would it be within our reach
with our limited means? He was living quietly at
Boulder. In response to a letter he expressed a
willingness to sell, and in twenty-four hours I was
on a train bound for Denver. This was in Novem-
ber. The first "Gazette" was not to appear until
Dec. 1. I had not been among those precious
records fifteen minutes before I felt certain that
with that mass of original information at our dis-

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posal we could make a cattle paper of "The
Breeder's Gazette" that would compel recognition
in influential circles. It was a gold mine. The
price was $1,600 cash. That staggered me a
little; but I posted back to Chicago and recom-
mended the purchase, even if we had to curtail
expenditures in other directions. The deal was
closed by wire, the draft forwarded and the
material shipped. Hence the announcement appear-
ing in the very first issue of "The Gazette" to the
eifect that the Rust collection was to be a part of
our library, and that cattle matters in the new
paper would be in my special charge. Before the
winter had passed the paper was upon a paying
basis.

A little later J. H. Sanders was named by the
President of the United States as one of a com-
mission authorized by Congress to locate lands
adjacent to certain Atlantic seaboard cities for the
establishment of quarantine stations for the deten-
tion of cattle then being imported in large numbers
from England, Scotland, the Netherlands and the
Channel Islands. Prof. James Law of Cornell Uni-
versity and the Secretary of the Treasury were the
other members. This served to bring 'The Gazette"
into still closer relationship with its patrons. In

SOME STEPS IN LIVE-STOCK JOURNALISM 293

1883 Mr. Sanders went abroad to study Percheron
horse-breeding in France, assisting in the founding
of the Stud Book for the race in its native land.
He also held a special commission from the Secre-
tary of Agriculture to investigate and report upon
certain conditions surrounding our export trade in
live cattle and meats with Europe. During his
absence the writer hereof found himself for the first
time charged with the entire responsibility of edit-
ing and publishing the weekly issues of "The
Gazette." I was then 23 years of age, and my
reward for that summer's work was a gold watch,
carrying inside the case an inscription which I value
at the present moment quite as much as anything I
possess. By this time the paper's patronage was so
v/ell established that I could have then carried out
m.y original plan of engaging in the practice of law,
but in the face of the situation then existing it
seemed folly to relinquish a work with which I had
now become closely identified; and so here I am,
after a lapse of more than thirty years, still shoving
a pencil in the same old service, and with no
regrets.

The work of J. H. Sanders as author and editor
has long since been concluded. It is a part of the
history of the development of our American agri-

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culture. There may have been others in his day
whose influence was farther-reaching in the matter
of broadening and strengthening our live-stock
industries — more stimulating in the matter of caus-
ing two good animals to be grown where but one
or none had been previously produced. It is perhaps
not for me to undertake to enter up any verdict
upon his long and arduous labors, often in the
teeth of circumstances most emphatically adverse,
and I do not, therefore, assume to do more than
submit the foregoing outline of how he came to
engage originally in stock-breeding; how he became
the founder of live-stock journalism, and how,
incidentally, this sequence of events set me upon
my own little journey.

XXXIII

WHERE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
MEET

In all these ramblings up and down the country-
side, at home and in foreign fields as well, we have
merely been traversing the stepping-stones that
lead at last to the practical business of utilizing in
a big commercial way the output of myriad pastures
and yards in the supplying of the world's necessities.
To the men whose accomplishments are commem-
orated by the Stock Yard Inn and the Saddle and
Sirloin gallery — to the men who annually make the
International Exposition — we are indebted for the
seed that bears its never-failing harvest in the form
of thousands of heavily - freighted trains annually
unloaded in our great central markets. To the men
who receive and find an outlet for all this product
of farm and range, we are indebted for the facilities
without which the nation's biggest industry could
never have attained its present gigantic proportions.

The library of the Saddle and Sirloin Club,
cornering, as it does, upon Dexter Park and Ex-
change Avenues, overlooks scenes that serve to
remind us that we are in the immediate vicinity of
the Yards — a fact that recalls us from our wander-
ings among the producers far afield, and brings us

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at once in touch with the present. We have left
the world of Charles Colling, Hugh Watson and
Ben Tomkins and enter a domain in which such
men as J. Ogden Armour, James J. Hill, Louis and
Edward F. Swift and Tom Wilson of Morris & Co.
are towering figures.

The largest body of productive soil in all this
world is that which would fall within the circum-
ference of a circle, say 1,000 miles in diameter,
the approximate center of which might be the
campus of the University of Illinois. I presume
that one may safely say that in respect to the
number of comfortable homes, distribution of prop-
erty, high average intelligence of the people and
the independent character of its citizenship, history
has no record of conditions at all comparable,
extent of territory considered, with those existing
today throughout the vast region that would be
encompassed within a radius of about 500 miles
measured from Dean Davenport's office. But
harvests however bountiful, herds and flocks however
countless, surplus soil products however abundant,
merely cumber the earth as waste material until
touched by the magic wand of someone able and
willing to buy. In a land, therefore, like ours,
where the very cornerstone of all prosperity lies in

WHERE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MEET 297

an adequate demand for the products of the farm,
one should not underestimate the influence upon
our agriculture of those to whose breadth of vision,
to whose master minds, to whose powerful person-
alities, to whose untiring industry and daring enter-
prise, we are so largely indebted for the broad
outlets that have made the central west the seat
of the most opulent agriculture the world has ever
known.

At the very base of the pyramid of our prosper-
ity is blue grass. No sooner had the plowshares
of the pioneers pierced the bosom of our western
prairies, turning under the wild grasses and the
flowers of a virgin world, than this sturdy invader
and its kindred crept slowly but surely from beyond
the Ohio into every nook and corner of the newly-
settled west, supplying the first green herbage of
the spring, resting throughout the torrid summer
months, only to rise into luxuriant profusion again
with the autumn rains, supplying needed provender
up to the very latest locking of the land in the
grip of the northern winter. Permanent, persistent,
perennial, the enduring basis of our pastoral wealth
still lies securely hidden in its roots.

And with the blue grass we have that marvel
of all marvels, the Indian corn! Outside the limits

298 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

of Argentina, there is no great area of cornland in
all the world save our own. There has been no
one product of either farm, mine or factory devel-
oped by any other nation that compares in value
and volume with the mountains of maize piled up,
even in comparatively unfavorable years, by our great
sisterhood of western states. Texas heaped upon
Oklahoma! Their stores piled on top of Kansas' and
Nebraska's! South Dakota and Minnesota swelling
the huge yields of Iowa and Missouri! The states
east of the Mississippi River lifting the harvest
up to Himalayan heights! Tennessee joined with
Kentucky, Ohio with Indiana, and Michigan with
Wisconsin, completing the endless chain of this
unparalleled production! In the center of it all, the
state of Illinois! Within the boundaries of Illinois,
imperial Chicago! At the bottom of the prosperity
of that metropolis, the interests that make the
Union Stock Yards; and its heart, its very core,
"Packingtown!"

In the days of old the breed-makers with whom
we have been visiting sold their fatted bullocks on
the streets of their local market towns to some
village Swift. Later on the beasts were driven to
some central fair, where buyers whose require-
ments were on a larger scale came to barter for

WHERE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MEET 299

the big old-fashioned steers. And when the
"Rocket" — the primal locomotive that stands at
Darlington, the ancient Shorthorn capital — and its
successors came along, then little vans were
requisitioned, and the fat stock sent away by rail,
maybe as far as London. So in our own country.
The business of cattle-feeding, originating in the
south branch of the Potomac, drifted over the Blue
Ridge into the Ohio Valley, and the men who first
used corn and blue grass on an extensive scale in
the making of beef as a commercial proposition
drove their herds over the mountains to find a mar-
ket in the seaboard cities. Then came the settling
of the cornbelt proper, the first lard hog, the pure-
bred bull and steel highways. Then, too, arrived
men of keen commercial instincts at the future
hubs of western lake and rail transportation — men
like James J. Hill, Philip D. Armour, Gustavus F.
Swift and Nelson Morris. Corn and wheat without
hogs, cattle and quick transportation had, in the
early days, but little value. Beef and lard on the
hoof in large quantities without a market, or means
of getting to market, were a waste. A place where
buyer and seller could be brought together was a
prime necessity. Hence the stock yards; hence
the packing houses; hence the ''granger" railways;

300 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

hence the present vast-extended business of pro-
ducing, marketing and distributing the meats that
feed the nations.

The enterprise of the pioneer packers and rail-
way builders has supplemented admirably the work
of the Sanctum Sanctorum fathers. Great markets
for the American steer and the American hog have
been found that did not formerly exist. The men
whose portraits adorn the Saddle and Sirloin
library have made possible a live-stock husbandry
in these United States more extensive than any
elsewhere in the world.

Studied in the light of this relationship to the
development of the middle west we will assuredly
find in P. D. Armour one of the colossal figures
upon the canvas that portrays the rise of our
greatest industry. His story may serve to typify the
achievements of the men whose pictures may be
found in the Saddle and Sirloin's main lounging
room.

Born upon a farm in Oneida County, N. Y., in
1832, he died in Chicago in 1901, so that he
practically attained the traditional three score years
and ten. As a young man he set out, with a stout
heart, a few hundred dollars in his pocket and a
pack on his back, bound for the goldfields of dis-

WHERE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MEET 301

tant California. We are told that he walked most
of the way across the continent. He began life
there, digging ditches for those seeking the precious
metal, at $5 a day. Soon he took contracts for
ditching, and in this way accumulated in the course
of five years the sum of $8,000. He then returned
to Oneida County, intending to buy a farm, but not
finding one to his liking he recalled that on his
way home he had passed through a promising town
on the shores of Lake Michigan known as Milwau-
kee, even then an important loading point for vessels
carrying western products eastward. He had seen
enough of the prairies and the plains to stir his
imagination. The west had a destiny. He would
stake his fortunes upon its development. And so in
1859 he formed a partnership with Mr. Fred B.
Miles to enter the produce and commission busi-
ness at Milwaukee.

This was in the days when the farmers of these
parts smoked and cured their own meats and hauled
their surplus, along with hides and pelts and bags
of wheat, to Milwaukee or Chicago. There were
thousands of homeseekers and an endless procession
of people passing through, seeking locations or
opportunities for entering business. These "over-
landers" required provisions for their journeyings

302 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

that would keep until used. The hour for the begin-
nings of the modern packing plant had therefore
struck.

John Plankinton was operating in a small way
at Milwaukee. Young Armour became his junior
partner. This was in 1864. The business pros-
pered. Meantime, Chicago loomed larger and larger
on the map. The lake-carrying and the general
outfitting trade began centering there, and in 18?'0
Armour & Go. entered the field of pork-packing at
this point. For the first eight years the business
was confined to pork-packing, and the immediate
effect of this large buying was a pronounced stim-
ulation of stock-keeping throughout the cornbelt.

The Union Stock Yard Go. had commenced
operations in 1865. Other men of enterprise and
vision saw the dawn of a wonderful era of expan-
sion in food production in the central west. Gus-
TAVus F. Swift and Nelson Morris, giants both in
the making, began about 1875. Mr. Armour started
killing cattle in 1878 and sheep in 1880. The
open ranges of the arid west were by that time
becoming the seat of extensive grazing operations,
and Mr. Armour, his colleagues and followers, now
feeling assured of steady supplies from farm and
ranch, began developing new markets in all direc-

WHERE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MEET 303

tions. At the same time they commenced to work
out with infinite patience and at large expense that
marvelous line of by-products which has now be-
come of such tremendous economic importance to
the world.

It would require hours to introduce at this point a
complete review, giving dates, processes and figures,
summarizing the evolution of the extraordinary busi-
ness in fresh, cured and canned meats, lard, beef
extract, glue, fertilizer, soap, bone novelties, hides,
pelts, wool, leather, ammonia, pepsin, curled hair
and other products of the modern packing plant.
We would need still other hours to trace the begin-
nings of the development of the science of refrig-
eration as applied to the business of transporting
and distributing food products. It would be a won-
drous story if one could tell the particulars of the
campaign waged for foreign markets. Suffice it to
say that these men are selling food products to all
the world. Their goods have been cached within
both the arctic and antarctic circles, and a story is
told of an unopened Chicago tin once found by
African hunters safely stowed away inside a croco-
dile killed on the Zambezi River.

The aggregate value of the animals passed
through the Chicago Union Stock Yards during the

304 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

first forty-eight years of their existence totaled the
unthinkable sum of $9,706,643,548! And there
are other markets, and other Swifts and Armours.
It is true that prices rise and prices fall, now as
always — the producers ever bearing the larger risk,
and sometimes meeting loss. Would that greater
stability in values could be assured; would that the
sunshine and the rain could always be rightly dis-
tributed. But since time began this has not been
vouchsafed to those who plow and sow and reap.
An undoubted element of chance enters always
into the operations of tillers of the soil and feeders
for stock-yard markets. There is no denying that.
Feasts are sometimes followed by famine; high
values succeeded by falling quotations; but the con-
servation of our soil demands imperatively the stead-
fast maintenance of our live-stock industries, and
the forces that can best insure the permanent pros-
perity of the growers meet in the library of the
Saddle and Sirloin Club. Packers, producers,
bankers and kings of the transportation world are
alike welcomed and honored under its roof. This is
as it should be, for their interests are incontestably
identical.

MAIN CORRIDOR OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

i-r

THE SMOKING ROOM— SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB

XXXIV

"SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE
FORGOT?"

Reference has already been made to Mortimer
Levering and Howard Davison as men who not
only were instrumental in founding the International
Live Stock Exposition, but subsequently contributed
largely to the creation of the atmosphere that has
placed the Saddle and Sirloin Club distinctly in
a class by itself. Both were members of what has
been termed "The Old Guard." The former was
unhappily called hence before his allotted time, but
his portrait speaks to us still of golden hours when
congenial spirits met to cultivate the joys of friend-
ships based upon mutual interests.

"Mort" came to us from Indiana. A devoted
admirer of highly-bred animals, wherever the na-
tion's choicest specimens were gathered for com-
petition there would you find him. At Madison
Square Garden, at Toronto, Chicago, or at leading
state exhibitions, in Kentucky or Virginia, or may-
hap at an English Royal, he might be seen among
the real enthusiasts. For years secretary and gen-
eral manager for the American Shropshire Sheep
Breeders' Association, he drew into that organization
one of the largest memberships ever enjoyed by

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306 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

any similar society. Jersey cattle also appealed to
him with special force, and his interest in and
expert knowledge of harness and saddle horses and
ponies resulted in his being called often to officiate
in the judge's box. He was secretary at different
times of more different live-stock associations than
any other man of his generation. It was as an
officer of the International, and of the Saddle and
Sirloin Club after his removal from Indianapolis to
Chicago, that his rare social gifts brought him con-
spicuously forward in the circles that centered in
those two organizations. A willing and efficient
worker when there were serious matters to be dis-
posed of, it was in his leisure hours about the
Club that his wit and his occasional impromptu
impersonations commonly rendered him the life of
any company. His place in Saddle and Sirloin
life will never be entirely filled.

Howard Davison of Altamont Farm, New York,
a man of engaging personality and an official of the
International Live Stock Exposition from its incep-
tion, has perhaps never received his just dues at
the hands of the American stock-loving public. His
intimates know and appreciate him as one who has
rendered outstanding service in the rise and prog-
ress of the Shropshire sheep on this side the

'SHOULD AULD ACaUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?" 307

water. For years ardently devoted to their cause,
he bought heavily of England's best, and has the
unique distinction of being the only American who
ever had the courage to send lambs of his own
production to the English Royal Show, where his
entries received official recognition in the ancient
home of the breed in competition with the very
flower of the old-world flocks. None but those who
have seen the extraordinary Shropshire classes at
an English national show can fully comprehend what
it means thus to beard the British lion in his lair
with animals of this particular type. Davison also
had a deep-rooted interest in Guernsey cattle and
in ponies of the larger types. He stirred New
York City to the point of holding a national show
at Madison Square Garden, modeled along our own
International Exposition lines, but his Herculean
labors in behalf of such an event unfortunately
were not properly seconded in the great metropolis.
I have said that Davison's real services have
not yet been fully acknowledged. This, I believe,
to be due primarily to the fact that he has always
been such a prolific source of entertainment to his
friends and associates that they have in many cases
failed to get the more serious side of his nature.
Once let a man gain a reputation as a humorist,

508 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

and he has to work harder than anybody else in
order to be taken seriously. The mere fact that
"Davy" has a convulsing repertoire of songs and
stories does not lessen in the least the value of
his work in behalf of American live-stock hus-
bandry. His portrait is soon to be put in the place
where it belongs, by Levering's side.

John Glay is another one of the pillars of the
International Show. Scottish Borderer by birth, he
hails from that historic region where the Teviot's
"silver tide" is lost in "Tweed's fair river broad
and deep." He has spent many a strenuous winter
there in recent years raiding the red fox, one day
with the North Northumberland hounds, and on the
next riding hard and fast on the other side with
the Duke of Buccleuch's. In fact, he was master
of the first-named pack when the great clash of
arms put an end to the "mimic warfare of the
chase." Early in the organization of the Interna-
.tional Show it was decided to bring out each year an
old- country judge to help place the prizes on our
Christmas cattle, and it has fallen to the lot of Mr.
Glay and myself to extend these invitations.

It is generally conceded that nothing has added
more to the dignity and the prestige of the Inter-
national than the bringing out of these gentlemen

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?" 309

to give US the benefit of unbiased outside expert
opinion upon our best-fitted grade and cross-bred
bullocks. Although in several notable instances
prominently identified in their own country with
particular breeds, in no case has any one of these
visitors permitted that fact to warp his Chicago judg-
ments. It has come to be an unwritten law that
these distinguished guests shall arrive in Chicago
on Friday or Saturday prior to the opening of the
show, and be delivered, presumably for safe keeping
away from all temptations, into the hands of
William R. Goodwin, whose portrait you will find
greeting you, by the way, among other familiar faces
in what is commonly called the reception hall of
the Saddle and Sirloin Club. Mr. Goodwin has been
a "Breeder's Gazette" editor since time whereof
the memory of the oldest "rail-bird" runneth not to
the contrary. The dean of all show reporters living
or dead, he keeps our British judges safe and sound
at Oakhurst, where designing exhibitors or over-
zealous friends may not get at them before they
enter the great arena to undertake their trying task.
These judges to date, in the order of service
rendered, have been as follows: 1900, J. B. Ellis,
Walsingham, England. 1901, James Peter, Berkeley,
England. 1902, James Biggar, Dalbeattie, Scotland.

310 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

1905, W. S. Ferguson, Perth, Scotland. 1904, John
Ross, Meikel Tarrel, Scotland. 1905, Thomas B.
Freshney, Lincolnshire, England. 1906, A. P. Tur-
ner, Herefordshire, England. 1907, James Durno,
Aberdeenshire, Scotland. 1908, George Sinclair,
Dalmeny, Scotland. 1909, William Heap, Man-
chester, England. 1910, H. M. Kirkham, London,
England. 1911, J. J. Gridlan, London, England.
1912, R. H. Keene, Westfield, Medmenham, Eng-
land. 1913, J. R. Gampbell, Lairg, Sutherland,
Scotland.

Tom Glark, whom I have already mentioned in
these notes, by reason of his long and sensationally
successful showyard experience has steadily been
the International directory's choice as general
superintendent of cattle at the December shows.
He came from Herefordshire as a young man, now
near fifty years ago. You will scarcely credit this
statement when you see him. You will swear it is
an error when you talk with him. He wears lightly
indeed the years that have passed over his head
since he became a butcher's apprentice in Gleveland
on his first arrival in the States, and no trick in
the showman's trade is likely to escape his vigilance.

Prof. G. F. Gurtiss has sat in the International's
councils continuously as the special representative

"SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?" 311

of the colleges. Probably no member of his pro-
fession has had so extended an experience in deal-
ing with live-stock competitions. It has been the
steady aim of the management of the Interna-
tional Show, as well as of the Saddle and Sirloin
Club, to lend every possible encouragement to the
colleges, their faculties, their graduates and the
undergraduates, and Dean Gurtiss, needless to
say, has served as an admirable connecting link in
the consideration and execution of every plan
touching educational topics.

The Hon. A. J. Lovejoy, big chief in the Berk-
shire camp, one of the ablest and most experienced
fair managers in America, has worked hard in the
International harness from the opening show. His
management of the swine department has been
continuous and successful, and he has served the
association also as its President.

Emil Ingwersen's name must be included in any
reference to men who have given freely of their
time and practical judgment to the fortunes of the
big show, and the Club as well. No man is more
conversant with our live-stock industries, and few
could have been so eminently useful and depend-
able in helping to meet and solve the problems
arising in connection with both International and

312 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

Saddle and Sirloin affairs. His services in the
handling of the carload-lot exhibits, and his advo-
cacy of the "short-fed special" prizes in connection
therewith, entitle him to the grateful thanks of
American stockmen.

James W. Martin is another "wheel horse" in
International team work. For years one of the
most esteemed members of the directorate, a man
whose "horse sense" is always in evidence, Mr.
Martin has acted with Emil Ingwersen in the carlot
section of the fat stock show, and always in the
light of practical knowledge of his subject and with
justice and fairness ever uppermost in the working
of his practical mind. In the field of blood-stock
production he has left a powerful impress for good
through his intelligent and persistent work with the
Red Polled Norfolks — one of England's best dual-
purpose types of cattle.

Gol. John S. Gooper, one of the martial figures
of the Yards and known to nearly every horseman in
America, has been a director of the International
from the beginning, sharing with Ogilvie in the
honors that have attached to the creation and
upbuilding of the greatest equine displays now to
be seen in any American showyard, and he is
one of the faithful devotees of Saddle and Sirloin

"SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?" 313

shrines. May he long be spared to a community
in the conduct of whose affairs he has borne a
distinguished and honorable part.

O. E. Bradfute of Aberdeen- Angus fame; T. F.
B. SoTHAM, known to all admirers of the Herefords;
I. M. Forbes, a leader in Shorthorn circles; James
Brown of Armour & Co.; G. B. Van Norman and M.
P. BuELL, prominent in the commission trade; Fred
Pabst, whose activities in connection with Wisconsin
stock-breeding have made him a national figure;
W. S. Dunham of Oaklawn; W. G. Brown, ex-
President of the New York Gentral Railway; Frank
Harding of the American Shorthorn Breeders' Asso-
ciation, Overton Harris, President of the Hereford
Association; Robert Miller, one of Ontario's best-
known stockmen, and R. A. Fairbairn of New Jersey
are also upon the honor roll of those who have
served as International directors. Senator Harris,
Richard Gibson and William E. Skinner have already
been referred to at some length.

I speak feelingly of these men, because it was
my fortune to sit with them for many years at
International business meetings. I know of their
unselfish and invaluable service. I have seen them
for so long, not only in council, but in action, that
I realize more fully perhaps than the average patron

314 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

of the Chicago exhibition how much our people are
really in their debt. They have helped to carry the
burden of the undertaking at a time when success
was largely dependent upon their judgment and
fidelity to the work in hand. These men are, in the
natural course of events, being succeeded by others
who will, I am sure, when we get out from under
the curse of the "foot-and-mouth," carry the Inter-
national to still higher levels.

It would be almost criminal, in closing, not to
speak of Tom Bell's masterly work in the ring in
the handling of the elaborate evening programs.
Such parades have probably never before been
staged elsewhere in any showyard in all animal
history, and the cleverness with which they have
been managed has been the subject of Saddle and
Sirloin comment many a time and oft. Mr. Henkle,
Mr. Leonard's successor as General Manager of
the Yards, has from behind the throne spent many
a weary hour working out details that have been
essential to right results. Barney Heide, placid and
patient, saddled with the secretaryship and general
superintendency, works fifty-two weeks in the year
for everybody concerned. Statistician Horine, too,
comes in for honorable mention, and ye who know
something of the importance of a master mechanic

SHOULD AULD ACGUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?" 315

in devising and carrying out "while-you-wait" plans
for the suitable housing and handling of a world's
animal fair, forget not Bill Ray.

George Harding & Son were the first to take
advantage of the facilities offered by the Saddle
AND Sirloin Club for entertaining on a large scale.
On the eve of an important auction sale at the Yards
they properly christened the main hall of the Club
by giving a banquet to several hundred invited
guests. This was really the dedicatory service
celebrating the consecration of the Pedigree Record
Building to its present uses, and in accepting Mr.
Harding's invitation to occupy the toastmaster's
chair for that evening, I had the pleasure of review-
ing the sequence of events leading up to the results
that had then materialized, and of felicitating the
breeders of America upon coming into so valuable an
heritage at that time. Since then innumerable lunch-
eons and "get-together" dinners have been given
at the Glub, at which matters relating to various
important interests have been effectively promoted.

Old acquaintance should indeed not be forgot,

and I must not close without some reference to

' everybody's friend Jack Hill, long time steward

of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. If the world goes

not well with you; if work or worry gets you on

316 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

the run; if the heavens be hung with black; if
"blue devils" are on your trail, then as the shades
of night fall deep o'er Packingtown, hie ye to Hill,
and let him make prescription. There is cheer
a-plenty in the dinner of which he consents to be
the architect.

XXXV
A WAYSIDE SHRINE

Still another successful effort at throwing an
ameliorating influence around the business at the
Yards has to be recorded, and our task is done.
And here again is seen the handiwork of Arthur
Leonard. I refer to the office fitted up just outside
the main entrance to the Yards for the personal
use of Robert Ogilvie in recognition of services
rendered in connection with the rehabilitation pro-
gram so splendidly carried out by the present
management.

As Secretary of the American Clydesdale Breed-
ers' Association, Mr. Ogilvie required room for the
transaction of the business of that organization.
You will recognize the place as you near the rail-
way tracks on the right-hand side as you approach
the stone arch leading into the greatest live-stock
market in the world, and if you will enter the
doorway of the unpretentious structure with the
plastered and timbered second-story exterior you
will find yourself inside the room where, in the
evening of his life, Mr. Ogilvie not only discharges
his secretarial duties, but where in the midst of
surroundings- peculiarly unique and characteristic
he welcomes every man whose heart beats respon-

317

318 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

sive to the traditions and inspirations of the Saddle
AND Sirloin Club.

The dominating feature of this place is a great
broad-breasted chimney-place of good red bricks.
Not one of those feeble imitations of the fine old
fire-places of our fathers so often seen in these
degenerate days, but a wide, deep, generous con-
struction with a capacity that tells of solid comfort
when old Boreas howls around outside and the big
back-log is wrapped in cheery flames. Furnishings
of solid oak stand upon a red-tiled floor. The walls
bear photographs of various celebrities. As might
be expected of a man who represents one of
Britain's favorite breeds, portraits of the late King
Edward VII and his present majesty of England —
whose interest in good breeding at Sandringham and
Windsor is a matter of pride with every man of
British antecedents — occupy conspicuous positions.
Clydesdale champions at the Highland, the Royal,
Toronto or the International challenge your attention
on every hand. Back of the massive table upon
which the Secretary does his work photos of men
whose names stand high on the scroll of live-stock
fame keep watch and ward. Nearby is a treasured
replica of Romanelli's heroic memorial bust of
Senator Harris.

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 319

The mantelpiece bears this inscription:

"DEDICATED TO THE

DIGNITY OF HUSBANDRY, THE CULTIVATION OF THE

HEART, THE JOYS OF FRIENDSHIP, AND

GOOD WILL AMONG MEN."

It is all in delightful contrast to the conventional
business office, and here the Secretary sometimes
sits and dreams. Here, and at the Club, he seeks
as best he may to lead men to forget at times the
lure of gold, and devote an occasional hour, at
least, to thoughts of things outside the counting-
room or market-place. He has proved the truth
that mere financial gains have been reaped, many a
time and oft, like Tam O'Shanter's joys, "ower dear"
— at too great a sacrifice of health and happiness.

Oh, yes, I know ! Sentiment, they say, butters
nobody's bread; but my good friend, if ye are a
stranger to it and inclined to call it weakness,
hearken to this, my admonition ! You may yet live
to see the day when your heart will feed upon it
fondly, and find in its proper exercise a sweeter
solace than was ever drawn by living man from
bonds or mortgages. I am sure that if some of us
had a little less of the one in our make-up we
might have acquired more of the other forms of
wealth; but, speaking for myself, I am content.

XXXVI
FALLING LEAVES

The preparation of these notes has occupied
various idle hours during my summer in the country.
Opposite my window in the edge of a wood the
oaks had just put forth their leaves as these
recollections first began to take on the form of a
settled purpose. Meantime, another seed time and
harvest have come and gone.

Last night there was an unmistakable note in
the wind that tossed the branches overhanging the
cottage roof. It was ominous of sleet and snows
to come. Today the leaves are falling fast. One
by one they silently part from the parent twigs
and find rest upon the bosom of the earth that
gave them birth. They have fulfilled their mission
and the bare arms that bore them stand out now
in bold relief against the autumn sky, awaiting the
resurrection of another April's sun and showers.
And as the maple, elm and oak cast aside their
wondrous raiment, word comes that a comrade-in-
arms, one who for more than twenty years has
marched closely by my side, has put off that which
is corruptible and put on incorruption. Joe Wing
is dead. He too has spent many happy hours in
and about the International showyard and the Club.

320

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FALLING LEAVES 321

In the early watches of the night, like the leaf
that is hurried away by a passing storm into the
depths of the forest, he has departed. And he will
no more return. He loved the whole Saddle and
Sirloin world, and contributed through his unique
mentality to its enrichment.

We have been dealing here in large degree with
men of the long ago; but I now begin to realize
that, as a matter of fact, the charmed circle of those
with whom I have walked and talked and worked
within my own lifetime is rapidly narrowing. One
by one the oldest and the best of friends are taking
their way silently into the shades; and year after
year the Saddle and Sirloin Club will become to
me more and more a place of memories. Happily,
however, the pictures and the scenes and incidents
which they recall exert, not a feeling of depression,
but of deep and mellow satisfaction. These men
have not really gone on and left nothing of them-
selves for our comfort and consolation. Here they
have met and exchanged words and sentiments that
live. Each has given something of himself to what
I can only call again the "atmosphere" of these
rooms. Nowhere else have these splendid types of
men come together so intimately. No other spot
has been the rendezvous of so many who have

322 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN

helped to build and shape our live-stock history in
recent years, and the larger grows the list of those
who have gone to join the great majority, the more
sacred will these portrait-covered walls become.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
BRANCH OF THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW

6EF

$CP 18 ^9^3

DEC 6 1934
AUG 2 81935

ff^!^?

■ '7

OCT 3 0 '41

FEB 2 5 '42

5m-8,'26

ohd

333972 ^^5^/

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UNIVERSIJY/i)F C^F^IA LIBRARY

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Full text of "At the sign of the Stock yard inn : the same being a true account of how certain great achievements of the past have been commemorated and cleverly linked with the present; together with sundry recollections inspired by the portraits at the Saddle and sirloin club"

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