stock business passed through it with scarcely a tremor. During the years 1915-16 a good deal of trouble developed in the Denver, Colo., section. There had been a lot of reckless work there. While the weak spot in 1898 and 1903 was Kansas City, it shifted to Denver in 1915-16.

This live stock loaning business has grown to huge proportions. Many millions of dollars are loaned every year and it is continually expanding. As cattle, hogs and sheep have increased in value, the call is for more money. Thirty years ago the live stock commission man did the business and it was on a basis of about a third in values of today. He was not trained to such work. He knew the practical side of his business but on the financial end he was almost dumb as the ox he sold. Then brokers appeared, gentlemen with nice offices and very handsome stationery. In the fall of 1896 Mr. P. D. Armour began to loan some money on cattle. The Illinois Trust & Savings Bank called all my firm's loans and then turned round and loaned the money to Armour & Co., a sort of "round the needle-eye boys" that was not appreciated by us. Either that fall or the following spring a cattle loan company controlled by Armour & Co. was started in Omaha. It had a rather chequered existence. As long as they followed the conservative lines of loaning on stock in the feed lot, they succeeded, but as money got back to normal, lower rates caught this liquid stuff and the cattle loan. company thirsting for profit began loaning on stock cattle. Result disaster; how bad, we never found out.

The cattle and sheep loaning concerns have been very successful for the past ten years. Their name is legion and they are continually increasing. Their success has come from two reasons: first a gradually appreciating price; second, better management. In regard to the first point, the boldest operator has been the most successful, because he has a steady rise in values. For two years past you shut your eyes in this business, plunged ahead and if you had no defalcations you made money hand over fist. Against this the liquid value of paper has steadily declined. It is simply astonishing

to go over lists of mortgages and see the slow character of the security against the borrowing obligations on short time. A tie-up in money such as we had in 1896 and again in 1907 would be apt to produce a catastrophe. We have not yet solved the difficulty of borrowing money for periods long enough to mature and make marketable the security covered. In other words, our live stock loaning business is in a precarious position. The proportion of slow security is out of line with the quick demands of the lender, while the capital stock of our loaning companies is a financial joke.

The second point made alleviates the above state of affairs to a certain degree. Live stock loaning is now a well understood and carefully conducted business. There are mishaps, defalcations, losses from climatic conditions, but it is not rashly conducted as in old days. Withal that we are riding for a fall. When the upturn in prices is reversed then the trying time will come and history will repeat itself.

(The above chapter was written in 1917. The last paragraph contains prophetic words—see the later chapter entitled "The Storm that Swept the Range." J.C.)

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CHAPTER XX

EXT to Cheyenne the most important place in Wyoming was Laramie City. It is a pleasant little town

on the south end of the plains named after it. There and in the neighborhood were a lot of cattle and sheep owners. Marsh & Cooper, E. S. R. Boughton, the DouglasWillan, Sartoris Co. were all of English importation. Ora Haley, Charlie Hutton, Jack Connor, Dowlin & Rush, Charles Hecht, the Dole Brothers, Homer & Evans, Balch & Bacon, and various others made it their headquarters. Mr. Edward Ivinson, an Englishman by birth, was the principal banker and today is still an evergreen, although partially retired after a long and honorable career. Not only was he a good banker, but a fine sportsman. He had a method, however, of keeping business and pleasure severely separate and he guided his ship through many a financial shoal with consummate skill.

The English crowd were voracious in borrowing money but shy at paying. They were not alone in this but as a fellow countryman their style of doing their financial business came under my eye. When one looks back over thirty years and passes in review the methods of doing business in these days, it staggers you to think how we ever got along. It led on to vast amounts of money disappearing as through a sieve. The pertinacity displayed by the borrowers and the lightning changes they made would have been amusing if you were not sometimes the victim of the play. The advent of the Britisher came through the fashion for big game hunting. Lord Dunraven was one of the leaders and he established a ranch in Estes Park, Colorado, where Theodore Whyte had as manager and part owner a rather chequered career. Men like Seton Kerr, Moreton Frewen, Horace Plunkett, Frank Cooper and hosts of others went into cattle ranching on a big scale. Not the least of these, physically

at any rate, was Jack Willan of the Douglas-Willan, Sartoris Co. He was a stout, jolly Englishman of fine address, good natured, socially as fine a fellow as you could meet. He was at home in London, had hosts of friends in New York and Chicago, while on the Laramie Plains he met the conditions of frontier life with an easy abandon. One autumn day in 1884 he met me at Rock Creek, Wyo., where we had been loading cattle all morning and behind a spanking pair of horses we drove over to his ranch, stopping at Cooper Lake to inspect two or three bands of wethers that were grazing near that place. They lived in a rather lavish way with a lot of help around them. They had lots of good land and put up a large amount of the finest kind of hay, but they were a bit ahead of their time.

At the price of live stock you could not afford to put much expense on it. Even with a four-year-old steer netting $35 to $40 and an old cow bringing $20, you had little margin for extra expenses. In fact on those plains 7,000 feet above the sea you were betwixt two fires. To keep life in your cattle or sheep through the winter you had to feed heavily, which at the time we write of was a losing game. On the other hand, the winter losses far exceeded any profits. So the above company of which the redoubtable Jack was manager and the leading spirit was a failure, but it survived for many years. They would get into debt in this country and carry along as far as possible, almost to the breaking point, then a fresh remittance would come from England. In a business way I had many deals with them till one day we went out to inspect our security, consisting of 8,000 sheep or thereabouts. They were absent, having been sold months before and the proceeds appropriated to some other purpose. It looked like serious trouble but the till was tapped again in England and the matter settled.

Lionel Sartoris, who was also a leading spirit in this concern, was a good looking Englishman, casual, completely out of place in his adopted home and not averse to letting you know it. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of

wealth where servants ministered to every want and wish and he had not transplanted easily or gracefully. Although at heart and among his countrymen who understood him, he was quite a favorite, yet you could not graft him into America and especially western life. To the last the members of this outfit retained their English style and methods and when the end came they slipped away and disappeared. With Marsh & Cooper I also had various deals. Frank Cooper, who is mentioned above, was an Englishman who had inherited wealth. He had hunted big game in the Rockies. How he and Bob Marsh had tied up together in ranching I never knew. They had a fine place on Rock Creek some twenty-five or thirty miles west of Old Rock Creek and before the killing winter of 1886-87 had a good herd of cattle. Cooper I only saw once so cannot say anything about him, but Marsh I knew well. He was a delightful man socially, a fine mellow nature with a touch of humor running through it. He was generous, kindly and brimful of hospitality, a magnet drawing everyone to him. In a business way he was far from successful, but he fell on evil days and times were against him. In many ways he was sharp, keen, well posted and farsighted. Then again he was careless of his obligations, inclined to let matters drift. After a long, pathetic struggle in which everything went against him, he died more of a broken heart than any real physical trouble.

Mr. F. O. Harrison, now living in the English Lake District, took hold of the above business and closed it up. But it was not the English ranchmen alone who were short of money. During the years 1885 and 1886 everyone seemed to be hard up in Wyoming. I judge from myself and many other concerns whose affairs I had occasion to investigate. The flow of money from abroad and the East had stopped. While in 1884 prices were good, we had a serious decline in 1885 and 1886. A great many ill-matured schemes had been started, just half-way financed and then left to sink or swim. Every ranchman reached out for land, forgetting that it took money to develop and keep it going. Just as nowa