CHAPTER IV

IN THE SPRING of 1882, while the California project was in process of arrangement, other companies

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were being floated to reap the golden harvest that was ripening on the western plains. London had caught the infection and several schemes were being promoted, among them the Cattle Ranch & Land Co. This property was situated in western Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas; at least, their cattle ranged over parts of the above, as well as in No Man's Land. On account of the Agricultural Commission then sitting in the British Metropolis, I had been called for various reports, written and oral. My father, as a prominent farmer, was asked to go upon the Board. The scheme on paper looked feasible. The cattle and the location were owned by Mr. Rufus Hatch and two younger men, Mr. Earl W. Spencer and Mr. Francis Drew. The promotion was carried through successfully by the firm of Webster, Hoare & Co. Hoare, so far as I recollect, I did not meet. The senior partner did the business. In this connection I met two extraordinary characters, Hume Webster and Rufus Hatch. Webster represented Lombard Street, and Hatch, Wall Street. Alongside of such men you have your eye teeth cut. It was my first experience in high finance. Hatch was not on the scene, but Hume Webster, with the assistance of Spencer and Drew, was quite capable of arranging matters. The work was done in dark and dingy offices, places which Dickens revelled in describing. The atmosphere smelt of money. You were near the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, across the way was Rothschild's office. You were cheek by jowl with the prosperous city financier, and you rubbed elbows with some poor devil who missed the golden apple that he believed was intended for him.

Webster was a study. He had come up from Montrose

in Scotland to the financial center of the world, and he had developed into a promoter, a genteel pawnbroker, and he would turn his hand to any kind of financial problem, good, bad or indifferent, so long as a penny could be turned to his advantage. He had a good presence at the time I met him, showing signs of dissipation, suave, soft spoken with a peculiar hesitancy in his speech, not an ordinary stutter, but a curious halt that he had evidently nursed so as to give his mental faculties time to balance up a scheme, or more often to give him time to squirm out of a difficult situation. A lot of rummy looking people haunted his office. They seemed from all parts of the world: Americans, Austrians, Australians, Jews and Gentiles, cowpunchers and wine makers, some of the best and some of the worst looking folks you ever saw. In this kind of a life, picking up your daily oyster in this big sea of financial turmoil, you had to be sharp, keen witted, yet honest to reach success, but Webster had not time for the latter and he was unscrupulous, inclined to be immoral, a very dangerous companion, a big spider among foolish flies. If a scheme went well, he was in the forefront; if it went wrong, he slid from under. Several years after he went down to his country place, and put a bullet through his brain, escaping the misery of going over his tortuous trail in a criminal court.

As I recollect, the company was floated on the basis of $500,000 in preferred and $500,000 in ordinary shares. Rufus Hatch and his associates took the deferred shares as payment for their cattle and range. The preferred issue provided money for new cattle as the range was not fully stocked. Webster got his profit for flotation by receiving a large block of the ordinary shares. A step further, for he had to divide up again with parties who assisted him. As for instance, it was arranged that I should examine the range and cattle and on this report, if favorable, the company would be floated. My remuneration was fixed by the Provisional Board of Directors at $1,250.00 and expenses. If the company was floated, I was to receive $2,500.00 in

ordinary shares. This meant of course an indirect bribe, the first and the last I ever received. I was roped and tied down before I knew it. The Chairman of the Board was a Mr. Moore (his initials have escaped me) who was socially a delightful man, quite a bit of a dandy in dress, with perfect manners, but he was more or less of a guinea pig. Doubtless he got some ordinary shares for his influence. Some of the other directors did, at any rate, to my certain knowledge.

In the office of Webster, Hoare & Co. we were handed over, so far as the detail work was concerned, to Mr. J. Durie Patullo, a very clean cut, cautious young Scotchman. Very shortly after the company was floated, he started business for himself and the affairs of the concern in London were transferred to his care, and there they remained till it was finally wound up. Patullo, I believe, still conducts a prosperous business, although I have not seen him for many

years.

The prospectus which went to the public was a little pamphlet of gilded glory. Nowadays I would hate to think that I put a spoke in the wheel. The success of the Prairie Cattle Co. had carried people off their feet. The resumption of gold payments in 1879 had produced a great boom in the States and Canada. Great Britain was enjoying great prosperity and the time was ripe for expansion. Credit was being extended sometimes without much judgment. The time was opportune to exploit new ventures. When I go back in these days after thirty-five years and more of experience on the plains, in the stock yards, in the banking end of the business and think how much there is to learn yet, it was certainly audacity, the courage of youth that led myself and others to undertake to examine and give opinions upon a new and unstable business on the western plains where conditions were erratic and the results doubtful. Except in Texas it was a virgin business. Prior to 1870 northern Texas, the West and the Northwest, were practically in a state of nature. The buffalo still grazed those lands, antelope and deer

were in abundance, so that even the men who owned herds in 1882 were more or less novices. It was a crude business at the beginning, and it remained so till the end. I use the word end because today we have only the skeleton of the old haphazard system of grazing cattle on the plains. The methods have changed. The haystack is the sheet anchor and the day is at hand as it has come in the sheep business in our western states, where winter feed will be more plentiful than summer grazing. Nature's balance is being upset by the dry farmer. The great areas of arid land provided for summer grass are being destroyed by our system of allowing any citizen to squat down on Uncle Sam's territory at any point he chooses, and, so far as cattle grazing is concerned, spoil many sections around him.

To return to the story. About the end of May, 1882, I met Rufus Hatch at Dodge City, Kansas. Dodge was some town then. It consisted of one main business street running parallel to the Santa Fe Railroad. The great bulk of the business houses were saloons. York, Parker & Draper had a big outfitting store in the midst of this medley of thirst parlors, gambling rooms and pimp houses. Cox had a hotel at the east end of this street. It was about the most rough and ready place it was ever my luck to stay in. It was so well populated that there was scarcely room for you. An ordinary cow camp was a palace in comparison for comfort. In Cox's hotel you expected much and got little. In the camp you expected little and got a great deal. From there we started. south to inspect the ranch. We had a buggy and four seated wagon, and as I recollect it, there were half a dozen in the party. Rufus was the main party and he had a satellite who went under the sobriquet of "Jeems Pipes." He was a mixture of king's jester, newspaper man, story teller, and general nuisance on a trip of this kind. A week after when he returned to Dodge unshaven and unshorn, all the vivacity and bravado gone, he was a sorry sight.

The ranch was 90 miles south of Dodge on the Kiowa. You had to cross the Beaver or North Cimarron, and we

stayed all night at a road house on its banks. There were only two places betwixt the railroad and the ranch. There were no fences except round a small horse pasture and the buildings were of the simplest character. But there was grass everywhere and the cattle were in splendid condition. Spencer and I spent several days driving round. Everything looked rosy. There was an ocean of grass, lots of water and the cows were dropping their calves as if there would be 90 per cent of a crop. No dead cattle showed up and in this connection my experience after examining scores of ranches is that you see very few dead cattle after grass begins to get green following the hardest kind of a winter. We returned to the ranch at night or stayed at some camp. Spencer was a delightful guide and companion. He was cheery, receptive and had a good knowledge of the cow business, and a man could learn a lot from him. But he was in bad company. Drew, his partner, was a miserable specimen of mankind, a sort of adventurer with an evil tongue, with no sense of honor. He eventually died in the Panhandle after having, with the aid of a scion of a Scottish lord, dissipated a fair sized herd of cattle. Of Drew, more hereafter. As the number of the herd had been accepted on account of the owners taking a deferred interest, I had only to pass on this question in a general way. Whether the number as stated was originally there or not, it was impossible to say, but the cattle, as said above, showed up well. They carried the Y brand and were a nice lot of improved Texans. We all journeyed back to Dodge and the last day of the trip I drove the buggy with Mr. Hatch as companion, and in the seven or eight hours we spent together I got to know much of the inside of his character.

There were two Hatches in Wall Street. Hatch of Messrs. Fisk & Hatch was the good Mr. Hatch. Uncle Rufus was the bad one. I had read of the latter many times. He had been for years an operator on the New York Stock Exchange, and he had led a rather adventurous financial life. To me he looked like some shadow on the Broecken, an overgrown