the end of the following year. But I got notice to quit early in 1896 and was thus entitled to remain till the end of that year. I accept McNab's word, but I know that both the Chairman and the Secretary knew of the contract. The original letter was in our office. The copy certainly would be in Edinburgh. It was not worth fighting about, but it is part of this story. After giving over the greater part of eight years to the service of the company, they afterwards treated me in the shabbiest, meanest fashion. Bowie was a party in a way to some of the things that were done, for after returning as a Director to the company in 1912, a letter was produced which proved it. I am not complaining; perhaps it was coming to me. In managing the company, and I made mistakes as all men will for it is only human, my policy was to guide the company solely on my own judgment so far as the physical management on this side was concerned, and then tell the Home Board what I had done. This did not sit well on Mr. Dun's shoulders and whether he swayed the Board or not, I cannot say. The above are the facts. The above-mentioned gentleman died September, 1897.

From 1896 to 1912 I had little to do with the company except meeting the Directors occasionally, but a year or two previous to joining the Board in Edinburgh I was consulted by Mr. McNab, then Chairman, as to the policy to pursue under the difficulties which were an annual crop and gave everyone connected with the company a great amount of trouble and anxiety. Several dividends were paid. Very unwisely, because the company still had a lot of Preference Shares which being preferential and supposedly cumulative were really a debt and have latterly given the company considerable trouble. Counsel have decided that they are not cumulative and can only be paid out of profits of which the company has made none for several years past. Consequently a large amount of interest has accumulated and at this writing the matter is being arranged by compromise betwixt the two sets of shareholders, which will need to be approved by the courts before it can go through. These divi

dends ate up the steers which had been placed on the range. For several years the reports to the shareholders show considerable prosperity. Nearly $500,000.00 in dividends was paid away from 1898 to 1911, both inclusive. On the other hand, quite a large amount of valuable land was bought and the company will reap largely in this way. During 1904 sheep were purchased by the company and since then have been a leading part of the business, but with indifferent results. Eleven years after I left the company Mr. Bowie's name disappeared from the management. A sad sort of a leave taking it must have been, for after thirty-five years' service with the company and Swan personally there was not even a note of regret. His great reputation, influence and honesty were under a cloud towards the end so far as the Scotch Board were concerned and he retired broken in health, the last of the coterie of able men passed by Aleck Swan to the Scotch Company. Dave Morris, doyen of the cowboys, is the only man of the old crowd who meets me at Chugwater.

The advent of the sheep was the beginning of the end of the range business so far as the Swan Co. was concerned. For years when others had fled, sold out or disintegrated, it stood alone powerful, progressive, somewhat aggressive. The two managers succeeding Bowie were not a credit to the old cult of range managers. They were utterly incompetent and I say this with sorrow, as I was responsible for one of them. But management or mismanagement, the open range was gone. Its death rattle was echoed over its broad acres in three words, "the dry farmer." You can fight armies or disease or trespass, but the settler never. He advances slowly, surely, silently, like a great motor truck, pushing everything before him. He is cringing in distress, autocratic in prosperity and yet he is a builder, a great western asset, peopling a childless land, planting schools by the side of cattle corrals, preaching in their practical way the new salvation that is coming to the arid West. The old timers thought their work was a flash in the pan, but it remains a luminous light over valley and divide.

In 1910 the cattle were disposed of. The settlers were too much for them. The range was so cut up. There was so much chasing, dogging, stealing and wastage that the Directors had no other course open to them. Thus closed a great era in the company's history. It is not necessary for me to pursue it further. Today our Executive Committee, consisting of James T. Craig of Belle Fourche, S. D., Curtis Templin, resident manager of the company and the writer, runs the practical end of the business. It is rather a thankless job, but with the high price of live stock and an improving demand for land, the outlook is better. But it does not do to prophesy about the company, for during the thirty-five years I have known it, it has been rather a hoodoo on the horizon.

[Note: The Swan Company is now (1924) out of debt, with a good cash balance in its banks.]

T

CHAPTER XXIX

HE great winter losses of 1886-87 in the West and
Northwest taught the ranch owner many things. The

days of stock herds were passing and the great catastrophe turned the ranch man to steers more than ever. Then it made him cautious as to debt. It was not fashionable, in fact it was an absolute necessity, to shape your finances so that in the autumn you were free of debt and had a balance in the bank for winter expenses. The VVV outfit adapted itself readily to these conditions. Not a single additional animal had been put on the range during the summer of 1886. As stated previously 2,000 head had been bought and paid for but were left in the Panhandle. These were sent north in 1887. They were shipped to Chugwater, then the terminus of the Cheyenne Northern Railroad and trailed from there to the Belle Fourche country. No cattle except an odd lot were purchased that year. Cattle prices looked bad. There was a failure of the corn crop and a great pressure of the southern and western cattle on the Chicago and other markets. Loans were being called indiscriminately and there was semi-panic in cattle circles. Under heavy receipts the packers pounded the market, the feeder buyer was casual and shy. Buying none, the above company did not need to sell many and altogether only 1,013 head, all steers but five head of cows, were shipped. Those netted $28.90 per head. The following year the steers shipped netted $47.38 per head, $18.48 advance.

To meet the losses developed in the summer of 1887 the capital of the company had to be reduced and it was written down from $560,000 to $390,000, at which figure it remained to March 30, 1910, when the company reorganized and was made into an investment company. This company was exceedingly fortunate in having an admirable Board of Directors. They were the opposite of the Swan Board whose

finger was always in the American pie, very often disastrously. They were exceedingly cautious and conservative regarding interference with range matters; keen, however, on finance and profits; drastic in writing off, and the best kind of men to be associated with. Individually they hated to lose and were rather cool in their treatment of a poor culprit who lost some money, but as a Board they were a unit and met disaster and success in the finest kind of spirit. The Chairman, Sir George Warrender, was a splendid business man—cool, keen, resourceful, a master of his subject, with a long, retentive memory, rather uncomfortable if you make a mistake in the misty past. He was sure to dig it up as a practical illustration. Then at the annual meetings an unfriendly critic of the management was squelched in a cool, inimitable sort of way-not a mailed fist, rather a rapier in a velvet hand, a rainbow of gentle sarcasm falling on the victim. At these meetings he had a sort of instinctive control of his audience and his annual address, composed first by Mr. Pringle, the managing Director, and carefully considered at a Board meeting, was a model in its brevity, yet always lucid, crisp and bristling with points emphasizing his remarks. And yet every shareholder was listened to with respect, but God help him if he got off the track and Sir George had to rebuke him. Withal he was a hard grained aristocrat and in his social life he hated a Radical and never made any bones about it. During my long business connection with him, I only broke bread once in his company and it was on an occasion when he was very much interested in a project that was developing in this country and out of which he made a large amount of money.

Another Director was Mr. Thomas Nelson, of whom I have written before. While slightly deaf he was a wonderful man at a Board meeting. His judgment was sound and he had the courage of his convictions. When the hard times. struck this company he bought largely of its shares and reaped a large profit. Another unique character joined the Board about 1887, Mr. John Wilson, an Edinburgh mer