ing. A few men from the European Continent, as Baron von Richthofen and the Marquis de Mores, established ranches. Few of these Continentals had any appreciable effect upon the ranching industry of America, but this was far from true of the British whose contribution to the development of the Cow Country was enormous. The Scots took the lead, and of these John Clay was one of the most important figures.

John Clay was born at Winfield in Berwickshire, Scotland, on April 24, 1851, the son of a prominent farmer and livestock grower. He was educated at St. Andrews School and the University of Edinburgh. When only 21 years of age he was given the task of settling up the 1400 acre estate of a neighbor who had died leaving his affairs in much confusion.

When this work had been completed he found the call of the New World irresistible and in 1874 made an extended visit to the United States and Canada. Although this was ostensibly a pleasure trip he was keenly alive to the business opportunities offered by the American West. After spending some time in the East he visited the cities and farm lands of the Middle West and continued his journey to North Platte, Nebraska, Cheyenne, and Denver in order to see something of ranching on the open range and to meet a number of its leaders.

On his return to New York by way of Toronto, Clay met George Brown, a fellow Scot, who was a newspaper publisher and the owner of Bow Park Farm near Brantford, Ontario. Before sailing for home Clay spent a few days at this farm which grew many thoroughbred cattle that were sold to Western ranchmen as breeding animals. Two years later Brown came to Scotland and formed a small company, apparently to refinance Bow Park Farm. It was not successful and in 1879 Clay was sent out as manager of this property, a position which he retained until 1882.

Long before the Scots and English entered the ranching industry in North America they had formed a number of large companies for investing funds in the United States

and Canada. The Scottish American Mortgage Company, whose managing director was Duncan Smith, was formed in 1872 and the Scottish American Investment Company, headed by W. J. Menzies, the same year. The former specialized in farm loans in the Middle West while the latter largely financed new railroads, banks, and mines. Since they could borrow money at four to four and a half per cent interest in Britain and lend it for six and a half to eight per cent in America, they were quite successful.

The entrance of these and other companies into the range cattle industry was in large measure due to a fast-growing volume of dressed beef and live cattle exported from the United States to Great Britain. Utilizing a new cooling system, Timothy C. Eastman in 1875 made a small shipment of dressed beef from New York to London. The venture was successful and in 1878 over 54 million pounds of beef and 80,000 head of live cattle were exported by the United States, almost entirely to Britain.

This great influx of American meat alarmed the cattle growers of North Britain, and 1879 the British government established an agricultural commission which sent two commissioners to America to survey the situation there. The men chosen were Clare S. Read and Albert Pell, both members of Parliament. John Clay who had been made manager of Bow Park Farm that year was appointed as a sub-commissioner and traveled with Read and Pell during most of their three months stay in America. Their report, published in 1880, gave a glowing account of ranch life, the almost unlimited capacity of the American West to produce beef, and asserted that all capital invested in ranching there during the past ten years had yielded a net profit of over thirty-three per cent annually.

The prospect of an annual return of thirty-three per cent on investments created great excitement among the leaders of the Scottish companies operating in America. The Scottish American Mortgage Company in 1880 established the Prai

rie Cattle Company with ranges in New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, and the Texas Panhandle. It seemed very successful and its payment of large dividends for the next two or three years further inflamed the interest of the Scots and English. The fever soon spread to London and new companies were established there and in Dundee, Scotland, to finance ranching ventures in the American West. The Scottish American Investment Company, with which John Clay soon became associated, also moved quickly to enter the business.

During 1882 many Scottish and English ranching enterprises were formed in Western America and during the next few years numerous others were created. John Clay, who had resigned as manager of Bow Park Farm, was called upon to inspect and report upon a number of ranch properties that were purchased or refinanced by British capital. Among these was the Chowchilla Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley which was acquired by the Scots and named the California Agricultural and Pastoral Company.

Others were the Wyoming Cattle Ranche Company, the Cattle Ranch and Land Company in the Texas Panhandle, "No Man's Land," and Southwest Kansas, with offices in London but owned largely by Scots, and Western Ranches Ltd., in Dakota and Wyoming. In addition was the great Swan Land and Cattle Company financed in 1883 by a loan floated in Scotland. John Clay inspected and reported upon all these properties before they were purchased, and later served for a time as manager of most of them. These and other British companies did not find their hopes of enormous dividends realized. In spite of John Clay's objections, company officials often accepted the number of cattle indicated by the books of a ranch purchased as correct when it was usually found later to have been far too high. Excessive costs of operation and winter losses also greatly reduced profits. On the whole, the Scots fared better than the English but in most cases their returns were quite disappointing.

By 1885 the flood of cattle from Texas had fully stocked and in some areas overstocked the Central and Northern plains. In the spring of 1886, however, huge additional herds were moved northward and spread out over the range in the most reckless fashion imaginable. Then came the frightful winter of 1886-87. In unprecedented cold cattle drifted before the bitter wind through sleet and snow into the coulees and canyons where they died by thousands and tens of thousands. Despairing ranchmen gathered in the cozy warmth of the Cheyenne Club were little cheered by the cynical remark of the barkeeper: "Don't worry boys; after all the books won't freeze." They knew that in the future sales by "book count" were a myth.

Spring came at last to find every cowman and ranching firm on the northern ranges in serious financial straits and many of them bankrupt. The Swan Cattle Company failed in May, 1887, and Finlay Dun of Scotland took over the property as manager for a year. He was succeeded by John Clay who remained as manager for over eight years. He then became manager of Western Ranches Ltd. He had pulled the Swan Company through its years of crisis and paid off its indebtedness. From 1896 to 1911 he had little to do with that company except attend an occasional meeting of the directors. Later, however, the affairs were administered for many years by an executive committee consisting of Clay and two associates.

During his long period of years on the range, Clay came to know every phase of the livestock business and nearly all of the important men engaged in it. He traveled extensively over virtually all the range area and made frequent trips to Scotland and England. He rode and ate with the cowboys, and often slept on the prairie or in the crude shacks of range riders or pioneer settlers. Equally at home in the western cow camps and the great cities of the world, he was closely associated with the leading financiers of Edinburgh, London, New York, and Chicago, and with the lean, brown cowhands

who did the work of the roundups and branding pens. Naturally a liberal, these contacts made him recognize even more keenly the truth of the words of the poet of his native land: "A man's a man for a' that."

Clay's book was published privately in 1924, ten years before his death on March 17, 1934. It is not an autobiography but exactly what the title implies, an account of his life on the range. Of his further activities as chairman of the directors of the Stock Growers National Bank of Cheyenne and president of the John Clay Commission Company in Chicago with branches in virtually every important livestock market in the West, it tells nothing. Except for the last chapter it consists of articles written in 1916 and 1917. The final chapter, which he wrote in 1923, deals with the condition of the livestock business at that time. The book is most interesting, for Clay had a flair for colorful writing and some passages are almost prose poems.

Before the publication of this volume a number of other important books on the ranching industry had appeared in print. The first was Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, published in 1874 and reprinted in 1932. This was followed in 1885 by a government document, Joseph Nimmo, The Range and Ranch Cattle Traffic of the United States. In 1895 came James Cox, Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry, and in 1905 James W. Freeman (ed.), Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry. The last two named have been reprinted recently by the publishers of this book. All of these volumes. might properly be called "Classics of the Cow Country," but Clay's book gives the most colorful and comprehensive account now in print of the part played by the Scots and English in the ranching industry of the West. Since its publication hundreds of books and monographs dealing with various phases of ranching and range life have appeared, but these are mostly biographies or histories of single ranches.