Frontier journalist Don Hampton Biggers lived through the cattle boom and bust of the 1880s. Of it he wrote: "The great boom of 1882 may be compared to an exciting election. In the beginning there were many enthusiastic wiseacres who knew all the time that the boom was sure to come, and that hereafter things would be thus or better; and when the crash came these same chaps were busy explaining why it happened."
Biggers explained how by the time the 1882 cattle boom in West Texas occurred, the country and the wider world had heard stories about all the free grass available in the vast expanses of the West. With railroads opening up the area to travelers of all stripes, people descended on the area with visions of being a "cow person." Europeans, primarily from England, came to see for themselves this land of sunshine and grass, where the skies were not cloudy all day (during droughts, especially) and seldom was heard a discouraging word, mainly because there were few humans on the land, and thus very little speech of any kind.
These investors and adventurers hit West Texas at a good time. Rainfall had been decent. Water and grass were sufficient, if not downright abundant. This was a land where many cows could graze until their hearts were content and they became fat enough for slaughter. The investors came, they saw, they bought. The boom was under way.
With no practical knowledge or experience with cattle raising, these lords of commerce from afar turned their operations over to men who, in many cases, were only slightly more experienced than the owners. When problems arose, as they inevitably did, their response was to throw money at it, but money turned out to be a poor substitute for practical knowledge.
The old time cowman who had operated in the area before the boom believed that free grass was his inherent right, and the end of it doomed many of the early ranchers.
"Any attempt to get him to secure his interest by purchasing or otherwise getting positive possession of the land was regarded as an act of hostility or a personal insult," Biggers wrote of the ranchers who set up during the days of free grass. "Originally, the cattlemen were themselves the strongest opponents of the lease law."
The English syndicates and the lords of various manners missed the horrendous die-offs that preceded the boom. The scale and horror of the die-offs can scarcely be imagined today. Blizzards blew in and the cattle drifted south, away from it, until they came to a fence line where they milled about together and walked the fence line until they dropped dead from hunger, exposure and exhaustion. They piled up, one atop another, for miles, while dying cattle walked on top of the dead ones until they also died and added to the piles of frozen cowhide.
But in 1882, the pastures were alive and healthy and the waterways were full. Range cattle that were going for $7 a head in 1881, cost $35 a head by the end of 1882. "Grass fed" Texas beef sold for $6.80 per hundredweight on the Chicago market, "the highest prices ever paid for this class of stuff," Bigger noted.
"The boom day era presented spectacles that will never be repeated in any country under any circumstance," Biggers wrote, perhaps not realizing at the time that economic history has a special way of repeating itself. "It was a blaze of glory in a world of visions; a riotous feast on the crater of ruins. It was drink and be merry, spend money and get more. The English nobleman, sent here perhaps as the 'business manager' for some English company, the native millionaire and the cowpuncher were boon companions in a social dissipation. They ate at the same table, drank at the same bar, gambled in the same game and all come to grief in one batch."
The market stayed strong for the better part of three years but went to pieces in December of 1885 and hit rock bottom in 1887. More horrendous die-offs followed. The English syndicates hardly noticed the loss of their millions, but the old cowboys noticed because, all off a sudden, their occupation was not around anymore.
Bigger used one example of a rancher with 45,000 head of cattle in 1882. The rancher refused an offer of $1.5 million for his cattle, horses and range privileges in 1883. In 1886 he sold out for $50,000 less than the total of his liabilities. Biggers reported that this was a common experience for Texas ranchers in the 1880s.
He wrote: "In fact, about the only men who did not suffer a similar fate were those who were very wealthy and owed but little, or the small stockman who owed nothing."
The more things change
