The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 54
641 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
these great cities are wholly inadequate. Half an hour is consumed
[in going to] and another half-hour in returning from markets where
good articles can be had. The alternative is to pay a dollar beyond
the proper value of a marketing at a fashionable stall where meats
are good, or buy at a third-rate stand, where the millions go, where
the vegetables are wilted, the chickens blue, and the beef Texan.13
By the mid-seventies the Longhorn was pictured as of a
lean, lank form, with prominent bones, long, wide-spreading horns,
long in the legs, and the body gaunt in proportion, with scantiness
of flesh in the most desirable parts for beef.'1
When fat the Longhorns weighed from i,ooo to 1,2oo pounds,
but when sold to the consumer, the flesh and bone weighed no
more than four hundred pounds. Not satisfied with painting so
adverse a word picture, the writer went on to a further extreme:
Yet the flesh is inferior in quality, and has little choice meat in it.
"Cheap meat for poor iolks" is the language of the butcher.
Texas beef was considered inferior and brought less in price than
northern beef. The Texas grower was under necessity of improve-
ment to overcome the prejudices.
Sentiment alone did not breed the horns off Texas cattle. An
economic factor entered 'to complete what northern prejudice
had begun. The late seventies ushered in the use of barbed wire,
closing the open range and often forcing the small stockmen out
of business. Stockmen fortunate enough to be able to buy land
and to fence it found themselves in the position of being com-
pelled to produce the greatest amount of beef possible on their
holdings. The Longhorn simply was not of a type to answer the
grower's needs; thus he became a victim of practical men. Texas
stockmen had learned that the crossing of beef-type bulls and
longhorn cows produced a calf that would grow into a cow worth
double the market value of its dam.'" Who made this discovery
is one of the unanswered questions of the history of Texas cattle.
It is certain, however, that in 1875 Texas stockmen knew the
value of new blood lines; the agriculture commissioner reported:
1sReport of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year x870 (Washington,
1871), 245.
14Report of Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year z875 (Washington, 1876),
422.
lIbid.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953, periodical, 1953; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101145/m1/72/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.