Francis E. Warren and the Search for a Grazing Policy, 1890-1929

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE FRUSTRATED FORTUNES: FRANCIS E. WARREN AND THE SEARCH FOR A GRAZING POLICY, 1890-1929 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By JAY RANDELL DEW Norman, Oklahoma 2007 UMI Number: 3264587 UMI Microform 3264587 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 FRUSTRATED FORTUNES: FRANCIS E. WARREN AND THE SEARCH FOR A GRAZING POLICY, 1890-1929 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY _________________________ Donald J. Pisani _________________________ Paul A. Gilje _________________________ David W. Levy _________________________ Katherine Pandora _________________________ Terry Rugeley © Copyright by JAY RANDELL DEW 2007 All Rights Reserved. for my father, Wilson T. Dew ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am overflowing with gratitude to so many people and institutions. It took a village. Professors Paul A. Gilje, David W. Levy, Katherine Pandora, and Terry Rugeley served selflessly as committee members -- Professor Levy even a year after retiring from a distinguished career. Professor Donald J. Pisani, my dissertation director, was the very model of a gentleman scholar. He was patient and prodding in equal measure. I owe much to the University of Oklahoma and especially the Department of History under the leadership of Professor Robert Griswold. He once called me into his office for what I feared would be a scolding but instead said, “I just want to give you a pep talk.” The Department supported me first as a graduate assistant and later entrusted me with many adjunct teaching opportunities. An A. K. Christian research grant allowed me to spend time in Wyoming archives and buffered travel costs during a summer of rising gas prices. Kristi Glenn of the Graduate College helped me negotiate the final push to the end, always with a smile. Barbara Million saved me from the boggling bureaucracy of graduate school, but more than that she was a true friend. Thank you, Barbara. The staff of the Bizzell Library obtained countless iv items for me without complaint. The Western History Collection at the University is a gem, and it was a privilege to work late nights in the reading room. The staff of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie also welcomed me into their fine collections. I am most grateful for the blessing of family and friends and the loving care that surrounds me on every side. My parents, Wilson and Sherry, strengthen me when I stand, comfort me when discouraged, and raise me up when I fall. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for everything. To my sister, Carrie, my brothers-in-law Sean and Ted, and my nephew Will, thank you. My in-laws, Neal and Mary Leader, and Sue Wycoff, were wells of wisdom and support. I have more friends than I can number. Brad and Lisa Raley, fellow travelers on this road, were unending sources of support and encouragement. Let’s play golf again, Brad. Other friends near and far carried me through even when they were not aware of it: Max and Jennifer Toperzer, Jake and Kristin Fisher, Brad Talley and Heather Toney, Rick and Murray Henke, Tyrrell and Sharri Conway, J. P. Leary and Adrienne Thunder, Megan Benson, Kelly Lankford, Matt Despain, Adam and Jenn Reed, Larry Turvan and Darren Mann, Nikki and Billy Thompson, Frankie and Allison Ramirez, v Kenneth and Patsy Bratz, Dwight and Mary Helt. The sweet people of St. John’s Episcopal Church and the Oakerhater Community reminded me that there is more to life than the past or even the present. Peace be with you. And Sara. My amazing and gorgeous wife, Sara. Love is patient and love is kind; it bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. Sara, you are love. You are my strength in need, my counselor in perplexity, my comforter in sorrow, and my companion in joy. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE . viii CHAPTER 1 Grazing the Commons: An Introduction to the Livestock Industry and Francis E. Warren. 1 2 Inside Warren’s Drive for Arid Land Cession and State Controlled Grazing Policy, 1890-1898 . 36 3 External Pressure: Frederick V. Coville and the Genesis of Managed Grazing . 90 4 After Cession, the Next Best Thing?: Warren and the Politics of Managed Forest Grazing, 1899-1906 . 133 5 Living With It: Federal Grazing, Fencing Scandals, and Francis E. Warren, 1906-1920 . 176 6 Warren’s Final Years and a Deadlocked Search for a Grazing Policy, 1920-1929 . 219 7 Final Thoughts . 280 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 290 vii PREFACE While conducting research for this dissertation, I had a curious conversation in the Reading Room of the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming. I made small talk with another researcher while I waited for ever more document boxes to be plucked from the shelves of the archives. She was a grandmotherly woman with bright eyes and a weathered face. As I recall, she was researching genealogical records. She asked me what subject brought me to Wyoming. “Grazing policy,” I replied. Without missing a beat she rolled her eyes and said, “Humph. Taylor Act, I suppose,” referring to the 1934 New Deal legislation that forever changed the relationship between ranchers on the public domain and the federal government with the creation of grazing districts. “No, not really,” I said. “The time before the Taylor Act.” In an instant, her judgmental expression lifted, replaced with a smile. “Oh! The good old days!” I still wonder about that exchange. First, why the assumption that because I was studying grazing policy I viii must be researching the Taylor Act? And why the nostalgia for the era before Taylor? To my regret I did not ask her to explain her reaction. Perhaps she had a living memory of the generation before her who knew life in Wyoming before the Great Depression, before the New Deal’s reorganization of land policy, of a time when the public domain meant something entirely different from what most twentieth-century westerners came to know. Was her disdain for the Taylor Act merely a standard response to FDR in a solidly Republican state? Was she part of a family or a business that suffered financially from grazing policy changes? What would her reaction have been if I had said that I was also writing about Senator Francis Warren? (A conversation about Warren with another Wyoming resident ended with the words, “He’s the person we love to hate.”) She was a stranger, our archive boxes arrived, and our conversation ended. I will never know her story. But in many ways this study grows out of those same questions. ix “And because it’s Wyomin it don’t seem so interestin to you?” Nikole’s grandfather drew a bottle from an inside pocket, unscrewed the cap. “Yeah. I guess so.” The same grassy shadows, the same long wind, everlasting fence. “Kid, let me tell you. Goddamn important things happened in this place.” --Annie Proulx, “The Governors of Wyoming,” Close Range: Wyoming Stories CHAPTER 1 GRAZING THE COMMONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY AND FRANCIS E. WARREN In June 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Taylor Grazing Act. By granting the federal government the power to regulate grazing, the law marked a fundamental change in the administration of the public domain. At the time, the law did not attract much attention; it was a “western issue” and just another item to tick off on the New Deal laundry list. Even the New York Times grouped the signing with other routine measures necessary for Roosevelt to “clear his desk” before taking a summer vacation. Roosevelt’s White House issued a statement about the new law. The passage of the act, the statement said, marked “the culmination of years of effort to obtain from Congress express authority for Federal regulation of grazing on the public domain in the interests of national conservation and of the livestock industry.” 1 Now the Secretary of the Interior would have sweeping powers to create grazing districts, as well as the authority to regulate and manage the number of livestock per range and the particular season of the year grazing would be permitted. As the Taylor Act was passed, the city 1 of Washington, D.C., baked under a summer heatwave. Only a month earlier dust storms from the Midwest had deposited Great Plains topsoil on the nation’s capital, literally bringing the crisis of the West to the East. 2 In the midst of dust bowl and depression, the Taylor Act seemed to be just another New Deal program designed to provide a measure of relief and, more importantly, to regulate agriculture. What neither the Times nor the White House press statement commented on, however, was the wholesale change in American public land policy that the Taylor Act represented. In the context of regional drought and national depression, it was viewed as a conservation measure. Few noticed that it effectively ended the era of homesteading, to say nothing of the open range. 3 Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) were not pleased with the new law. In the previous three years, ranchers had seen cattle prices drop by as much as fifty percent. 4 But even as they petitioned the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to classify the entire state of Wyoming as a drought area, the WSGA lashed out at Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace when he visited the state.

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