Cattle Party

Down upon El Paso's 217 bars last week swooped ten inspectors dispatched by the Texas Liquor Control Board to enforce the State law against the sale of hard liquor by the drink. El Paso never took Prohibition very seriously because Mexico's gay Juarez was always just across the Rio Grande River over 2^ toll bridges. Lately the city has been wide-open in defiance of State law. What annoyed the city's barkeepers last week was that the inspectors arrived two days before the 40th annual convention of the American National Livestock Association brought 1,500 of the primest U. S. cattlemen to town.

Even had the inspectors not closed up the town, El Paso s saloon keepers were doomed to disappointment. Rulers of three-fourths of the West's privately-owned range, the cattlemen were a sober-sided lot. Drawled C. M. Newman, arrangements committee chairman and an oldtime El Pasoan, as he doffed his black sombrero to the delegates: "It's getting so you can't tell a cattleman from a businessman." Only half the cattlemen sported high-heel boots and ten-gallon hats. None tucked in his pants. Sheep raisers and cattlemen, who traditionally loathe one another, shared tables in the Juarez cabarets. The only six-gun to be seen in El Paso last week was on a slick young ticket-taker at the Ellanay Theatre where Gary Cooper was playing in The Plainsman.

Plenty of cattlemen present remembered the tough old days. Past President Charles E. Collins, who has been in the saddle for 50 years and still rides his 50,000 Colorado acres in sub-zero weather, could recall the time when nothing except long-horn cattle roamed the range. And presented to the convention was Rev. L. R. Millican, 84, a wrinkled, white-thatched Baptist circuit-rider who as a boy knew General Sam Houston, father of Texas independence.

More typical was bespectacled Association President Albert K. Mitchell, who grazes 500,000 acres for Red River Cattle Co. near Albert, N. M. Both he and the town were named for an uncle. One of the ten top U. S. registered Hereford breeders. President Mitchell was chiefly concerned about tariffs and quotas, for particularly painful to cattlemen are Secretary of State Hull's reciprocal trade pacts, which tend to lower the fences against foreign meat. Cried President Mitchell: "South America is the only fly in the cowman's ointment. Otherwise he is riding high and handsome. This Argentine business is Secretary Hull's idea to promote peace and world markets. He is a high-class gentleman but he is making a mistake."

"Argentine business" that bothered Mr. Mitchell is an unratified sanitary convention to replace the present embargo on Argentine meat, promulgated ostensibly to keep out foot & mouth disease. The sanitary convention would admit meat from uninfected Argentine districts instead of considering the whole country under a foot & mouth quarantine.

Beef Tastes. From the cattlemen's biggest customers, the meat packers, came the most radical notion advanced at the meeting. Reporting a record slaughter last year (16,900,000 head), predicting higher cattle prices for this year because of the short corn crop, Vice President Paul C. Smith of Swift & Co. informed the cattlemen that the average beefeater does not really want "prime" grades. Cattlemen were wasting their time trying to breed up prime stock. Among the qualities of prime beef is tenderness when rare and when broiled. The fact is, declared Packer Smith, that 95% of all women, 75% of all men, like their roast beef not rare but well done. And ordinary beef if well done is as tender as prime.

Rustlers. The cattlemen also talked about a lively menace to their business--cattle rustling. Gone except in the cinema is the oldtime rustling ring, which risked lynch law to cut out a bunch of cattle in the dead of night, run them down a secret canyon toward a trail or a railroad on the border. Nevertheless, cattlemen, while vague on figures, estimate that rustlers now take a greater toll than in the purple past.

With fast trucks on paved highways, modern rustlers sneak down on an unguarded herd, shoot a few head with a silenced rifle, are 200 mi. away before the loss is discovered. Meantime the carcasses may have been butchered at leisure, put in refrigerators aboard the truck. Or the rustlers may load the steers alive, whisk them away, perhaps to another state, sell them with a forged bill of sale as evidence of ownership. In most cattle states cattlemen's associations maintain their own anti-rustler forces which perform such miracles of detective work as tracing an odd hoof to a matching hide, and the hide to the rustler. But rustling continues to thrive and the assembled cattlemen last week resolved to seek Federal laws against interstate transportation of rustled beef.

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