Bankers and CattlemenIn the latter part of the nineteenth century the Eastern financier, attracted by the propaganda of individual promoters, the blandishments of public relations men and business acquaintances, invested heavily in the Western range cattle industry. This book is the story of these men and the story of the business and politics of the cattle industry from 1870 to 1900. The Eastern capitalists who financed the business of raising cattle arrived not on horseback but on the gritty red plush of Pullmans, and they took their bourbon in places like the Cheyenne Club, where good wine flowed freely and the entertainment was supplied by the likes of the graceful Lily Langtry. Mr. Gressley has given us the stocks-and-bonds, Havana-cigar, mahogany-and-leather side of the cowboy era. The scions of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia fortunes--men such as Marshall Field, William Rockefeller, E.C. Converse, and Nathan Thayer--their portfolios lined with the rich surpluses of the robber-baron era, followed the come-on of seeming profits and then learned the hard way about the Western version of drought and the business cycle. There are no gunslingers in this book, but it is filled with good guys, bad guys, and big-time, big-moneyed gamblers who made the monte dealers of Western romance look like tinhorn gamblers. Colorful and readable though his is, Mr. Gressley's research is an example of the new Western scholarship which offers much more than trail-dust and saddle-leather romanticism. Here are the hard business facts of a hard and colorful era in American history -- Book jacket. |
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48th Congress American Cattle Trust Baker Library Bank bankers Bell Ranch Boston capital Cattle Company Cattle Industry Collection cattlemen cent Charles Cheyenne Chicago Clarence King Colorado commission agent commission firm convention cowboys Dakota Denver dividends Eastern investors economic Elkins Ellwood Collection Francis Smith Growers Association Collection H. K. Thurber H. P. Drought Harvard University Hauser herd Higginson Historical Society History Research Center Ibid interest investment Isaac Ellwood January John Clay Joseph Ames Kansas City Lance Creek Land and Cattle Laramie letter Letterbook Levi Leiter loan Louis Lyman Gage manager Montana Nebraska organization partner political profit railroad ranch Range Cattle Industry Rosenbaum San Antonio Senator Smillie Smith and Company Stock Growers Association stockholders Teschemacher and deBillier Texas Thomas Adams Thomas Sturgis tion Union Pacific University of Wyoming Van Duzee versity of Wyoming Warren West Western History Research Western Range Cattle William winter wrote Wyoming Stock Growers York