The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 55
686 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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John Thomas Lytle: Cattle Baron
favor of the legislation, but the vote failed because of a lack of a
quorum. As the spring drives were getting under way, time did not
permit the cattlemen the luxury of Congressional delays. The sup-
porters of the bill made no further attempts in that session to secure
passage of the livestock highway bill."
Contemporaneous with the quarantines was a decline in the demand
for Texas cattle. The Longhorn had long been inferior in quality to
the beefier northern livestock, and in 1885 a sufficient supply of
superior shorthorn cattle was available for purchase. Texas cattlemen
suffered accordingly."
This change in the ratio between supply and demand is easily seen
in the example of one of Lytle's contracts. In early February, 1885,
Colonel B. B. Groom, general manager of the Francklyn Land and
Cattle Company, contacted Lytle and asked that the Captain aid in
marketing the Francklyn's cattle. Organized in 1882 on vast Panhandle
holdings, the Francklyn Company was deeply in debt by 1885 and
needed desperately to sell most of its available stock to meet pressing
financial commitments. Colonel Groom had confided in Frank G.
Brown, the company's secretary in New York, that he planned to hire
Lytle and J. Henry Stephens"' of San Antonio to transport and to sell
the ranch cattle, for they were more familiar with the livestock business
than any other two cattlemen. Toward the end of February, Groom,
Lytle, and Stephens agreed that for $i.oo per head, Lytle and Stephens
would take charge of all Francklyn cattle in Greer County, see to all
matters of the trail, sell the cattle on the northern market, and deposit
the proceeds-less their fee-at the direction of the Francklyn Company.
Groom was confident of success, and he wrote Brown that Lytle and
Stephens had marketed between them 75,000 head the previous year;
therefore, he believed they would have little trouble with only a third
that number. Upon the herd's arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in June,
Lytle notified Groom that he expected sales to total $ioo,ooo by July 1,
$200,000 by August 1, and the balance by mid-September, and that
"1Congressional Record, 49th Cong., Ist Sess., 1885-1886, XVII, Pt. 1, 346, 376, Pt. 2,
2025, Pt. 3, 2521, 2573, 2668, Pt. 4, 3985-3936; see also House Reports, 49th Cong., ist
Sess. (Serial No. 2438), Report No. 1128.
"Edward Everett Dale, The Range Cattle Industry (Norman, 193o), 107.
"Stephens, who owned a trailing company in San Antonio, was apparently hired by
Groom because of the immense size of the herd he planned to market; Groom evidently
felt that two firms were necessary to handle 25,00o head. Stephens and Lytle had worked
together before, primarily in the Panhandle; but it is not known if they ever merged
their businesses. See Sheffy, The Francklyn Land and Cattle Company, 155-157.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968, periodical, 1968; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117145/m1/73/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.