Margaret derry ontarios cattle kingdom purebred breeders and their world, 1870 1920 university of toronto press (2001)

Preface++vii Acknowledgments xiii 1 Ontario and Agiculture, 850-+920+++ 2 Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders and Their World 14 3 Purebred Breeding, Cattle Production, and Re

O N T A R I O ' S C A T T L E K I N G D O M

Purebred Breeders and Their World, 1870-1920

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-4866-8

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Derry, Margaret Elsinor, Ontario's cattle kingdom : purebred breeders and their world, 1870-1920

1945-Includes bibliographical references and index.

Frontispiece: Group of Thoroughbreds.

From Report of the Ontario Agricultural Commission, vol 4, 1880.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the

Ontario Arts Council.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Preface++vii Acknowledgments xiii

1 Ontario and Agiculture, 850-+920+++

2 Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders

and Their World 14

3 Purebred Breeding, Cattle Production, and Regulation 53

4 The Relationship of Purebred Breeders to theGeneral Beef-Farming World in Ontario 86

5 Purebred Breeding and Dairying 107

6 Ontario Cattlemen and Canadian Beef Farming 116

7 The Ontario Beef Farmer and the Meat Industry 133

8 Conclusion 149Epilogue 156

Notes6+163 Biblography++1+1 Ind+x++15

Plates follow page 29

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This book is about the world of Ontario purebred cattle breedersbetween 1870 and 1920 and the impact of their work on the Canadianbeef cattle industry specifically and national dairying tangentially Whilethe topic appears to be a specialized one, in fact it offers information oncattle farming generally and even explains something of the dynamics

of agriculture itself My study of purebred cattle breeders in Ontario isintended not only to provide knowledge about specific aspects of live-stock farming, but also to introduce the reader to the broaderop++++how the world of agriculture worked One of the chief difficulties inunderstanding the dynamics of the rural past is grappling with the factthat it presents such a diverse picture In any exploration of agriculturalhistory the scholar is confronted with a bewildering array of social, eco-nomic, and cultural characteristics, making it hard to understand agri-cultural thinking, to find commonality of patterns, or to appreciate theoccupation in a comprehensive way This problem is especially exasper-ating because farming was the occupation of so many Canadians formost of the country's history How can we grasp the diverse natur o+fagriculture in relation to the underlying homogeneity implied by farm-ing's ubiquitous presence? It seemed to me that the story of a particularfarm enterprise could illustrate how underlying patterns existed withinthe diverse warp and weave of agriculture's complex fabric Characteris-tics of agricultural thinking, or expertise, in relation to the practice +ffarming could be discerned

This history of Ontario purebred cattle breeding and its relationship

to cattle production generally in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies is approached in a rather unusual way: I tend to focus on theherds - purebred and otherwise - as much as on the people who ere-

ated them My reasons for doing so are twofold First, the livestock cantell us what people thought, because the animals were living examples

of cattle-breeding theory By addressing cattle characteristics, we can seehow both purebred breeders and farmers hoped to market their prod-uct, and that these individuals could strategize their production in com-plex ways, via breeding techniques When we look at cattle-breedingmethods, for example, it becomes apparent that by the 1890s the pro-duction of beef generally tended to mirror two patterns: attituds o+ffarmers to purebred breeders' stock and a concurrent intensification

of dairying activities in Ontario It is significant that beef productionreflected certain breeding methods and that beef farming increasinglybecame a by-product of dairying; the two patterns explain what someagricultural practices were and why these practices ex+sd The be+efand dairy industries had become linked far more closely in 1899 thanthey had been in 1879 A farmer in 1899 might describe his beef income

as part of 'dairy' income, or as an added bonus to dairying The bred industry played a role in that linkage, and as a result it is difficult

pure-to fully understand either general beef farming or dairying without anappreciation of purebred breeding

The second reason that a focus on the livestock is important is thatany appraisal of an agricultural industry should take into account thecapability of the animal or plant to provide the marketed product.Scholars have not given enough attention to the role these biologicalunderpinnings played in historical agricultural output The cheeseindustry (a major nineteenth-century sector of dairying in both theUnited States and Canada), for example, is usually assessed by focusingonly on cheese manufacture - be it farm or factory - without any appre-ciation of the role played by the generators of milk used for cheese -namely, the cows Since cheese was just as much the production of cows

as of factories, at least some attention should be given to the tics of the animals and how these shaped the industry By indicating howthe animals were physically changed for meat production through pure-bred breeding, this review of the purebred beef cattle industry showshow farmers used the beasts that provided beef I aso assess why farmr+schose whether or not to use the purebred stock for that purpose, andhow those shifts interacted with marketing systems I hope to reveal howbiological factors embedded in cattle, and how purebred breeder andfarmer assessments of those capabilities, influenced the agricultural out-put of beef The herds embodied forces that were not necessarily com-patible: different visions of people and biology

characteris-Preface+ i+

Specific topics emerge in this story of purebred breeders and theirworld One particularly important one is the process of innovationadoption with respect to animal breeding In spite of the diverse condi-tions on farms, an underlying cleavage exists in this story of purebredbreeders and the larger agricultural world Farmers faced experts overthe acceptance or rejection of breeding theories Various scholars in theUnited States have noted farmer reluctance to use information technol-ogy from 'off the farm' befor+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++information between 1870 and 1920, then, are especially interestingbecause they reflect approaches to change in a transitional period Howdid farmers use biological technology? Why would farmers decide nolonger to rely on their own judgment, but rather, with respect to live-stock biology, to import outside technology? Questions of this naturecannot be answered without reference to expert discourse It is known,for example, that the farming press was the most influential vehicle bywhich new agricultural knowledge became widespread.2 We can learnfrom journals, then, about the early process of how farmers assessed bio-logical innovation from off the farm

Another topic that arises in this study is the fight against human andanimal disease The story of the purebred cattle breeders' world and itsrelationship to general cattle farming tells us about developing medicalopinions in the nineteenth century, about control of disease, and aboutthe relationship between human and animal illness In the process welearn how veterinarians, bacteriologists, and doctors worked with eachother Cattle diseases were intimately linked with the evolution of statedevelopment, with regulation, and with the economy

Two closely related issues are the development of regulation for allpurebred breeding in Canada and the evolution of breeding methodol-ogy The concept of herd books and control of the documentatio +ofpurebred stock arose in these years and dovetailed with shifting ideas onbreeding methods It is important to understand herd books and breed-ing theory for farm animals in the 1870 to 1920 period for two particu-lar reasons First, it was within this time frame that the eugenicsmovement - the drive for greater 'purity' and improvement of thehuman race - took place, and we do not know enough about the rela-tionship between ideas on the breeding of animals and those on thebreeding of people Second, the breeding methods applied to animalsthat we see today - not only in the production of farm stock, uo++fhouse pets as well - evolved between 1870 and 1920 Many nineteenth-century animal-breeding theories are still with us today, and therefore

expert discourse of the nineteenth century has much to say about theway animals are bred in the present Modern genetics has only justbegun to influence how to breed good livestock or pets That science,more in the form of quantitative and population genetic theory than inMendelian genetics, has started to make it easier to achieve desiredresults Even so, the breeding of animals is still to some degree an art.Indeed, it could be argued that the views of farmers and purebredbreeders on animal breeding in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies would come to form the core of what the modern approachhas become.

Economic implications emerge in this story as well Examples are thelinkages of Ontario's purebred industry to the nation, Ontario's generalbeef cattle production from a national point of view, and the function-ing of the beef cattle market and its relationship to both consumer andcattle producer One economic pattern that is explored is the east-to-west linkages of the beef cattle industry The production of Canadianbeef cattle did result from west-to-east linkages, but not the ones that arecommonly held to be true It has been stated, for example, that by the1880s western cattle came to Ontario to be fattened for slaughter Theydid not in fact do so until after 1920 In contrast, in the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries the situation was the reverse - Ontariostock went west for feeding Economic implications also emerge in anassessment of the impact of product quality on the industry This studyexplains product quality and shows how that is of crucial importance toany economic understanding of the industry or of farmer inputs andoutputs

Because no discussion of the Ontario situation is complete withoutreference to the province's position relative to that of other provinces, Ilook into what was happening across Canada with respect to the pure-bred industry and also beef cattle raising I assess the relative positions

of the provinces in order to achieve an understanding of the nationalpicture My aim is to comprehend the relationship of the provinces tothe whole, not to present an in-depth analysis of the industry in eachregion Provincial and Dominion government documents are used asthe main sources to do this It is perhaps worth noting that little written

in French turned up from these sources on the Quebec circumstances.French-Canadian farmers were far more likely to practise dairying, notbeef farming, in a commercial way, and that fact probably at leastpartially explains the relative lack of French-language material on b+efcattle The purebred situation in Quebec provoked writing by French-

Pr+e++ i+

Canadian experts in the English language, a phenomenon discussedlater in this book Quebec Department of Agriculture reports were writ-ten in French but, like other provincial governments in the late nine-teenth century, they assessed cattle affairs by using only Dominionstatistics Government documents showed that beef cattle raising wasnot critical to Quebec or the Maritimes either, and also that my story,from a national point of view, was centred on Ontario and its relation-ship to western Canada, particularly Alberta For this reason, Albertacattle ranching and farming received more attention from me than thebeef industry in provinces other than Ontario

Some issues that surface in the book beg more extensive researchthan this study can give Many of these topics are related to the industrymost closely affiliated with beef cattle farming - the meat industry Thisbook deals with matters relating to live cattle, not to dead meat Theimpact of transported dead meat on the movement of live cattle is notinvestigated The meat trade in its entirety needs to be better under-stood before we see how it affected cattle farming I hope that this workstimulates more in-depth analysis of the beef packing industry (whichwas totally separate from the pork packing industry) and its relationship

to central stockyards, and also of the regulation of the meat industy We

do not comprehend the beef processing industry well enough to ciate the ultimate driver behind both industries: patterns of consump-tion Our understanding of the way farms worked with the meatindustry to fulfil consumer needs, and the process of consumption itsl+f

appre-as it applied to different social groups rather than per capita, would begreatly enhanced by a better understanding of many aspects of the meatindustry

A few comments beyond what has already been said about sourcesused for the research of this book might be added here While I utilizedstatistical material, I relied more heavily on expert discourse to tell mystory The views of the experts, of course, represented only what theseindividuals thought Farmer dialogue that took place over the farmfence on subjects such as livestock and expert opinions would probablyoffer a different point of view, but unfortunately we do not have records

of these talks Expert discourse emerged not just in the farm press, butalso from other sources A very significant one was government docu-ments Sessional Papers of governments at the provincial and Dominionlevel and reports of provincial and Dominion Departments of Agricul-ture supplied valuable material on circumstances in Ontario and inother provinces Breeder association reports and contemporary works

on animal breeding and farming techniques provided wonderfulsources as well Monographs on the historical development of variousbreeds offered another perspective It was possible to trace the excite-ment that purebred breeders must have felt over developments in theirworld Poring over herd books and registration lists was less interesting,but the activity did teach me how to link types of stock to certain groups

of people in a way that would be impossible to understand otherwise.The letters of Arthur Johnston, Ontario Shorthorn breeder, were invalu-able Information on markets, breeding, the structure of breed associa-tions, relationships with other breeders, international implications, anddifficulties with quarantine emerged in this breeder's personal dis-course Reading them also revealed the history of some individual ani-mals Their stories added colour to the research process, and I hope aswell to the finished book

My story of purebred cattle breeders and their world reveals strategies

to control markets, and the process of innovation adoption through ticular emphasis on animals as cultural texts The animals reflected whatexperts and farmers thought about agricultural practices and marketcontrol Cattle also show us how agricultural technology was inevitablymeshed with biology In spite of the diversity and complexity that agri-culture presents with respect to beef cattle farming, then, we do see def-inite patterns in the industry It is my hope that this study of Ontariopurebred cattle breeders and their impact on the general cattle-farmingworld will illustrate at least one aspect of the dynamics of agriculture

par-A cknowledgments

Work that was both practical and academic went into the writing of thisbook The study developed initially from farm experience as a purebredbreeder and from academic work that in its earliest form was a PhD the-sis On the practical side, I learned a great deal about present-day agri-culture generally and cattle breeding particularly after my husband,children, and I decided to become breeders of purebred beef cattle Itwas quite an experience for city people! From farmers and fellow pure-bred breeders of cattle, from show judges and the 4H leaders whotaught our children about the practical aspects of farming activities,over the years I became aware of a totally new world On the academicside, when I returned to graduate school in the doctoral program at theUniversity of Toronto's Department of History, I gravitated quite natu-rally to the subject of historical cattle production for my dissertation.History and geography scholars at the University of Toronto helped mesee other farming issues outside the practicalities of agricultural work.From Ann Robson I became aware of the underlying developments inBritain that were the basis of livestock breeding in Ontario From JimLemon I learned agricultural practices of the past, especially in theUnited States From Carl Berger I came to appreciate the larger intellec-tual world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in bothOntario and Canada From my doctoral supervisor, Craig Brown, Ilearned the most He supported me throughout the program andoffered clear, helpful advice while I was writing my dissertation Theappraisal readers for thesis defence, Ian Radforth of the Universit +ofToronto and Harriet Ritvo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,supplied insightful comments on the completed dissertation

I found when I wrote the dissertation that there was a paucity of

infor-mation on the agricultural history of Ontario in the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, especially that relating to the livestock indus-tries While a purebred breeding aspect of cattle farming was not thelargest sector of that livestock enterprise, I came to see the evolution ofpurebred breeding as central to wider developments within that world.When Gerry Hallowell of the University of Toronto Press invited me tosubmit a manuscript based on the conversion of my thesis to a book,

I chose to emphasize the story of purebred breeding to a greaterdegree than I had in the thesis In that process, it became obvious to

me that cattle production in Ontario and Canada at the end of thetwentieth century could be understood more comprehensively whenlate-nineteenth-century patterns were more fully understood I alsofound that patterns in all livestock production (and the breeding of petanimals, for that matter), not just cattle improvement, were madeevident this way

This book has been published with the help of a grant from theHumanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds pro-vided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Can-ada A number of people helped me bring the manuscript with its neworientation and information to completion Gerry Hallowell, EmilyAndrew, and Jill McConkey of the University of Toronto Press aided mewith submission for publication Frances Mundy and Wayne Herringtonhelped see the book through to completion I was fortunate in the peerreview process to have the readers that I dd for th Universty +++fToronto Press and the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program Anony-mous reviewers provided insightful comments and many helpful recom-mendations, which in the end greatly improved the book Discussionsabout cattle with fellow purebred breeders made me understand morecomprehensively the issues that earlier breeders had faced One farmer,Dave Jackson, read the manuscript and offered useful comments Afterrevisions at this stage, the manuscript was reviewed by my peers ShelleyMcKellar and Allison Kirk-Montgomery, PhD candidates in the Depar-ment of History, University of Toronto Their ideas and encouragementresulted in an immensely improved book Michelle Leung supplied mewith valuable material that I had been unaware of My husband, DouglasDerry, who is a chartered accountant, spent many hours reading themanuscript and gave sound advice on overall themes and the economicarguments that I made And again Craig Brown supplied wonderful sup-port He reviewed the manuscript and provided many comments on thestructure, style, and content of the new work Without the input of all

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O N T A R I O ' S C A T T L E K I N G D O M

Purebred Breeders and Their World, 1870-1920

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Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920

'Old Bossy is easily the most important of all lower animals upon thegreen-carpeted footstool of the Great Creator,' stated A.C Wood, a pop-ular, early-twentieth-century writer who had been raised on an Ontariofarm He went on to say that 'there is more attention of++++++++++++books than any other animal, bar none' and that 'artists are forever put-ting her into their pictures, too, and all her comings and goings arepleasurable to behold.'1 The appreciation that this Ontario author hadfor cattle was indeed justified By 1870 cattle were bestowing significantfinancial benefits on Ontario farm families through their dual produc-tion of dairy and beef commodities Between 1870 and 1900 the num-ber of stock on the province's farms doubled as farmers tried tocapitalize on the wealth generated by cattle.2 Purebred cattle breedersplayed an important role in the way the cattle industry developed, andthis book describes the work of the breeders and their relationship tobeef farming generally But the story makes more sense when seenagainst a background shaped by many forces The purebred industry,and cattle farming generally, developed within a provincial, national,and international framework, with both non-agricultural and agricul-tural forces This chapter briefly explores certain aspects of that envi-ronment: namely, agriculture and the nation, Ontario's position withinboth, Canada's export trade patterns, the agricultural situation inOntario from 1840 to 1870, and general agricultural changes in Ontariobetween 1850 and 1920

Agriculture represented 40 per cent of the national GDP in 1870.While the role of farming declined in the national economy between

1870 and 1920, agriculture still formed an important sector of the GDP

in 1920 at just over 20 per cent.3 Ontario was clearly a major agricultural

producer within the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies At Confederation in 1867 Ontario had the largest share ofincome devoted to agriculture in the country Although the provinceled the nation in manufacturing output per capita, its relative position

to agricultural output per capita was even stronger.4 Average farmincomes in Ontario were also high relative to those in other parts of thecountry For example, the average Ontario farm income in 1870 wasmore than twice that in Nova Scotia.5 Per capita income was lower ineastern Ontario than in the western section of the province; indeed, thiswestern section provided the highest income earned from farming inthe country Within the national framework Ontario held an importantposition with respect to agriculture related to cattle production as well

In 1870 over 50 per cent of the nation's stock was located in Ontario,and as late as 1920 the province still maintained over 30 per cent of thenation's stock.6 Farm commodities produced from Ontario cattle wereaimed at both domestic and foreign markets The export sector com-manded the interest and attention of contemporaries, even though thataspect of the cattle industry was not the largest segment of the cattleeconomy Contemporary concern with the export arm makes it particu-larly important that we first understand how Canada and Ontario func-tioned, above and beyond the cattle industry, in the general econmy o+fthe Western world

All export aspects of the economy were built on the nation's ships with two countries: Britain and the United States Canada's mainexport trading partners after 1867 were first Britain and then theUnited States Trade with the United States remained strong in sp+ +ofthe abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, while more tan ha+lf

relation-of Canada's imports came from Britain Within this triangle, all threenations experienced the general economic growth that prevailed in theWestern world In 1873 world recession set in, and many countriesmoved to greater protectionism (most notably, as far as Canada was con-cerned, the United States) Although recession lifted in 1879, the Cana-dian economy fluctuated until 1896 Imports exceeded exports in thatperiod, but trade deficits were insignificant because they were compen-sated for by British capital investments Between 1873 and 1896 tradepatterns with Canada's two major trading partners shifted Exports toBritain climbed, and those to the United States fell At the same timeCanada began to import more extensively from the United States.After 1896 Canada benefited from the general economic boom expe-rienced by Western nations Canada's exports grew steadily, in spit o+f

Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920 5

persistent protectionism from the United States, as British and can markets demanded agricultural products and prices rose Thegrowth of British imperial sentiment and of attempts at imperial solidar-ity, through schemes such as preferential imperial tariffs in the late1890s, helped fuel general optimism for the nation's economic future

Ameri-In 1913 world recession again surfaced Recovery in Canada was aged by lower protectionism from the United States and by the outbreak

encour-of the First World War in 1914, which also shifted the export economy.War and adjustment to peacetime brought a basic move in Canada awayfrom economic dependence upon Britain to economic dependence onthe United States It was against this international backdrop that theagricultural export trade, and cattle farming generally, was practised inOntario between 1867 and 1920

The post-1867 Ontario cattle industry evolved within a shifting cultural situation within the province By 1867 farming in the provincehad undergone modifications from the earlier colonial period Therelationship of wheat cropping to other farming endeavours changed aswheat became less important Wheat production had been particularlysignificant between 1840 and 1860, and that fact has aroused consider-able historical debate Early scholars viewed wheat as the staple thatdrove the economic engine of the province after 1840 It has been sug-gested many times that Ontario's economic growth resulted from theprovince's status as a major wheat producer and exporter betweenroughly 1840 and 1860 It has also been assumed that Ontario farmerslargely ignored livestock farming More recently Mclnnis and McCalla,who made a number of studies of Ontario agriculture at mid-century,have shown otherwise Their work reveals that wheat was important, but

agri-it was not a staple (a great deal of the product was exported to Quebecand not outside the nation), and at no time could it be said that wheatwas cultivated at the expense of other farming endeavours Mclnnisrevealed, for example, that in the heart of the wheat-producing region

of Ontario, only about 25 per cent of the farm land was planted in wheat

at the height of the wheat era Looking at Peel County, which was themost prosperous farming area and most heavily committed to wheat, hemade clear that the county was above average in its stocks of animalsand generated an output per acre of animal products that was onlyslightly below provincial average Mclnnis believed that livestock prod-ucts played just as important a role in the functioning of the farm econ-omy as wheat.7 However, although livestock raising might have beenwidely practised in Ontario by 1851, it is fair to point out that wheat still

played a particularly significant role in the farm economy Wheat duced the most cash income for farms Mclnnis's work suggests theimportance of livestock to the farm economy, but at the same time hisanalysis of the 1861 census implies that wheat held a unique position inthe economy because of its special ability to generate income He foundthat farms were more likely to produce a surplus of wheat than anyother commodity - suggesting that wheat was more ikely than any othercommodity to provide income for a farm.8 It seems evident that live-stock was essential for local trade (and for home consumption), butbefore 1860 it was not a cash generator of the same significance aswheat.

pro-Over the first half of the nineteenth century, wheat yields per fielddeclined, thus decreasing potential income Yields had been as high asthirty to forty bushels an acre on recently cleared fields.9 By 1851 about

90 per cent of fall wheat planted resulted in a crop averaging sixteenbushels an acre in Canada West, with only three of forty-two countiesproducing more than twenty bushels an acre.10 The simple crop rota-tion method used by colonial farmers for wheat production - wheat-fallow-wheat and known as 'naked fallowing' - partially caused thesedeclining returns from the fields Naked fallowing reduced soil fertilitybecause it failed to return nutrients to the land Lower crop yields alsoresulted from the natural aging of land newly cleared of trees Earlyfields displayed a heightened fertility because removal of tree coveringresults in abnormally high soil productiveness The drop in crop yields,then, reflected a return of the land to normal conditions as well as theeffects of naked fallowing Because contemporaries were not aware thattree removal changed soil capabilities, experts blamed the dramaticdecline of field productivity on naked fallowing alone Consequentlyfarm journals bemoaned the practice

Experts preached the values of an agricultural system that theybelieved would correct the evil of soil exhaustion caused by the rotationpractice This system was known as 'mixed farming,' or 'scientific farm-ing,' and was founded on the principle that wheat cultivation should gohand in hand with livestock production and the planting of foddercrops The symbiotic relationship between wheat and animal husbandrywas based on the theory that better wheat yields would result from rota-tion systems that provided nutrients to the land, as well as fertilizatio +ofthe soil by animal manure However, because the local market for live-stock in Canada West before 1850 generated just small amounts of cash,the only farmers who emphasized animal husbandry, as well as cropped

Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920 7

wheat, were those with additional income from off the farm.11 Mixedfarming with substantial income potential would not begin until therewas a larger market for livestock products For farmers to find mixedfarming worthwhile, it had to pay

By 1870 the profitability of mixed farming had improved because stock commodities, and more particularly cattle products, had found aforeign market When the Civil War broke out in the United States in

live-1861, new international market opportunities that were not in wheatdeveloped for Canada West farmers The northeastern states were ablenot only to meet their own demand for wheat, but also to export mil-lions of bushels to Britain during the war.12 These states, however, werenot able to supply their own need for beef The war cut off the connec-tion between western cattle-producing areas and the eastern urban con-sumption centres.13 The result was a weak market in the northeasternpart of the United States for Canada West wheat, but a good market forbeef catde Canada West farmers responded to this situation by shiftingtheir agricultural practices to bring them more in line with mixed farm-ing theories, through a new emphasis on livestock production that wasdirected particularly at the raising of beef cattle.14 The American mar-ket for Canada West catde products continued after the war, and evensurvived the 1866 abrogation of reciprocity In 1870 Canada exported tothe United States over one hundred thousand head of cattle, almost all

of which had come from Ontario.15 On the basis of Urquhart and ley's figures in+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Buck-on internal cattle movements in Canada (described in more detail later

in this book), it is possible to state that numbers exported represented

at least 40 per cent of the province's beef cattle sold for meat that year.Clearly an export market motivated farmers to raise more stock than thedomestic market could handle In the years after 1870 Ontario wouldfind a lucrative market for live cattle to varying degrees in Britain as well

as in the United States From 1880 to 1900 approximately 20 per cent ofthe beef catde sold by the province's farmers was exported.16 A greatlyexpanded home-demand made the export market less significant by

1900 than it had been in 1870, but it was the early exportation of cattlethat triggered both the rapid development of Ontario's beef cattleindustry and an exaggerated concern with the export sector of the cat-

de industry Trade with the United States in the 1860s set the whole cess in motion

pro-Even though farmers were more concerned after 1870 with beef (andother livestock) production, in the present age of intense, specialized

farming it is worth emphasizing that until the end of the period understudy farmers continued to produce wheat as well as livestock It was areorientation of value emphasis that had taken place Initially because

of its export potential and later as a result of domestic demand as well,animal agriculture became a cash-generating force to be reckoned with,and therefore it commanded as much respect as wheat But mixed farm-ing continued after 1870 to represent the raising of both wheat and live-stock By 1921, of approximately 177,000 farmers in Ontario, about 300practised dairying to the exclusion of wheat production, and some 600emphasized livestock farming by devoting themselves solely to the rais-ing of sheep, cattle, or horses Most of the beef cattle production in

1921 resulted from the husbandry of Ontario's mixed farmers, whomade up 99 per cent of the province's agricultural producers.18 Farm-ing in Ontario from 1870 to the 1920s, therefore, consistently reflectedthat symbiotic relationship between wheat and livestock/fodder cropproduction that was essential to the system of mixed farming and advo-cated by agricultural experts

It is unclear whether farmers and agricultural experts agreed on thestrategy behind this symbiotic system Some evidence suggests that manyfarmers saw animal production as intrinsically desirable and wheat culti-vation only as a strategy to counteract the market conditions for beefcattle Production levels of wheat were often inversely related to produc-tion levels of cattle While there would be small wheat booms between

1870 and 1882, these coincided with simultaneously falling cattleprices.19 Many farmers apparently chose to plant wheat for the shortterm to counteract poor monetary yields from beef animals Whateverfarmers might think, other evidence implies that agricultural expertsheld different views These people appeared to see cattle farming as amethod to perpetuate better wheat farming The rationale of mixedfarming, today understood as a balance of general livestock/foddercrop and wheat production as complements of each other, oftenseemed in the contemporary literature of experts to represent just asmuch a new method of wheat production as a strategy to overcome poorcattle prices Examples abound on the use of animal husbandry (and itscomplement of fodder crop cultivation) to support wheat farming, or as

a part of wheat farming The old wheat dream did not die easily for cultural experts who advocated mixed farming Professor WilliamBrown of the Ontario Agricultural College noted in 1886 that he had'often said that the fattening of cattle with Ontario conditions [wa++++

agri-marily to manufacture crops [with the use of] manure, and secondarily to

Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920 9

produce food.'20 It could be argued that agricultural experts did not seecattle production as more important than wheat cultivation because theprofitability of wheat remained viable long after the rise of cattle farm-ing.21 While many farmers had adopted the ideas of agriculturalexperts, it seems evident that they did not necessarily practise mixedfarming for the reasons agricultural experts thought they should.Other changes in agriculture between 1870 and 1920 accompaniedthe growth of livestock farming One important change was theincreased spread of mechanization, which had been initiated in the1850s By 1870 the province was becoming mechanized for both wheatand fodder (animal feed) crop farming.22 Most farms had a least onemechanized implement In 1871, of the some 172,000 farms reported inOntario, about 14,000 reported having threshers, 121,000 had fanningmills, 46,000 had hay rakes, and 37,000 had reapers or mowers Therewere, on these farms combined, 289,000 plows, harrows, and cultiva-tors.23 Another indication of increased mechanization by 1871 was thefalling numbers of oxen (castrated adult male cattle used for draft pur-poses on farms) These animals did not work well with better imple-ments, and more particularly larger plows and harrows While thenumber of farms grew between 1851 and 1871 the asolu+e nm+ber+o+draft cattle had fallen by 1871 to approximately one-quarter of what ithad been in 1851, at the same time that the number of horses on farmscame close to doubling.24 Cattle farming, and livestock agriculture gen-erally after 1870, created a demand for more mechanized implements.The result was a spectacular growth after 1870 in the Ontario imple-ment industry, which had been triggered initially by wheat cultivationrequirements of the 1850s The industry would come to reflect thediversification of implements that mixed farming required.25 By the end

of the nineteenth century a great array of horse-powered equipmenthad been invented Farm implements also became increasingly afford-able and therefore more widely available between 1880 and 1900 Forexample, a self-binder sold in 1881 for $300 and cost only half that in

1890.26+From 1875 to the late 1890s mower costs dropped from $85 to

$43, and hay rakes were reduced by half.2++By the 1880s such machinerywas common on Ontario farms.28

In the present age of urbanization many people do not know whattasks farm implements or machines performed, and modern scholarlyliterature is not particularly informative on this matter.29 Outlining whatwork some important implements and machines actually did on farms istherefore useful Implements and machines used for animal husbandry

can be divided by function into two groups: crop cultivation and chorelabour-saving devices The cultivation and harvesting of fodder cropswith late-nineteenth-century implements proceeded as follows The soilwas broken up with a plow Plows varied in size and design, from a sin-gle-blade mouldboard plow with a cutting edge known as a 'share,' to a'ride-on' plow called a sulky plow, which was known as a gang sulky plowwhen it had many blades An instrument called a harrow flattened thedeep ridges left by any plow Harrows varied in type and were useful forother functions such as weeding the growing crop Seed drills wereemployed to plant the crop, and if a harrow was not used to weed, a cul-tivator was All crops were cut with a reaper when they were ready forharvest The product was then either collected by hand and bound insheaves or else was bound by a combined, reaper binder.30 Sheaves weregathered together to form a cone-like structure called a shock and thenleft to sun dry, or cure, for a number of days The shocks were collectedand taken to the barn If the crop was grain, not hay, the seeds were sep-arated from the straw, either in the barn or in the field, with a thresher.Machines that could reap, bind, and thresh grain (known as combines)were available by late in the century, but they were rare If the crop wascorn, it was either sun-cured and returned to the barn in the same fash-ion as hay, or it was harvested in a completely different manner,explained below.

The mechanization of farm work outside that of crop husbandryallowed the size of livestock operations to increase Mechanization,which could reduce the need for manual labour, resulted in the produc-tion of a myriad of tools One example of this type of mechanization wasthe windmill The introduction of windmills in the 1880s provided run-ning water, thus eliminating much of the ordinary task of hand-wateringthe stock when it was housed in winter months.31 Windmills were alsoused to power the sawing of wood, cutting of fodder, and gridin +o+ffeed.32 Another major labour-saving implement was the manurespreader Although primitive spreaders were in existence in Ontario bythe 1880s, the task of manuring fields, one of the basic princils +of+mixed farming, generally remained a back-breaking job until near theend of the period under study.33 Manure was hand-shovelled onto thefields from horse-drawn wagons It was not until 1910 that the firsthorse-drawn manure spreaders, which had beaters and were capabl +ofthrowing manure, were available

In addition to mechanization, there were other changes in tural practice that interacted with cattle production between 1870 and

agricul-Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920 11

1920 Shifts in crop husbandry were particularly important The needfor winter food for a substantial number of animals required more from

a farmer than merely leaving fields, which had been used for wheatcropping, in permanent pasture for hay cropping Good quality hay(that is, pasture sun-cured grasses) could only be cultivated by bettercrop rotation and the use of new plants As early as 1880 farmers inOntario practised rotation systems that commonly covered a seven-yearperiod and called for the cropping of various plants Peas were recog-nized by that time as being as effective in retarding the growth of weeds

as naked fallow.34 New species of plants were introduced to the provincebetween 1870 and 1920 to improve hay A major new crop for livestockwas corn By the 1880s the Ontario Experimental Farm at Guelph wasdeeply involved in testing the value of various feeds and found corn to

be the best and the cheapest.35 While the growing of various legumes(for example, different clovers) was also initiated early in the period,what would later be recognized as the most important of these, alfalfa,was the last to be recognized 'I believe alfalfa, even if it may not havethe value that scientific men lead us to believe, is to be one of the mostimportant factors in future beef production, perhaps a more importantone than any other forage plant we have,' Thomas McMillan, a well-known contemporary Ontario cattleman, told farmers in+++++++++++valuable as it was, would not replace corn Shifts in land use and foddercrop husbandry after 1870 paralleled the expansion of livestock farm-ing, as Table 1.1 indicates More and more acres were planted in cropssuch as hay and clover, fodder corn, and oats for animal consumption,

at the same time that fewer and fewer acres were planted in grains such

as wheat and barley for human consumption

Methods of feeding and preserving fodder crops also shifted between

1870 and 1920 While farmers commonly pasture-fed animals in thesummer and hay-fed them in the winter, other crop maintenance andfeeding techniques were also used Year-round stall-feeding and thefeeding of fresh, green fodder gained some acceptance by farmers atthe beginning of the period In the 1870s it was suggested by agricul-tural experts that stall-feeding animals year round, rather than summerpasturing, was cheaper and more efficient The system was known assoiling Green forage, or cut-up fresh plants rather than sun-cured feed,was fed to stock in the barn under the soiling system Professor WilliamBrown of the Ontario Agricultural College argued that soiling withgreen fodder plants was three times as efficient in land use as grazing,which meant that three times the number of animals could be sup-

Barley _ 849 701 578 579 413

Oats _ 1,375 1,882 2,399 2,777 2,761

Fodder corn _ 207 224 511 710 563

Hay and clover 1,691 2,529 2,462 2,527 3,415 3,456 SOURCE:+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Economic History of Ontario from Confederation to the Second World Wa+++++++++++++++++ Toronto Press, 1987), Table 3.1, 366; Bureau of Industries, Report (Sessional Papers 26,

Ontario, 1901), 25, 26, 29, 32.

ported on the same amount of land as grazier patterns would support.37

Part of the idea behind soiling was carried over in the 1880s to the lem of winter storage of feed Ensilage of plants - the preservation ofthem in a green state over winter - became increasingly popular inOntario It was at that time a relatively new practice anywhere in theworld The system was thought to have begun in France and wasbrought to the United States in 1882, from where it was transported toBritain It appeared to enter Ontario from the United States.38 The pres-ervation of fodder by ensilage compelled the designing of new build-ings The construction of silos, structures designed to hold this type offeed, accompanied farmers' use of ensilage fodder in Ontario

prob-While ensilage could be made from many plants, its greatest benefitswere seen from the use of corn.39 Effectively the ensilage of corn and itspreservation in silos meant it was possible to soil in the winter In someways soiling and ensilage were the same thing: soiling represented sum-mer feeding and ensilage represented winter feeding of green plantmaterial rather than sun-cured feed.40 While the use of soiling wouldwane, however, that of ensilage would remain Ensilage would increas-ingly accompany winter hay feeding The ultimate significance of soil-ing, apparently, was that it introduced the idea that green feed, ratherthan simple sun-cured feed, provided superior fodder Between 1892and 1917 the acreage devoted to corn for silos in Ontario increasedsteadily from 91,000 acres to 511,000 acres.41

Between 1840 and 1920, then, Canada and Ontario experienced

Ontario and Agriculture, 1850-1920 13

many changes that influenced the world of cattle farmers The nationaleconomy shifted with respect to trading partners for both import andexport sectors The economic boom of the 1850s and 1860s wasreplaced by economic instability from 1873 to 1896 Recovery lasteduntil the recession of 1913, but war conditions would shift the economyagain Functioning within that general economic situation, farmers inOntario altered their agricultural practices in relation to their ability tosell on the export market Wheat production occupied a special posi-tion in the agricultural economy between 1840 and 1860 When itbecame possible to sell cattle products in a significant way on the Amer-ican market in the 1860s, agriculture shifted in Canada West More cat-tie were produced, and general changes accompanied that rise in cattleraising Mechanization, already underway as a result of wheat produc-tion, spread more rapidly New crop husbandry methods and greaterfodder crop cultivation were also introduced All of these processesaccelerated after the western prairies became major producers of wheat.First Manitoba and then by the late 1890s the North West Territories(which would later form Saskatchewan and Alberta) contributed to theCanadian economy with increasing volumes of exported wheat

The evolution of cattle farming in Ontario witnessed the g+o+++ofbeef raising, but beef farming was to become entangled with dairying It

is difficult to understand one segment without addressing the wefre+o+fthe other Central to an appreciation of both, and pivotal to the direc-tion either took, was the rise of the purebred breeders and the influencethey and their animals had on all cattle agriculture The next chapterlooks more closely at the development of the purebred industry withinthis agricultural world

Livestock Expertise:

Ontario Purebred Breeders and Thei W++ld

On a cold, clear night in February 1881, anticipation was high at BowPark, the Shorthorn breeding centre of the late George Brown A valu-able cow, the imported Kirklevington Duchess of Horton, was about togive birth to a calf from the service of Fourth Duke of Clarence, who was

a famous Shorthorn bull in Canada at the time The birth arousedintense disappointment The herdsman reported to the two managers

of the farm, 'with a very solemn face,' that the cow 'had just dropped abull calf, and awful to think of, it was a white one.' The men went out tosee 'this unwelcome arrival,' and when they got 'to the box he was born

in, he was just getting up on his forelegs seeking for food He was a ls+ychap and white as the snow outside.' Because of his colour the calf, Clar-ence Kirklevington, became a show steer (a castrated male) and not ashow bull (a breeding male) But his career in the ring demonstratedhis excellence in spite of his colour In 1884 at Chicago, the centr +ofNorth America's beef cattle industry, Clarence won every class possible

He was champion Shorthorn steer of any age, the best animal of anybreed, and ultimately the best carcass of any breed or age 'No entrycould do better than that,' commented Grant MacEwan in his h+soy + ofCanadian Shorthorns.1

Clarence was an envoy of an important class of cattle He was, first andforemost, a purebred animal While purebred cattle represented only atiny fraction of the cattle population in Ontario, they comprised theelite section of the cattle-farming world The animals and their breederswere significant beyond their numbers because, together, they influ-enced all cattle farmers Purebred cattle embodied technology for supe-rior production of the living animal, and the way farmers reacted topurebred livestock would reflect how one form of knowledge absorp-

Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders 15

tion evolved The pattern by which purebred cattle spread, then, was astory of innovation adoption Clarence was also an emissary of Ontariobreeders on the international scene because he represented percep-tions about the cattle-breeding technology of purebred breeders in thatprovince His story implies that Ontario purebred cattle had an impact

on cattle breeding outside the boundaries of Ontario and therefore thatpurebred breeding in the province held a respected position in widecircles This chapter introduces the world that created Clarence -Ontario's purebred industry We look here in considerable depth atpurebred breeding, and will see later how this industry fit into thelarger cattle world

The rise of improved livestock everywhere in the Western world must

be seen in context of the larger environment of Britain Three areaswere central to the agricultural transformation in that country that hadtaken place over centuries: innovation, enclosure, and the distribution

of land All three patterns increased the output of food through the ter use of land under cultivation and the extension of farming acreage.Innovation brought superior results from land already in use By the lateeighteenth century the fallow had been replaced by new fodder cropcultivation The planting of legumes and turnips in turn supported alarge livestock population But it would not be until the mid-nineteenthcentury that farmers generally came to see that livestock productionitself could be profitable, and that it could be viewed separately fromwheat production More land came under production through enclo-sure, and shifting distribution of land holding also influenced farm out-put By 1500, 45 per cent of land in England was enclosed, rising to

bet-47 per cent by 1600, 71 per cent by 1700, and 95 per cent by 1914.Changing property-holding patterns, particularly in the nineteenth cen-tury, resulted in the increased land ownership of the nobility.2 Becausethey owned most of the agricultural land and because the income of theBritish aristocrats (unlike those in other European countries) wasclosely tied to agricultural output, the nobles were concerned aboutagriculture's performance They were prepared to put large amount +ofmoney into schemes for improved production, and the impact of thisinvestment should not be underestimated The patronage of the lordsresulted not only in increased agricultural output of the country, butalso in the provision of a favourable environment in which the spear-head of advanced knowledge could take place Technical advances infarming were developed by tenant farmers such as Robert Bakewell(who will be discussed in more detail shortly), not the aristocracy.3 Ten-

ant farmers in turn supplied the lords with that new technology Thus,while tenant farmers experimented with methods of improving live-stock, the nobility funded the experimentation.

While the two groups might not have a great deal in common, andthe welfare of the tenant farmers may not have been at the heart of thearistocrats, the two groups did need each other Tenant farmers found away to earn income, and the nobles believed that they were improvingtheir estates Within aristocratic ranks, however, the buying of purebredstock led to an internal competitive rivalry, which resulted, at least tosome degree, from a hobbyist attitude towards purebred stock Thatperception had little to do with herd improvement In fact, one scholarimplied recently that the entire purebred industry in Britain had beenhobby-oriented, not improvement-driven, and claimed that purebredbreeding of cattle in Britain had not improved the national herd in thetwo hundred yeas from +750 to+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++there is no denying that wealthy buyers of purebred farm animalsacquired the beasts for complex reasons that were not completelyrelated to herd improvement, either on their properties or morebroadly in the nation But while the nobles were interested, at least par-tially, in lordly competition, it cannot be said that tenant farmers wereunconcerned with better production of livestock or that the generalfarm population did not benefit from the experts' work In fact, it hasalso been argued, from a study of the first pedigree herd book, that theearly Shorthorns were bred primarily by farmers for farmers, and notfor the nobility at all.5 While this point of view might represent theopposite swing of the pendulum, it seems fair to say that at least someBritish farmers who were neither experts nor members of the aristoc-racy did use the improved breeds

As a result of aristocratic involvement, all farming received a gooddeal of public attention Better agricultural methods were extensivelybroadcast The most important information on improved farmingmethods in the nineteenth century emanated from the works of aneighteenth-century agriculturalist, Arthur Young Youngs suppor o+fnew rotation systems and the improvement of livestock by purebredbreeding methods influenced agricultural thinking throughout thenineteenth century It was probably partially a result of his influencethat mid-nineteenth-century Britain experienced a new interest in live-stock farming and a decreased concern with the cultivation of wheat(often referred to as corn in Britain) The volatility of the Europeanwheat trade over the first half of the nineteenth century also helped

Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders 17

trigger that shift Numerous poor British harvests and wars in Europecreated periodic shortages of wheat between 1780 and 1815, but politi-cal stability and the better wheat production that followed resulted inlower prices in Britain after 1821 Although a series of tariffs, known asthe Corn Laws, were passed in Britain to help stabilize the situation, thewheat trade continued to demonstrate volatility

When Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, he did so in order

to promote the rise of mixed farming, already under way on the estates

of the aristocracy, rather than to break agricultural interests of thenobility in an attempt to provide cheap imported food for the urbanpoor And in fact the abrogation of protected wheat farming in Britaindid not destroy British agriculture.6 What followed, from 1853 to 1873,was the Golden Age, or what has been described as the era of 'highfarming,' in which animal husbandry and the production of foddercrops received increased emphasis Crop rotation methods also im-proved as the Norfolk system of four-course changes in field cultivationbecame more widely used World recession in 1873 brought whatappeared to contemporaries to be a general agricultural depression inBritain that lasted until 1896 A closer look at the situation, however,reveals that livestock production - especially production that resultedfrom better-bred animals - continued to be profitable and that whatappeared to be a widespread depression was in reality economic hard-ship primarily for wheat farmers After 1896 emphasis on livestock prod-ucts would only increase.7 In spite of fluctuations in the agriculturaleconomy in Britain over the nineteenth century, the period saw anincreasing interest in livestock and an adjustment between arable(grains for human consumption) and pastoral (fodder crop cultivation)farming, a change that was supported by the aristocracy Because bothHouses of Parliament were still dominated by the landed classes overthis period, the agricultural approach of the nobility received the sup-port of the government The combined attention of the lords and thegovernment meant that agriculture, and livestock farming in particular,was linked to national identity Mixed farming was better farming, andimproved agriculture meant an improved nation It was within thisframework of British cattle-breeding evolution that the rise of Ontario'spurebred industry took place

Who were the Ontario purebred breeders? In answering that tion, a discussion about Shorthorn breeders is useful because, until the1920s, Shorthorns outnumbered all other purebred cattle combinedand dominated the purebred industry Social patterns in the Shorthorn

ques-world roughly reflected those of the purebred industry.8 In the 1870sbreeders tended to be immigrants who had settled in Ontario and weregenerally Scottish (although a considerable number were English orIrish) They were in two groups The most influential group, throughtheir domination of government positions relating to agriculture (andsometimes other positions as well) and ownership of expensive breed-ing animals, were wealthy men who maintained large producing herds.These individuals were more likely to import their animals than buyfrom domestic breeders The wealthy breeders were not full-time farm-ers and could be described as hobbyists or amateurs They hired farmmanagers to run their breeding operations Examples of this group

were George Brown, founder of the Globe and a Father of

Confedera-tion, and David Christie, who like Brown was a Scottish immigrant andDominion senator

While these individuals tended to have dreams of being landed tlemen, they also saw their work with livestock as essential for the devel-opment of the nation Their personal interests, it seemed to them,dovetailed well with what they believed their civic responsibilities to be.These attitudes were not unlike those of the landed classes in Britain,and wealthy men in the new country probably knew that they were emu-lating the ideals of the British aristocracy Editors of farm journals wereinclined to see this amateur group as valuable to the livestock industry

gen-for their funding and patronage roles.+The Canadian Breeder and tural Review commented+in 1885 on 'amateu' breeders as being lawyers,

Agricu-doctors, and others who had gone into livestock breeding over the lastten years and as men who had learned to breed good stock The journalargued that these breeders were able to do so because they were willing

to put in a great deal of capital, take substantial losses, and likely toread up-to-date information on both livestock breeding and farming ingeneral.9

The other group of breeders were generally practising, full-time ers who had come to Canada as agricultural labourers or small-scalefarmers in the 1830s and 1840s These men had smaller herds of less-important cattle, were not wealthy, and held no positions of influence ingovernment or agricultural organizations But they brought a love ofgood livestock with them from their farming backgrounds They alsomaintained family connections with the old country, where the breed-ing of improved stock was expanding They were, therefore, in an idealposition to import exceptional stock through family chain connectionsand, with their knowledge of animal breeding, to create breeding herds

farm-Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders 19

of superior, and ultimately expensive, stock Their British backgroundwould make them aware that farmers who bred superior stock couldfind markets for the animals among wealthy patrons They were, ineffect, the experts when the term 'breeder' is applied But the farmer-experts had not yet established a strong niche market among thewealthy amateurs, who provided the logical replacement of a special sec-tion of the British buying class in the new country Good example o+fthis group are John I Davidson, John I Hobson, various member +ofthe Miller family, Simon Beattie, Richard Gibson, John Hope, the Card-house family, Arthur Johnston, and John Dryden

We can learn something of the business practices of the two groups inthis early period from breeder testimony given to the 1880 Ontario Agri-cultural Commission John Clay, manager of Bow Park, which wasGeorge Brown's estate, described operations on this elite farm BowPark bred for purebred breeders and sold most of its stock in the Amer-ican market Out of the two hundred females on the farm, about onehundred and twenty of them produced calves every year Roughly onehundred head would be available for sale every year, leaving twenty forthe replacements that might be needed to maintain the herd after natu-ral losses occurred Operations of the non-elite group, as revealed bytwo breeders, were apparently smaller than that of Bow Park and wereaimed at different markets John I Hobson, a Shorthorn breeder whowould later become a supremely important figure n the livestock world,had a herd of thirty-five to forty head Hobson used his purebred stockfor commercial production of beef meat, not live sales to either pure-bred breeders or other farmers John Miller, another breeder of Short-horns, said he bred purebred cattle to supply farmers with improvedbulls While he did not indicate how successful he was in selling tonon-purebred breeders, his comments imply that his market was differ-ent than either Bow Park's or Hobson's

By 1900 the situation had changed from that of the 1870s First, allbreeders were more evenly divided ethnically as Irish, English, or Scot-tish by descent Second, they were just as likely to be native-born as immi-grants Third, three types of purebred breeders, not just two, could bedistinguished by then: a farmer-expert group that held important posi-tions, a wealthy amateur group, and another farmer group The farmer-expert group, which tended to be composed of farmers who had beenpart of the non-elite group in 1870, held the influential agricultural posi-tions within either government or farming organizations and main-tained the best producing herds of cattle Not only did these individuals

hold positions of power in livestock organizations, but they were also ognized by all purebred breeders as being the expert breeders Animalsfrom their herds, either bred by them or imported through chain con-nections at reasonable cost, were capable - at least sometimes - of gener-ating a good deal of money for the farmer-experts While theseindividuals knew how to create livestock that would command highprices, one must remember that it would take the production of a greatmany animals to achieve the production of a few good ones.

rec-It appears that the extensive breeding knowledge and understanding

of the market for livestock held by these breeders had developedthrough an apprenticeship training within families over generations.The most successful full-time breeders, importers, and sellers of pure-bred cattle learned their trade within the dynamics of a family that hadbred livestock over several, or even many, generations.11 This farmer-expert group was also connected by surprisingly extensive intermarriagepatterns.12 For example, in 1904 William, the son of John Dryden,Shorthorn breeder and Minister of Agriculture for Ontario at the time,married Margaret Miller, daughter of Mrs William Miller, who was thewife of a prominent breeder and the daughter of James I Davidson, afarmer of great importance as an importer.13 Chain connections alsohelp explain the growth of the purebred industry geographically withnNorth America Many Shorthorn breeders in Manitoba, and later inareas farther west in Canada, had family connections with Ontariobreeders Trade patterns in the Shorthorn world across the American/Canadian border were also based on chain connections The Miller fam-ily, for example, had bases in both Manitoba and Iowa, through residentfamily members

Perhaps one of the best examples of a farmer-expert was RobertMiller, descendant of Scottish farming people with large family connec-tions The Millers became established in Ontario early in the nineteenthcentury, and many members of this family bred Shorthorns in the prov-ince (By the mid-1990s the original family farm, Thistle Ha', was still inexistence, breeding Shorthorns, and in the hands of the same family.)14

Robert Miller learned his trade in purebred livestock from his family, as

he explained in 1898: 'My father came here over sixty years ago andbrought Shorthorns with him then He has lived with Shorthorns I havebeen brought up along the same line, and I know nothing else.'15 By thelate 1890s Miller had become a livestock dealer par excellence, a superbbreeder and showman of cattle, as well as an importer Miller crossedthe Atlantic twenty-five times in his lifetime and was able to create mar-

Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders 21

kets for Shorthorns He was the first breeder to induce the CanadianPacific Railway (CPR) to buy bulls for improvement of western livestock

In 1898 the first of such shipments was made from Ontario to the West,with seventy bulls in all Miller had sale connections all over the UnitedStates, Canada, Mexico, and South America.16 His organization was sostrong that he was able to sell cattle for smaller breeders over great dis-tances Robert Miller was outstanding as a cattle expert, but there wereother influential members of this farmer-expert group Good examplesare men mentioned earlier as being members of the non-elite groupafter 1870: Arthur Johnston, John Dryden, John I Davidson, John I.Hobson, and many other members of the Miller family

While the farmer-expert group controlled the affairs of the purebredcattle industry, a wealthy amateur group that owned good and, moreimportant, expensive cattle still did exist But wealthy amateurs were notthe expert breeders or the most significant generators of livestock.These men concentrated on buying costly cattle more than breeding.The farmer-expert group in Ontario had by now found a niche marketwith wealthy breeders It could be argued that the wealthy amateurgroup's most valuable function within the purebred industry was tat+ ofbuyers for the farmer-expert group's production Expert breeders at thetime were well aware of that fact For example, when one farmer-expert,Arthur Johnston, felt compelled in 1906 to sell his stock, he wrote to awealthy breeder, W.D Flatt, requesting that he spend money in order tomake sure that Johnston's auction sale went well.18 Another breederarticulated the importance of the wealthy amateur buyers somewhat df-ferently, however: 'It always strikes me there is perhaps no better safetyvalue for rich men than going into agriculture, as it will keep them from

getting too rich Another way of looking at it, in this age which [sic] the

socialistic element is getting strong, there is no better means of getting

an even distribution of wealth If these wealthy men keep at it longenough it will result in a large distribution of wealth throughout the

,19

province

The wealthy amateur group tended to be represented by individualswho bought expensive animals, bred from them in a limited way for afew years only, and then vanished.20 The pattern, which surely demon-strates that hobbyist tendencies were present in the purebred industry,was particularly true from about 1890 to 1910, and this type of breederwas dominated by wealthy lumbermen.21 Some were influenced by nos-talgia for boyhood farms.22 For example, W.D Flatt bought the familyproperty, Trout Creek Farm, near Hamilton A deep conviction in the

prevailing North American rural myth underlay his nostalgia He wrotethe following to the++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++mind wanders back to the old farm, I can see where mother left thecandle of love burning brightly in the window, the old door wide open,where father left his footprints of the simple life I can see the trail oflove, sacrifice and devotion plainly marked in the rearing of the family.

I can see the trail marked with love, industry and thrift I can trace allthese trails directly into the trail of success.' Central to his vision of thedynamics of a family farm was his mother's agricultural activities 'Myfirst introduction to the value of cows was from my mother,' he said.'From the sale of butter from a few cows, steers from those cows andeggs from a few hens and the garden produce she fed and clothed afamily of seven children, and was often in a position to assist father tomake payments on the land which they had+purchased.+++++hothornsespecially were intertwined with his boyhood farm memories He dis-tinctly recalled a favourite white Shorthorn heifer.24 In 1901 Flattbought a heifer (named Cicely) that had been owned by Queen Victo-ria He sold her at an auction sale he held in Chicago in November ofthat year for $5,000.25

A third group, albeit a small one, of purebred breeders existed by

1900 and was made up of full-time farmers who had only one or two mals.26 It was this group, of the three, that would increase the mostbetween 1900and++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++their purebred stock for herd improvement than for the perpetuation

ani-of purebred cattle It is within this group, then, that we can see the tial beginnings of general herd improvement via the use of purebredcattle

ini-While there was evidently great diversity in the social make-up of thepurebred breeders over the period under study, the breeders - espe-cially those in the first two groups - showed surprising cohesiveness inthe way they identified their work Expert discourse suggests that mostpurebred breeders from 1870 to 1920 (with the exception of those inthe group just outlined) believed three primary characteristicsdescribed what they did and why they did it The three characteristicswere interrelated and resulted from patterns established in Britain'slivestock revolution Breeders were concerned with nation building,were convinced that monetary income was not the prime motivator oftheir work, and saw themselves as being of vital importance to the suc-cess of cattle farmers generally

Purebred breeders believed their work was of great national

impor-Livestock Expertise: Ontario Purebred Breeders 23

tance Monetary benefits, they insisted, were secondary to their desire

to produce better purebred livestock for the nation's use In 1872 the

Farmer's Advocate+ponted out that breeders had endured great

pecuni-ary risks and had conferred on the country 'a great and permanent efit.'28 In 1898 one breeder claimed that between 1878 and 1898 theprofits of importers had steadily declined That situation, however, hadbeen of untold benefit to the nation The importers and bree+ers ofpurebred livestock had added millions of dollars to the revenue of thecountry while they often could not make a living The breeder elabo-rated: Tt may be argued that the breeders of pure-bred stock are in thebusiness for the money they make out of it If I were to say that that isnot true the country would laugh at me, but I am willing to be laughed

ben-at, for I maintain it is not true The men who breed pure-bred live stockare doing it for the love of the work A successful breeder is not made,

he is born.'29 As another individual told fellow breeders in 1900, 'Weshould do anything within our power to advance the interests of thelegitimate importer and breeder of pure-bred live stock The impor-tance of the work done by these men is not recognized or valued by theCanadian people as it should be, and not even by our farmers or ourrulers On the success of the importers and breeders of live stockdepends our future as a nation.' Certain breeders added millions of dol-lars to the value of the nation, he stated, while gaining very little moneypersonally.30 Patterns that were evident in Britain over the period - gen-eral desire for agricultural improvement via livestock breeding, privatefunding of that improvement by nobility, and the linkage of thatimprovement to nationalism — explain partially where these views inOntario originated

The speaker touched on another way that purebred breeders viewedthemselves: as helpers of the general farmer's welfare Breeders arguedthat they had a special relationship with the farming population As eary

as 1872 the Farmer's Advocate pointed out that purebred breeders looked

on farmers as being potential beneficiaries of a breeder's work.31 In 1900one breeder informed his peers that 'the best class of stock cannot beproduced by Canadian farmers without the aid of breeders of pure-bredlive stock men, whose life work is to produce good males for breedingpurposes These animals must be bought and used by every farmerbefore Canadian agriculture will be as profitable as it should be.'32 Thisview resulted from a combination of the latent paternalism embedded inthe purebred industry and from the genuine belief that agriculturalimprovement could be achieved via the use of purebred cattle