The Downfall of the American Cowboy

[mahatmakanejeeves]

So I guess I'm stuck in the cubicle again.

POLITICS & HISTORY

The Downfall of the American Cowboy

As the need for ranch workers has dwindled, the iconic status of cowboys has continued to grow.



A Bunch of Bucking Broncho Busters, 1898
via Wikimedia Commons

By: Farah Mohammed July 10, 2019 3 minutes

America loves cowboys, from the swaggering heroes of the silver screen, to legends like Buffalo Bill, to today’s bestselling videogames, such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Even presidents turn to the iconic cowboy hat and boots to endear themselves to the public and make themselves seem more authentic, capable, and iconically “American.”

But in real life, the American cowboy’s fortunes took a turn for the worse long ago. In a 1982 article in The Massachusetts Review, writer Peter R. Decker points out the contrast between how America celebrates cowboys and how it treats those who still roam its open plains.

The downfall of the cowboy was result of the mechanization of the ranching industry. As ranches acquired more land and focused on increasing production, they required more horsepower than actual horses could provide. Machines could complete much of the physical labor. As Decker explained, “No ranch today needs a bronc buster mounted atop a $30,000 self-propelled swather, running at full throttle, spurring the paint of its flanks.”

Decker writes that for all our admiration of the cowboy’s self-reliance and independence, economically, they were always hired help. Ranches today do create jobs for many, but cowboys aren’t often on the payroll. Despite the commonly-held romantic notion of the open range, operating a ranch today requires a cadre of specialists, including programmers, marketers, and engineers. Cowboys’ skillset increasingly became less relevant to the modern, machine-run ranch, and when the work dried up, so did the lifestyle

It seems odd, then, that as actual cowboys have been sidelined by industrialization, as a culture we continue to fervently love the figures. As Decker puts it, “There is, unfortunately, a destructive tendency in our capitalistic culture to romanticize that which we are in the process of destroying.” After spending time among cowboys, Decker writes about the future of the profession: “Visit our western ranches today, and look closely, and you’ll see and hear among the owners and workers a new despair.” He goes on to note:

It is a despair which can vividly imagine a future in which urban values permeate the entire countryside, where more and more land is controlled by absentee owners. It is a future which holds few rewards for the dignity of labor and its creative spirit. It is a future of mechanical feedlots and space age backlots. It is a future of a paved wilderness and a boutiqued countryside, monuments to the powerful all American consumer.

Cowboys remain a reliable marketing trope. But it would seem that the American love for cowboy trappings does not extend to the profession itself, or the way of living that enabled it.

Resources
JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Cowboys Need Not Apply
By: Peter R. Decker
The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 515-521
The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

[mr_lebowski]

1. I'd imagine that the development of what we call 'fences' probably played a big role

in the obsolescence of old-school Cowboy gigs.

[Triloon]

4. Building and maintaining fences has always been a cow hand's work.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. The American Cowboy, etc.

Oklahoma City has a very nice museum to the history of the American Wild West...including cowboys, etc.
We went and we thoroughly enjoyed. We could have stayed all day.

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City is America’s premier institution of Western history, art and culture. Founded in 1955, the Museum collects, preserves and exhibits an internationally renowned collection of Western art and artifacts while sponsoring dynamic educational programs to promote interest in the enduring legacy of the American West.

https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/

[MuseRider]

3. They are still out there (real cowboys)

but certainly not in the numbers they were. I know a bunch of them, they run ranches and train horses. No more long trails though. I hear about a few here and there but they are activities not actual trails. Herding cattle in the Flint Hills with cowboys is one of my most treasured memories. I did it quite a bit in the 90's. What a fun thing to do when you are just helping now and then.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Cowboy boots sold in the U.S. fueled the decline of pangolins

Wait; what? I don't have any made of pangolin.

ANIMALS | WILDLIFE WATCH

Cowboy boots sold in the U.S. fueled the decline of pangolins

As pangolin leather became unavailable, sellers replaced it with leather from a giant Brazilian fish—threatening that species as well.

4 MINUTE READ
BY RACHEL NUWER

PUBLISHED JULY 24, 2019

Pangolins are the world’s only scaled mammal, and that conspicuous distinction has contributed to their status as the world’s most trafficked mammal. Poachers target pangolins throughout Asia and Africa primarily for their scales, which are used as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Research indicates that hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of pangolins are killed each year.

But according to a new report in Conservation Science and Practice, scales aren’t the only reason people covet the scaly anteaters—and Asia hasn’t always been the only center of demand for them. Before 2000, the United States was a major importer of pangolin skins, which were used to make exotic leather cowboy boots, belts, and wallets.
....