Heaven in their dreams
was a range better watered than the one they knew, with grass
never stricken by drought,
plenty of fat cattle, the best horses and comrades of their
experience, more of women than they talked about in public,
and nothing at all of golden streets, golden harps, angel
wings, and thrones; it was a mere extension, somewhat
improved, of the present. Bankers, manufacturers, merchants,
and mechanics seldom so idealize their own occupations; they
work fifty weeks a year to go free the other two.
For every hired man on horseback there have been hundreds of
plowmen in America, and tens of millions of acres of
rangelands have been plowed under, but who can cite a single
autobiography of a laborer in the fields of cotton, of corn,
of wheat? Or do coal miners, steelmongers, workers in oil
refineries, factory hands of any kind of factory, the
employees of chain stores and department stores ever write
autobiographies? Many scores of autobiographies have been
written by range men, perhaps half of them by cowboys who
never became owners at all. A high percentage of the
autobiographies are in pamphlet form; many that were written
have not been published.
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