The End of the Cattle Trailing industry in Texas

Illustrations showing cattle drives near Kerrville,
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.

The conditions which created the need for trail driving cattle to market were disappearing by 1887. Open ranges were being fenced. Consumers preferred beef from different breeds of cattle, breeds other than Longhorns. Railroads were providing a convenient, though expensive, transportation alternative.

One important cattle trailing partnership dissolved in 1887: Lytle, McDaniel, Schreiner & Light. The way in which it ended is unusual: Lytle, McDaniel, and Light surrendered their shares in the partnership to Schreiner, with the understanding Schreiner would assume the indebtedness of the partnership. This arrangement would seem to favor all parties except Schreiner. What benefit could he have in acquiring sole ownership in a withering business?

John W. Light, once a partner in the extremely profitable and largest of trailing companies, was so financially broken by these changes he could no longer finance his ranch on the James River in the Texas Hill Country, near Mason. He sold his ranch to Charles Schreiner, and for about five years, managed what had been his own ranch for Schreiner.

Thomas McDaniel never recovered from the financial calamity. He died within a year of the end of the firm.

John T. Lytle, who was indispensable to the partnership, also suffered financial difficulties after the partnership was dissolved. He returned to his ranch near Castroville. He’d lost his business, and, with McDaniel’s death, his friend. Lytle sold many of the properties he’d owned in partnership with McDaniel — some 50,000 acres of land and several thousand head of livestock — to the American Cattle and Trust Company of Fort Worth and New York, for $400,000.

Lytle had made other prudent investments during the partnership, including a part interest in the property which sold to a London firm, and became the Rocking Chair Ranche, Ltd. He had properties in Maverick, Kinney, and Medina counties. He owned the 7D ranch, in Pecos County, which included the famous Comanche Springs; this sold to the England-based Western Union Beef Company.

In 1887, Lytle, in partnership with three other former transportation agents, founded the Union Stock Yards Company in San Antonio. He continued to be active in the cattle business, even occasionally trailing cattle to northern pastures. In 1901, he was elected to the executive committee of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association, and was named secretary and general manager of the association three years later.  He died in January, 1907.

Schreiner had these memories of those days, as reported by J. E. Grinstead in 1920: 

‘The business prospered, but it was not always easy sailing. I remember very distinctly that in 1886, when the cattle business had become an important feature of my business, myself and some other Texas cattlemen leased the grazing rights on part of the Kiowa and Comanche reservation. We paid the chiefs for the lease, but those … gentlemen expended the funds for firewater and personal adornment, and forgot to make an accounting to the tribesmen. When the cattle went on the reservation the Indians set up a complaint about the trespassing, and we produced our lease. Then Poor Lo raised a clamor for his share of the proceeds. When it was not forthcoming there was trouble. General Sheridan investigated the trouble, and told us that the only way an uprising could be prevented was to remove our cattle from the reservation. We had put thirteen thousand beef steers on the land. We gathered one thousand and twenty-seven head. This fiasco broke several of the men who were associated with me, and it bent me pretty badly, but the mercantile busi­ness pulled me through that disaster, as it did through many others.”

Schreiner blamed the chiefs of those tribes for the failure of the partnership; George Littlefield believed the cattle caught Texas fever when they crossed the North Fork of the Red River, “and died like rats under the plague.” Though this was contradicted by Gus Schreiner, who said their herds were immune to Texas Fever.

Gus Schreiner also disputes the idea that the store alone pulled Charles Schreiner out of the financial quicksand, asserting that a loan, secured by August Faltin from his friends in Germany, allowed Schreiner to stay in business. “The amount of the loan was $50,000; the interest was very low and the time was exceedingly long, but Captain Schreiner paid it off very soon afterwards.”

And what of Schreiner and his sole ownership of what had been a great trailing partnership? 

His investments in the cattle trade increased. He did leave the trailing industry in 1887, but he continued to use company cattle brands, livestock he’d obtained when he assumed the debt of the partnership, and the pasture lands he’d purchased from Light.  He continued to purchase additional ranch lands and cattle, though he diversified the livestock on his ranches to include sheep and goats.

And, in 1887, the year the partnership dissolved, Schreiner made the necessary financial investments which brought the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad right to his doorstep in downtown Kerrville.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who is working on a biography of Captain Charles Schreiner.

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