“Geographical comparison is equally striking. Wyoming is larger than Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and the District of Columbia. While these communities had in 1890, 23,000 prisoners, Wyoming had only 74. Wyoming is larger than Maine, Pennsylvania and Maryland put together, yet while these old, well-settled states had 7,000 criminals, all that great region had but one-hundredth part as many. Even little Delaware had nearly double the number of criminals that Wyoming had, and little Rhode Island, about one-ninetieth the size of Wyoming, had over seven times as many. Massachusetts had seventy times as many; New York, 1,400 times as many.” The few scalawags who live by plundering their neighbors are generally confined to the villages and towns where they can dispose of their ill-gotten gains. Considering the fact that the hundreds of thousands of cattle running on our plains and mountain sides are rarely seen by their owners, or herders, more than once a year, at the general round-up, when the calves are branded with the character or letter worn by their mother, the small loss from theft is not only remarkable, but a high testimonial to the good character of our people. The live stock industry of Wyoming has been the leading pursuit for more than a double decade of years, and the stockmen have dominated the political and financial policy of the territory from its establishment in 1868 down to 1892. The Legislature has always been largely made up of live stock owners or local representatives of Eastern and foreign cattle syndicates, and until the last session of that body, in January, 1893, the laws have been framed to suit the manipulators of the stock interest. In 1872 the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association organized, the membership comprising most of the leading stock growers of the commonwealth and many citizens from the adjoining territories. This body was a strong, centralized power, and for years virtually shaped the territorial policy and socially controlled throughout the realm. Legislative enactments first assumed form in the councils of the Executive Committee of the Association, and through its social prestige were popularized with the masses, even before adoption as laws. Thus, through the agency of the Stock Association and the stockmen in the several legislatures, the stock-growing industry was in full command of the law-making department. Naturally they everywhere dominated. The people acquiesced because of the magnitude of the cattle interest.