Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 1984
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 1984, pp. 194-95.
Abstract
The question that immediately comes to mind is: what justified a second printing in hardcover of this book first published eighteen years ago? The book is certainly well written, though it is not of great literary excellence; it is also very well organized and researched, yet not brilliantly so. The real contribution is clearly its subject matter.
In 1882 a group of businessmen, most of them from in and around Dundee, Scotland, purchased for $1,250,000 what became the Matador Land and Cattle Company. At the time, many other British and Scottish investors were also plunging into the American cattle business. Many lost heavily and sold out or went into bankruptcy. Such was not the fate, however, of the Matador, which came to own more than 800,000 acres, most of them in two huge parcels in the Texas Panhandle. It leased nearly an equal acreage in Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. When the company finally sold out in 1951, its investors realized $23.70 for each seventy-cent share.
What makes the story interesting is the Matador's success. It paid dividends-occasionally very good dividends-and was never really in financial straits. Reading this book becomes a lesson in sound business practices, for it leaves little doubt as to why the Matador succeeded when so many failed.
Comments
Copyright 1984 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln