on. This is, of course, best for the
country and for progress; but something passes, and is no more. So the
Chino ranch and more recently Lucky Baldwin's broad acres have yielded.

And even in the case of those that still remain intact, whose wide
hills and plains graze thousands of head of cattle; whose pastures breed
their own cowhorses; whose cowmen, wearing still with a twist of pride
the all-but-vanished regalia of their all-but-vanished calling, refuse
to drop back to the humdrum status of "farm hands on a cow ranch"; even
here has entered a single element powerful enough to change the old to
something new. The new may be better--it is certainly more
convenient--and perhaps when all is said and done we would not want to
go back to the old. But the old is gone. One single modern institution
has been sufficient to render it completely of the past. That
institution is the automobile.

In the old days--and they are but yesterdays, after all--the ranch was
perforce an isolated community. The journey to town was not to be
lightly undertaken; indeed, as far as might be, it was obviated
altogether. Blacksmithing, carpentry, shoe cobbling, repairing,
barbering, and even mild doctoring were all to be done on the premises.
Nearly every item of food was raised at home, including vegetables,
fruit, meat, eggs, fowl, butter, and honey. Above all, the inhabitants
of that ranch settled down comfortably into the realization that their
only available community was that immediately about them; and so they
both made and were influenced by the individual atmosphere of the place.

In the latter years they have all purchased touring cars, and now they
run to town casually, on almost any excuse. They make shopping lists as
does the city dweller; they go back for things forgotten; and they
return to the ranch as one returns to his home on the side streets of a
great city. In place of the old wonderful and impressive expeditions to
visit in state the nearest neighbour (twelve miles distant), they drop
over of an afternoon for a ten-minutes' chat. The ranch is no longer an
environment in which one finds the whole activity of his existence, but
a dwelling place from which one goes forth.

I will admit that this is probably a distinct gain; but the fact is
indubitable that, even in these cases where the ranch life has not been
materially changed otherwise, the automobile has brought about a
condition entirely new. And as the automobile has