aw_, 1907. OP. An omnibus
carelessly put together with many holes in it.

LAKE, STUART. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Best written of all gunmen
biographies. Earp happened to be on the side of the law.

LANKFORD, N. P. _Vigilante Days and Ways_, 1890, 1912. OP. Full
treatment of lawlessness in the Northwest.

LOVE, ROBERTUS. _The Rise and Fall of Jesse James_, New York, 1926.
Excellently written. OP.

RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD. _Famous s and Western Outlaws_, Doubleday, Garden
City, N. Y., 1929. A rogues' gallery. _Guns of the Frontier_, Boston,
1940. Another miscellany. OP.

RASCOE, BURTON. _Belle Starr_, New York, 1941. OP.

RIPLEY, THOMAS. _They Died with Their Boots On_, 1935. Mostly about John
Wesley Hardin. OP.

SABIN, EDWIN L. _Wild Men of the Wild West_, New York, 1929. Biographic
survey of killers from the Mississippi to the Pacific. OP.

WILD BILL HICKOK. The subject of various biographies, among them
those by Frank J. Wilstach (1926) and William E. Connelley (1933). The
_Nebraska History Magazine_ (Volume X) for April-June 1927 is devoted to
Wild Bill and contains a "descriptive bibliography" on him by Addison E.
Sheldon.

WOODHULL, FROST. Folk-Lore Shooting, in _Southwestern Lore_, Publication
IX of the Texas Folklore Society, 1931. Rich. Humor.

25. Mining and Oil

DURING the twentieth century oil has brought so much money to the
Southwest that the proceeds from cattle have come to look like tips.
This statement is not based on statistics, though statistics no doubt
exist--even on the cost of catching sun perch. Geological, legal, and
economic writings on oil are mountainous in quantity, but the human
drama of oil yet remains, for the most part, to be written. It is odd
to find such a modern book as Erna Fergusson's _Our Southwest_ not
mentioning oil. It is odd that no book of national reputation comes off
the presses about any aspect of oil. The nearest to national notice on
oil is the daily report of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oil companies subsidize histories of themselves, endow universities with
money to train technicians they want, control state legislatures and
senates, and dictate to Congress what they want for themselves in income
tax laws; but so far they have not been able to hire anybody to write
a book about oil that anybody but the hirers themselves wants to read.
Probably they don't read them. The first thing an oilman does after
amassing a few millions is bu