| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

John Clay, Jr.: Commission Man, Banker and Rancher. By Lawrence M. Woods. (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark, 2001. 285 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $42.50.)

Time has created a caricature of John Clay. Once known as the dean of American stockmen, Clay could be at once a charming storyteller whose romantic prose seduced contemporary readers and subsequent historians alike, a thrifty Scot whose skinflint ways were the despair of his employees, a highly regarded manager whose reputation outshone his accomplishments, an investor in a plethora of small town banks and creator of one of the most successful of all livestock commission houses, or a charming host who was as comfortable in a Victorian parlor as in the Stock Yards Inn in Chicago or the Cheyenne Club. Finally, there was the orator Clay whose philippic "Back to the Wagon," a paean to the Puritan ethic on the range, would commonly bring his stock grower audiences to their feet with wild applause—but the message, if not the messenger, would be rapidly forgotten when the cheering stopped. 1

Clay's My Life on the Range has long been regarded as one of the "Big Four" volumes of range literature. His sharply etched literary portraits of livestock colleagues are as memorable as they are untrustworthy. Listen to his literary snapshot of Alexander Swan: "He was vane [sic] and loved to do big things, with a jealous disposition. . . . Sycophants in abundance buzzed round him and he was swept off his feet by hero worship." (My Life on the Range, Norman, OK, 1962, p. 50.) . . .

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