Barbed Wire, Texas and Property Rights

See Barbed wire and other revolutions. Michael Taylor of The San Antonio Express-News reviews a book about innovation. Well defined property rights are important for long run economic growth and this articles shows how something seemingly small and simple made a big difference. You might have to be a subscriber to read this. Excerpt:

"Modern Texas owes everything to the innovation and marketing genius of John Warne Gates. Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of him either until last week.

In 1876, at Military Plaza — site of San Antonio’s future City Hall — he presented a technological marvel that would revolutionize the state.

Gates described his innovation as “lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust.” A print advertisement from the year before had dubbed it “The Greatest Discovery of the Age.”

Gates’ marketing stunt: He bet all comers that their wildest longhorns, whipped into a frenzy by his sidekick with a burning brand, couldn’t break through a flimsy-looking little wire pen he’d built in Military Plaza.

His innovation: barbed wire. It worked.

The anecdote comes from some enjoyable summer reading, Tim Harford’s 2017 book: “Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy.”

In a series of 50 essays of three to four pages each, Harford describes the surprising results of many seemingly humble innovations.

So what revolution did barbed wire launch? Before barbed wire, the vast prairie lands of Texas were too big to be divvied up effectively into private parcels. Native tribes and teams of cowboys heading up cattle drives thrived in this fenceless free range, which was like an untamable ocean.

Despite President Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 promise of 160 acres — through the Homestead Act — to anyone who could settle it and work it for five years, privately held land in the state just didn’t work economically. In vast swathes of Texas, it was nearly impossible to keep free-roaming cattle in — and out — of people’s property. Property lines, without an effective means of enforcement, weren’t respected.

But with barbed wire, cheap and easy enforcement changed everything. The native tribes were doomed. The cowboy-led cattle drive was doomed. Without unfenced prairie, “the open range,” their livelihoods were gone. “The devil’s rope” tamed wild Texas. Private property owners now had a cheap and effective means to invest in and develop their land."