Barbed wire helped rancher and change Barbed wire has been helping ranchers for a long time. Barbed wire has helped ranchers because of the fence law of 1872 in Illinois it states that this passing of this law requiring farmers to corral their animals. Well this gave rancher trouble because Illinois winters can and are known to …show more content…
By the 1880s, cattlemen had realized that ringing their herds with barbed-wire fences allowed ranchers to reduce their labor costs by employing fewer cowboys. It also gave ranchers more control over their herds, keeping their prized bulls from wandering and impregnating competitors' cattle and allowing ranchers to rotate herds from pasture to pasture to prevent overgrazing. Since ranchers could have more control over their herds ranchers gained more money. It states from this reference that “Gone were the long trail drives that characterized the prairies from 1866 to 1880 Cowboys no longer lived the rough-and-tumble life that fostered so many romantic visions. Instead of herding their boss's cattle over vast public prairie lands, ranchers now worked more as traditional farmhands, drilling wells to provide water to pastures that did not border on streams and tending the fenced herds.”(Technology and the Making of the West." Westward Expansion Reference Library. )The longhorn cattle, a hybrid of Spanish and British cattle, were soon bred out of existence as fencing was used to separate breeds and improve a cattleman's stock. Since cowboys did the work that did help the ranchers to earn more money. Barbed wire did change the lives of ranchers and rancher hand …show more content…
In these article it states “Barbed wire was used during World War I (1914-18) to protect front lines from surprise infantry (foot soldier) attacks.” Barbed wire." (UXL Science Detroit: UXL, 2008. Student Resources in Context) Barbed wire was used on both sides of the war. Barbed wire was used in concentration camps in World War 2 so the Jews could not escape from the camp. People started to use barbed wire in war tactics because barbed wire is made so it is sharp and is cut a certain way so it is hard to pull it out of something without harming the people any further. Barbed wire did create jobs in wartimes and is used in other buildings in war times. War prisons and other government outposts are covered in barbed wire to make sure the enemy cannot get in the prison or outposts. The U.S. government used it to protect buildings and equipment during the Spanish-American War and the two world wars. “In 1914, the American Steel & Wire Division of United States Steel Corporation and many other U.S. manufacturers sent mile after mile of barbed wire to Europe, where it was tangled into barriers that were impenetrable by ground forces.” ( Encyclopedia of American Industries)Barbed wire created jobs in the army during world war two. In this book it shows the job, “Frogmen" were trained to cut clearings for submarines and ship propellers through the carloads of barbed wire dumped by the Japanese into