This book relates the modern development of the Kansas beef cattle industry, combining both the history of production--including specific business problems and the significant work in upbreeding--and an examination of the marketing aspects of the industry that became so important during the twentieth century. Sharpest focus is on the period 1890 to 1940, after the Western beef industry had passed through the transition from using the expansive, openrange method of beef production to the more rational and organized methods of today.

After thirty-three years, Paula Chamlee returned home to photograph and write about the farm where she grew up on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. This document provides a look at her home place and reveals a way of life and value system that are quickly vanishing. It attempts to evoke the flavour of farm life in the twentieth century.

"By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal. Beef production in the United States had gone from small-scale, localized operations to a highly centralized industry spanning the country, with cattle bred on ranches in the rural West, slaughtered in Chicago, and consumed in the nation's rapidly growing cities. Red Meat Republic tells the remarkable story of the violent conflict over who would reap the benefits of this new industry and who would bear its heavy costs"--