Dayton Moses to Woodrow Wilson

As attorney for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas, an organization composed of 5,000 stock farmers owning approximately 2,000,000 cattle, I desire to call your attention to the shortage of meat producing animals and laborers on stock farms and ranches in the Southwest.

Hon. Herbert C. Hoover has notified the Nation the world's shortage in meat producing animals is 115,005,000. Owing to two years' drought in Texas there will be a shortage of cattle exceeding 750,000 head by April 1, 1918, over similar date this year.

There is an unusual shortage of stock farm and ranch laborers in Texas occasioned by reason of the following conditions, viz:
1.A large percentage of the intelligent white labor in the range section of Texas has enlisted in the National Guard and other arms of the military establishment.
2.Prices paid for labor in other enterprises have attracted many able bodied men to other fields of activity.
3.From Brownville, Texas, to Yuma, Arizona, along the Mexican boundary and for 150 miles to the interior an overwhelming number of the farm and ranch laborers are Mexicans and a large percent of them have crossed into Mexico to avoid military service, whole families in many instances leaving Texas and crossing the Rio Grande, leaving the farms and ranches unmanned. The Chamberlain Alien Bill when enacted into law will cause many more to go.

Experienced laborers with stock on the range require many years training. Town raised boys or even farm reared boys do not make good ranch hands except after long years of experience.

In Southwest Texas and Southern New Mexico and Arizona where the exodus of Mexican labor has occurred a more liberal rule should be followed in granting exemption to intelligent stock farm and ranch labor; otherwise many farms will not be cultivated and a great many herds and flocks will be closed out and seriously reduce production.

Respectfully,
Dayton Moses,
Attorney Cattle Raisers
Association of Texas.