Barbed Wire

by Mitch Shindelbower

Title

Barbed Wire

Artist

Mitch Shindelbower

Medium

Photograph

Description

Barbed wire, also known as barb wire, less often as bob wire[1][2] or, in the southeastern United States, bobbed wire,[3] is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand(s). It is used to construct inexpensive fences and is used atop walls surrounding secured property. It is also a major feature of the fortifications in trench warfare (as a wire obstacle).

A person or animal trying to pass through or over barbed wire will suffer discomfort and possibly injury. Barbed wire fencing requires only fence posts, wire, and fixing devices such as staples. It is simple to construct and quick to erect, even by an unskilled person.

The first patent in the United States for barbed wire was issued in 1867 to Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, who is regarded as the inventor.[4][5] Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, received a patent for the modern invention in 1874 after he made his own modifications to previous versions.

Barbed wire was the first wire technology capable of restraining cattle. Wire fences were cheaper and easier to erect than their alternatives. (One such alternative was Osage orange, a thorny bush which was time-consuming to transplant and grow. The Osage orange later became a supplier of the wood used in making barb wire fence posts.[6]) When wire fences became widely available in the United States in the late 19th century, they made it affordable to fence much larger areas than before. They made intensive animal husbandry practical on a much larger scale.

An example of the costs of fencing with lumber immediately prior to the invention of barbed wire can be found with the first farmers in the Fresno, California area, who spent nearly $4000 (over $75,000 in present-day dollars) to have wood for fencing delivered and erected to protect 2500 acres of wheat crop from free-ranging livestock in 1872. The "Big Four" in barbed wire were Joseph Glidden, Jacob Haish, Charles Francis Washburn, and Isaac L. Ellwood.[13] Glidden, a farmer in 1873 and the first of the "Big Four," is often credited for designing a successful sturdy barbed wire product, but he let others popularize it for him. Glidden's idea came from a display at a fair in DeKalb, Illinois in 1873, by Henry B. Rose. Rose had patented "The Wooden Strip with Metallic Points" in May 1873.[14]

This was simply a wooden block with wire protrusions designed to keep cows from breaching the fence. That day, Glidden was accompanied by two other men, Isaac L. Ellwood, a hardware dealer and Jacob Haish, a lumber merchant. Like Glidden, they both wanted to create a more durable wire fence with fixed barbs. Glidden experimented with a grindstone to twist two wires together to hold the barbs on the wire in place. The barbs were created from experiments with a coffee mill from his home.[14]

Later Glidden was joined by Ellwood who knew his design could not compete with Glidden's for which he applied for a patent in October 1873.[15] Meanwhile, Haish, who had already secured several patents for barbed wire design, applied for a patent on his third type of wire, the S barb, and accused Glidden of interference, deferring Glidden's approval for his patented wire, nicknamed "The Winner," until November 24, 1874.[16]

Barbed wire production greatly increased with Glidden and Ellwood’s establishment of the Barb Fence Company in DeKalb following the success of "The Winner". The company's success attracted the attention of Charles Francis Washburn, Vice President of Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company, an important producer of plain wire in the Eastern U.S. Washburn visited De Kalb and convinced Glidden to sell his stake in the Barb Wire Fence Company, while Ellwood stayed in DeKalb and renamed the company I.L Ellwood & Company of DeKalb.
Barbed wire played an important role in the protection of range rights in the Western U.S. Although some ranchers put notices in newspapers claiming land areas, and joined stockgrowers associations to help enforce their claims, livestock continued to cross range boundaries. Fences of smooth wire did not hold stock well, and hedges were difficult to grow and maintain. Barbed wire's introduction in the West in the 1870s dramatically reduced the cost of enclosing land.[22]


Rusted barbed wire in a roll
One fan wrote the inventor Joseph Glidden:

it takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts, and is both durable and cheap.[23]
Barbed wire also emerged as a major source of conflict with the so-called “Big Die Up” incident in the 1880s. This conflict occurred because of the instinctual migrations of cattle away from the blizzard conditions of the Northern Plains to the warmer and plentiful Southern Plains, but by the early 1880s this area was already divided and claimed by ranchers. The ranchers in place, especially in the Texas Panhandle, knew that their holdings could not support the grazing of additional cattle, so the only alternative was to block the migrations with barb wire fencing.[24]

Many of the herds were decimated in the winter of 1885, with some losing as many as three-quarters of all animals when they could not find a way around the fence. Later other smaller scale cattlemen, especially in central Texas, opposed the closing of the open range, and began cutting fences to allow cattle to pass through to find grazing land. In this transition zone between the agricultural regions to the south and the rangeland to the north, conflict erupted, with vigilantes joining the scene causing chaos and even death. The fence cutters war came to an end with the passage of a Texas law in 1884 that stated among other provisions that fence cutting was a felony; and other states followed, although conflicts still occurred through the opening years of the 20th century.[25] A federal law passed in 1885 forbade stretching such fences across the public domain.[22]

Barbed wire is often cited by historians as the invention that truly tamed the West. Herding large numbers of cattle on open terrain required significant manpower just to catch strays, but with an inexpensive method to divide, sub-divide and allocate parcels of land to control the movement of cattle, the need for a vast labor force became unnecessary. By the beginning of the 20th century the need for significant numbers of cowboys was not necessary.

Uploaded

April 2nd, 2018

Statistics

Viewed 982 Times  -  Last Visitor from Romeo, MI on 04/19/2024 at 6:03 AM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags