Fences

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 354, 5 April 1946, Page 10

Fences

FEEL some need of apology in writing about the song called "Don’t Fence Me In," for all readers will have heard it by now on quite a number of occasions and will reflect that either you like it or you don’t and that there is very little more to be said about the matter. However, it is not the purpose of this paragraph to enter into a discussion of the ditty’s merits, but rather of its antecedents. The theme is vaguely Western-that favourite compendium of the larger and looser American aspira-tions-and, whether the author intended

it or not, this lends a distinctive interest to his title and theme. For in the history of the cattle industry of the West of America the coming of fences signified a great change which lasted many years -the change from the era of free pasture and semi-nomadic herdsmen (the cowboy par excellence, nearest in type

to the Argentine gaucho) to one of high finance and intensive capitalist farming, in which either private owners or great trusts obtained the title to stretches of land, fenced them off and developed them as exclusive private property-to the fury, vigorously expressed in word and deed, of the old guard, who felt the historical scene of which they were a part passing away. A later age, to whom the cowboy and his hat became a romantic

' legend, sided as usual with the primitive, unbusiness-like, almost unworldly phase of the industry, and lamented the coming of the fences. So the over-popular crooning hit refers rather vaguely to a genuine historical: struggle and a_ favourite American legend.