"Few industrial enterprises left a more enduring imprint on the American West than Miller & Lux, a vast meatpacking conglomerate started by two San Francisco butchers in 1858. Industrial Cowboys examines how Henry Miller and Charles Lux, two German immigrants, assembled the West's most extensive land and water rights, swayed legislatures and courts, monopolized western beef markets, and imposed their corporate will on California's natural environment.

Writing with clarity and originality, David Igler uses one fascinating case study to illuminate the industrial development and environmental transformation of the American West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.".

"The process by which two neighborhood butchers turned themselves into landed industrialists depended to an extraordinary degree on the acquisition, manipulation, and exploitation of natural resources. Igler examines the broader impact of western industrialism - as exemplified by Miller & Lux - on landscapes and waterscapes, bringing to the forefront the important issues of land reclamation, water politics, San Francisco's unique business environment, and the city's relation to its surrounding hinterlands.

He provides a rich discussion of the social relations engineered by Miller & Lux, from the dispossession of Californio rancheros to the ethnic segmentation of the firm's massive labor force."--BOOK JACKET.