In Episode 224 of Anecdotally Speaking, discover how barbed wire transformed the American West and its business lessons on innovation.



In Episode 224 of Anecdotally Speaking, Mark tells the story of John Gates, a bold salesman who introduced barbed wire in a dramatic public demonstration in 1876. This simple invention reshaped the American West, revolutionising land ownership, farming, and settlement patterns. But its impacts weren’t all positive.

Shawn and Mark discuss the unexpected consequences of innovations and how small changes can have far-reaching impacts.

They also explore how incentives drive adoption and reflect on similar innovations that seem small but have profound effects in business today.

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Tags: Storytelling, Innovation, Technology, Change

This story starts at: 0:18

In the late 19th century, specifically in 1876, a young man named John Gates, who would later be known as “Bet-a-Million” Gates, was in San Antonio, Texas. He gathered some of the toughest and wildest Longhorn cattle from across Texas—at least, that’s how he described them. Gates put the cattle in a wire pen and took bets that they wouldn’t be able to escape. Onlookers, confident that the cattle could break through, took him up on the bet.

The fence he was demonstrating was made of a new invention called barbed wire. At the time, the American Plains were wide open, with rich agricultural land but no fences. Cowboys would roam freely across the land. Ranchers, however, needed a way to fence their properties, but there wasn’t enough wood to build traditional wooden fences. Regular wire fences weren’t strong enough either, as cattle would simply walk right through them.

John Gates’ barbed wire, however, was different. It worked. And it quickly took off, especially among farmers. Just a few years earlier, in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act, which allowed any U.S. citizen, including women and freed slaves, to claim 160 acres of land in the western territories. To secure their claim, settlers had to build a home and work the land for five years. However, the law required them to protect their crops, and if cattle trampled through their fields, the settlers had no legal recourse.

Barbed wire solved this problem, transforming the West. It gave settlers the ability to fence their land and protect their property. But not everyone was happy. Native American tribes referred to barbed wire as “the devil’s rope” because it divided the once-open land that they had freely roamed. For the cowboys, the days of riding across the open range were over. Now, they had to stop and open gates every few kilometres.

The introduction of barbed wire also sparked conflicts known as the “fence-cutting wars,” where cowboys, unhappy with the new fences blocking their way, would cut through them and leave threatening messages for ranchers, warning them not to rebuild or face consequences.

In its first year of production, 51 kilometres of barbed wire was manufactured. Six years later, that number exploded to 423,000 kilometres—enough to circle the world ten times.

Barbed wire was a simple invention, but it had an enormous impact, completely changing the landscape and economy of the American West.