The Code of the West

Cowboy Ethics. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The Code of the West. It’s the unwritten rules that cowboys live by. The difference between right and wrong...hard work and cheating. A few years back at a low point in my life I rediscovered the cowboy code and it really helped me come to find the real me. In 2004 author James P. Owen wrote a book about the code of the west and how it might pertain to Wall Street.

OWEN: I spent my whole career in the investment world. I was as shocked and dismayed as anybody when these scandals hit the paper, it just seemed like every week something new and what I realized was this was not a case of a bad actor. There was a culture of corruption and a culture of greed and we needed to do something to address this thing.

Owen said it was then that something happened to open his eyes.

OWEN: About that time I saw this movie called “Open Range” that Kevin Costner did and it literally changed my life. I don’t know what it was. It literally transported me back to my childhood I guess. Good guys and bad guys; white hats and black hats. It seems so simple when you see a movie like that and I just took this thing on and I found out the code of the west was never written down.

He immersed himself in western books and movies to figure out what the code of the west really was. It took about a year and half and a chance meeting with photographer David Stoecklein before the book hit the shelf.

OWEN: I’m as surprised as anybody. I want to underscore that. Who would have guess the book as sold a 120-thousand copies and still going strong. And all I can say is it’s tapped into something, there’s a yearning to go back to a simpler time and it’s not nostalgia. It’s something far deeper. I think that most people in this country today, you can sense there’s something wrong, we’re off track, we’ve lost our moorings, whatever you want to say, we’ve lost our moral compass.

Owen says he is inspired by the iconic cowboy, not just the Hollywood version.

OWEN: The working cowboys I call it, the guys out in Oregon, Washington; eastern Washington, Montana, Wyoming. There’s something about this guy. In my heart I really believe this guy represents the best of America. I think it’s true. Courage, optimism, self-reliance and all these core values that we need to get back to, and that’s what it’s all about.

Owen has followed up the success of Cowboy Ethics with Cowboy Values and The Try. More tomorrow with author James P. Owen.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.