On Nov. 17, a plan was first proposed calling upon Congress, "in the interest of cheaper food," to build and maintain a National Trail from the Red River north to the Canadian border. It was much less expensive for Texas cattlemen to trail their herds to northern railheads and ranges and then ship them by rail rather than ship directly from Texas, and most Texans saw increasing northern quarantines that had increasingly restricted drives — in the years after diminishing open range had ended the Chisholm Trail and others — as a threat to their economic well-being. Legislation to create the National Trail proposed by Texas congressman James Francis Miller failed to pass, and that defeat and the advent of barbed wire sounded the death knell of trailing.