428 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



When the farmer walks into the great stock exchange build- 

 ing at Kansas City he is in a structure every brick of which 

 belongs to a packing house company. All the commission men 

 in this great building are dependent upon the packers (for they 

 are all in one great combination), as to what ofTices they shall 

 occupy and how much they shall pay. When the farmer goes 

 out into our great stockyards he goes "wjiere every lot and alley 

 and plank belongs to the packers. They charge him what they 

 please for yardage. They sell him hay and corn for his cattle 

 and hogs, and charge what they please — always a most exorbi- 

 tant price. He can buy food for his stock nowhere else. When 

 he comes to sell, if he has fat cattle he can sell them only to 

 these packers. They claim that they compete with one another, 

 but they do not. They bid below a certain price agreed upon 

 but never above it. The commission men who sell the farmers' 

 beeves are afraid of these packers because if they offend them 

 they will not buy from them, and there are no others, as a rule, 

 to whom the beeves can be sold. 



I call your attention now to an infamy of infamies. I know 

 that I am telling the truth, not only from observation, but from 

 sworn testimony in a recent case I tried. A large number of 

 commission men were witnesses in the case I am referring to, 

 and every one of them stated on the stand that the custom I am 

 about to refer to existed. The custom is this: If a farmer does 

 not like the price offered for his beeves in Kansas City and con- 

 cludes he will ship to Omaha, St. Joseph, Chicago or St. Louis, 

 then the packers invariably "wire on him," as they term it; 

 that is, they wire to their associates and representatives of the 

 great packing houses in the markets I have named, or rather to 

 the one to which the farmer is shipping, telling them exactly 

 what the bid or bids at Kansas City have been, with the under- 

 standing growing out of a conspiracy between them that the 

 farmer is to receive nothing more than he was bid at Kansas 

 City. If you can imagine any worse species of dishonesty and 

 rascality than this let fancy take wings at once. This act of 

 wiring ought to be made a felony by both State and United 

 States statutes, and it ought to be punishable, not with fine, 

 but with punishment in the penitentiary. I defy any man to 

 show me the difference in morals between stealing the farmers' 

 beeves outright and wiring on him so that he will not be able to 

 obtain the honest market price for them. 



