Cattle, Sheep and Swine Feeders' Association. 429 



But I have not yet called your attention to the principal 

 crime committed in this custom of "wiring on the farmer" when 

 he ships to another market. You can readily see what does 

 occur at Kansas City. It compels the farmer to sell there and 

 there only. It prevents Omaha, St. Joseph, Kansas City, St. 

 Louis and Chicago from competing with one another, which the 

 honest laws of trade require that they should do. The delib- 

 erate purpose of these packers in this "wiring" process is to 

 destroy competition between the great stock markets in the 

 United States, and they accomplish their nefarious purpose. 

 Surely this ought to be a felony punishable only with the pen- 

 itentiary, for these packers, with their millions, care but little 

 about fines. 



I call your attention to another crime constantly com- 

 mitted by the packers. They are deliberately, by reason of 

 being members of a common trust, making the market difference 

 so small between the price of feeders and the price of beeves 

 that they are practically putting the feeder out of business. 

 Recently at the stockyards a feeder from Illinois told me he had 

 just paid $7.65 per hundred for feeders. The commission man 

 who bought the feeders for him said that that very day feeders 

 of the same kind made fat sold only for $8.00. You can readily 

 see that no man can feed cattle on a margin of 35 cents. We 

 hear a great deal about the high cost of meat. People fail to 

 realize that a farmer on ground worth $100 an acre cannot raise 

 corn and feed it to cattle for which he must pay $7.65 a hundred 

 and then sell for $8.00 or $8.25. The condition I am depicting 

 would not be so bad if the consumer received any benefit from 

 it. In the case I am referring to a commission man, who tre- 

 mendously favored the packing houses, was asked by myself 

 how he accounted for the fact that about a month before that 

 time beeves on foot had dropped $1.00 on the hundred, and had 

 continuously sold for $1.00 less, while the consumer was paying 

 at the meat market precisely what he paid before the drop in 

 cattle? The commission man answered by saying that the 

 butcher, as we used to call him, or retail meat man, as we call 

 him now, was to blame for this. He said these men held the 

 price up, but we all know this is not the truth. There are 

 thousands of these small meat sellers. They are not in any 

 great combination, and it is absurd to say that they would con- 

 tinue to sell meat just as high if the packers would sell it to 

 them $1.00 less after the fall in the price of cattle. The packers, 



