536 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Under the magic touch of the great railroad wizards, the 

 western country has been developed from a wild and barren waste 

 to a grand producing country where farm lands, that a few years 

 ago sold from ten to forty dollars per acre, are now worth any- 

 where from fifty to two hundred dollars per acre, but I do not wish 

 to dwell too long in emphasizing their virtues and exploiting their 

 achievements. The point that I desire to make is, are they giv- 

 ing the live stock industry the kind of service which it deserves 

 and which it is entitled to? 



Men who stand very high in railroad circles like Mr. Marvin 

 Hewitt of the Chicago Northwestern Railroad, tell us that there 

 is no money in handling live stock. Other railroad officials have 

 made the same argument. If this argument is good, then I would 

 like to have them explain to me why they send out traveling live 

 stock agents broadcast all over the country to solicit the live stock 

 trade. Furthermore, I should like to ask them to explain why they 

 are running promotional trains and educational trains, employing 

 college professors and eloquent orators, to accompany these trains 

 advocating to the farmers that they should raise and feed more 

 live stock. The railroad men tell us that they would prefer to 

 haul grain to market instead of having it fed to live stock, but 

 they must stop and consider that if there was no live stock fed 

 in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska that farm lands 

 would deteriorate very fast and it would not be very long until the 

 farmers could not raise very much grain for the railroads to haul, 

 consequently it is absolutely necessary that in the great corn-raising 

 states above mentioned that we must raise and feed live stock. 

 The railroads have done a great deal to promote the raising and 

 feeding of live stock, but now on account of the bad service which 

 they are giving this traffic they are crippling the industry. In 

 my opinion they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg. 



Several years ago when the railroads were not as well equipped 

 physically as they are at the present time to handle live stock on 

 good fast time and get them in for the early morning market, they 

 did much better in that respect than they are doing now. Today 

 they have large engines capable of making fast time, they have 

 double tracks, they are safeguarded by all the modern improve- 

 ments which genius can invent, they have the Jenny couplers, they 

 have the air brakes and in fact every modern invention to facilitate 

 the traffic, but to counteract all of these modern appliances there is, 

 in my opinion, one evil which offsets it, and that is the so-called 



