SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 395 



SELLING DIRECT TO THE PACKER. 

 BY CHAS. G. COCKERILL, JEFFERSON, IOWA. - 



My paper is to be short, the intention being to open the subject for 

 your discussion. 



I have made many inquiries of packers, of commission men, of the 

 agents of the United States Department of Agriculture, of stock buyers 

 selling to packer agents at the so-called concentration points. (That is, 

 some nearby station designated by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 

 sion in a ruling that has given the railroads at said concentration 

 points the right to stop cars of live stock, unload, sort, water, feed and 

 re-load in double-deck cars if the buyer so elects, and re-ship to the 

 point of destination.) The country buying by packers is done exclu- 

 sively through these concentration points, as I understand it. 



Now the Iowa feeder and meat producer furnish to the market in 

 Chicago, called the Union Stock Yards, 53 per cent, I am reliably in- 

 formed, of all the live stock handled at the Chicago yards. That is a 

 large percentage. Think of Iowa as a feed lot, helping at this time 

 to feed the world. 



I refer to the above to try to bring out what vast interests are at 

 stake for the meat producer, in helping to handle the situation as to 

 the best method of selling. I have no solution to offer at this time as 

 to which method is best, selling to these buyers at concentration points 

 or shipping to some city having stock yards with competing buyers to 

 offer you on your consignment to your commission firm, who, in turn, 

 will sell to the highest bidder. 



I am informed by a man traveling in the interest of agriculture 

 that he has found in some of the eastern states that feeders do and 

 have contracted their fat cattle for a certain month's delivery, at so 

 much per 100 pounds. If we in Iowa could buy our cattle and corn, and 

 be sure of the selling price of fat cattle — well, I don't know what we 

 would do with the money. 



Now, one of the men at the head of one of the largest packing houses 

 told me, in answering questions, that it might be possible to grade 

 hogs and buy direct on offers sent out, but we could never expect to 

 handle cattle in that way, owing to diversity of quality and prices, as 

 at this time we have cattle selling for from $5 to $12 on the Chicago 

 market. I will leave someone else to explain why there is such a great 

 spread in prices. 



I find from Swift & Company's annual report that the dressed beef 

 prices for the year 1916, at Chicago, average $11.19; for the year 1915, 

 $10.85. For the year 1916, at New York, the average was $12.12; for the 

 year 1915, $11.64; also live weight cost average for the year at all points, 

 for cattle, was $7.21. The dressed-beef price was almost $1 per cwt. 

 higher in New York for the past year's average than in Chicago. Was 

 it the freight or the quality? 



