SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 40:j 



nopoly there under the conditions then existing, and the conditions in 

 general have improved in recent years, and there is, on the whole, quite 

 a friendly feeling toward the large packing concerns that have gone in 

 there. They have developed a better market for a great many of the 

 commoner grade of animals which could not be disposed of formerly 

 under favorable conditions; and, on the whole, they have never had as 

 prosperous conditions in beef and mutton production as in the last few 

 years. 



There are some things of interest pertaining to the dealings between 

 the packers and the cattle men down there. In the first place, those 

 men who have large holdings — the big estanchios — and they run up to 

 two or three hundred thousand acres in many cases, nearly all of the 

 land being in large holdings — are big men, and men of a high sense of 

 honor, and accustomed to doing business in a big way. The cattle that 

 go to the large market centers are not shipped in and sold to the high- 

 est bidder buying on the market, as they are here, but the most of them 

 are handled in this way: The packing house sends out a man who acts 

 as a surveyor. He visits these large estanchios, makes a record of the 

 number of cattle they have on hand of marketable age, their breeding, 

 general quality and condition, and the condition of the pastures and the 

 probable condition that the cattle will be in when they arrive at market 

 a few weeks or months later, and makes a report to the packing house, 

 in which he estimates the number of pounds of dressed beef per animal 

 that those cattle will probably produce. The owner of the cattle that are 

 ready for the market then goes to the manager of the packing house, and 

 they make a deal on the basis of that estimate; and when the cattle are 

 shipped in by the train-load or half dozen train-loads, they are bought 

 upon that estimate. After the cattle are killed, the manager of the 

 packing house shows the seller just what they actually made In pounds 

 of beef, and they take into account the price that was paid for them. 

 Sometimes there will be, naturally some little variation from that esti- 

 mate one way or the other. That does not affect the deal that has been 

 made, but each party will rem,ember it, and it will enter into the next 

 deal. The man who gets the short end in one deal tries to get it back 

 in the next, and I am told that some of the largest estanchio managers 

 continue to sell their cattle to the same packing house manager year 

 after year without receiving or soliciting a bid from any other concern. 

 I have said to some of the packers here since I returned that they 

 have a better standing down there than in their own country, because 

 I do not know of any man here who would sell to them on that basis. 

 One of the packing house managers said to me that these cattle 

 men are the biggest and best cattle men in the world. If a man makes 

 a hundred thousand dollars on cattle on his estanchio, he is willing to 

 reinvest it in the business, and he has confidence to go on improving 

 his stock and his pasture conditions. There is no country where I have 

 ever been, or about which I know anything, where they put so much 

 stress upon the value of good blood as there. We hear a good deal 

 about those conditions, but I want incidentally to refer to some of the 

 conditions which you see in their big show down there. 



