SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 419 



It seems to me that the average feeder in the country does not keep 

 quite well enough posted in regard to buying his feeding cattle. I be- 

 lieve the majority of the men here will agree that that is true. A 

 man knows that the market is depressed and lower this week, but he 

 thinks his work is not in shape to leave, and puts it off until next week, 

 and the consequence is that perhaps his cattle cost 25 to 40 cents more 

 per cwt.,- and when he gets the cattle fattened, perhaps that difference in 

 the buying is all the profit there is in them. I find that keeping well 

 posted on the market is the success of buying your cattle at the right 

 price. 



CO-OPERATIVE PACKING F'LANTS. 



BY CHARLES W. HOLMAN, SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL, 

 AGRICULTURAL. ORGANIZATION SOCIETY. 



I can not help but think that in preparing a program, your secretary 

 and chairman could have picked a better man to acquaint you with the 

 progress and status of co-operative packing plants, as I am neither 

 a live stock producer nor a packing house expert. I would very much 

 prefer to talk on the American land question of the co-operative mar- 

 keting of perishable products. However, the National Agricultural Or- 

 ganization Society, which I represent, found it necessary a few weeks 

 ago to inaugurate a survey of the co-operative packing house industry 

 in the northwestern states, and I promised Secretary Wallace to come 

 over here and tell you just what we might discover in this connection, 

 provided we were able to make any progress by the time that this 

 meeting was to be held. 



In an attempt to carry out this promise, I have been traveling con- 

 tinuously for the last ten days, visiting three plants and talking with 

 persons connected with them. I arrived here direct from the Wausau 

 plant, and have had only about ten minutes' time in which to arrange 

 my data. So I am not going to attempt to give you a regular speech. 

 I am simply going to tell you what I have found from the point of 

 view, we might say, of a man v/ho expected to invest in one of these 

 concerns. 



The last three years have witnessed a peculiar reaction on the part 

 of the live stock producing interests in this country towards the packers. 

 In addition to the attempts of associations such as your own, through 

 the market committee of the American National Live Stock Association, 

 and the National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, of which 

 I am secretary, to secure a cost-finding investigation of the live stock in- 

 dustry from "calf to plate," certain groups of farmers and cattle men 

 have thought that they could establish packing plants and abattoirs in 

 competition with the great packing interests of the country. This unrest 

 on the part of our live stock producers has made them peculiarly sus- 

 ceptible to promotion efforts from the outside. Accordingly, when several 

 groups of shrewd promoters — men who make a business of starting enter- 

 prises for other people to carry on after them — have gone into some of 

 the richer states, they have found the farmers an easy prey, and they 



