TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 447 



than for the poorer. For the former it includes the weight within four 

 classes: Below 1100, 1100 to 1300, 1300 to 1500, and above 1500. The 

 state of origin, if one of the six most important — Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, 

 Nebraska, South Dakota or Indiana, with all other states under one head- 

 ing; and the buyer. With the poorer grades, the record by states is not 

 so complete nor is the division by weights as close. The totals from these 

 daily sheets are carried to weekly ones, and these to monthly, and then 

 to continuous ones by months, so that information as to the receipts dur- 

 ing a longer or shorter period is readily available. 



The information that it was hoped to obtain from the packers has not 

 yet been secured. The matter of getting ft was taken up first with 

 two of the packers directly, and afterwards, at the suggestion of one of 

 them, through the Institute of American Packers. Schedules of the de- 

 sired information were made out and forwarded to the Institute and 

 submitted by the director there to several of the packers. Some tests 

 were run to learn what might be done in securing it, but the result was 

 not deemed sufficiently representative to justify its use — at least, this 

 was the conclusion of the packer making them. Several conferences were 

 held to discuss the matter, but they did not get anywhere and the attempt 

 to secure it in this way was given up. The packer representatives 

 thought it was a matter that ought to come before a joint committee of 

 producers and packers, and they wanted any further action postponed 

 until such a committee should be appointed— the producer members by 

 the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation (as the old pro- 

 ducer-packer committee when it disbanded recommended that a new com- 

 mittee should be thus designated). Pending the appointment of such a 

 committee, and to try to establish a satisfactory basis for the activities 

 of such a committee if appointed, a memorandum of what was considered 

 a fair statement of the relationship to be maintained between the pro- 

 ducers and packers, which included the reasons why the securing of in- 

 formation such as this was deemed essential, and making the securing of 

 it a pre-requisite of any attempted joint activity, and also a schedule of 

 the information desired with regard to this particular class of animals, 

 was drawn up and was forwarded through the president of the American 

 Farm Bureau Federation to the heads of the four large packing organiza- 

 tions at Chicago for their consideration, with a request for an unequivocal 

 answer as to whether they were agreed to the statement in the memo- 

 randum and would be willing to give such information as was thereon 

 indicated. General replies were received with promises for more specific 

 ones in the near future. 



In the meantime the livestock marketing conference was held in Chi- 

 cago which resulted in the recommendation that a general committee of 

 fifteen be appointed to consider all questions having to deal with live- 

 stock marketing and kindred subjects and to outline a policy and pro- 

 gram to be followed, and it was decided to let this matter await the ap- 

 pointment of this committee and then bring it before them and get their 

 endorsement of the whole proposition. If this is secured, the subject will 

 be opened again with the intention of finding out just what is going to be 

 the attitude of the packing interests and thus know whether there is any- 



