528 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



ganizaticns for all sorts of purposes, and there lias been a great outpour- 

 ing of protests and resolutions dealing with the live stock situation — 

 some of which have resulted or will result in active measures of relief, 

 others of which have resulted only in much talk and the conditions re- 

 main as tho they had never been held. The trouble has been that altho 

 many persons were conscious — painfully conscious — that things were not 

 going right, there vrere few who could correctly diagnose the causes of 

 the trouble, and fewer who were prepared to offer concrete remedies for 

 concrete disabilities. In the face of threatening conditions live stock pro- 

 ducers have found themselves helpless to take any united or concerted 

 action — and it is to be hoped that out of this consciously felt helpless- 

 ness a will and a desire for self help may be developed. 



It has been, then, to the third activity — that of making a careful 

 study of the whole fed cattle situation — that the greater part of the time 

 has been devoted, and from which the most promising results have been 

 obtained. Heretofore corn fed cattle have been considered as simply one 

 part of the supply of cattle produced in the general cattle industry, and 

 the producers of such cattle as an inseparable part of the general class 

 of cattle producers, and very little attempt had ever been made to con- 

 sider it as an industry in itself or the men engaged in it as a class rather 

 definitely separated from the bulk of the men engaged in the breeding 

 and raising of cattle. For this reason, there was and is very little avail- 

 able information of a concrete and dependable kind dealing with the pro- 

 duction and distribution of these kinds of cattle, and it has been to the 

 building up of a method of getting this information and of using it for 

 constructive purposes after it has been obtained that the most effort has 

 been given. 



In order to study price relations and price fluctuations of any com- 

 modity it is necessary to have some fairly accurate information on the 

 side of supply — for price is the monetary level at which an effective con- 

 sumers' demand will take a given supply at a given time, and to under- 

 stand how it is determined it is necessary to know both the demand and 

 the supply sides. But there are no figures as to past supplies of corn 

 fed cattle, and no attempts have been made heretofore to secure them. 

 As a beginning, then, it was felt that something should be done to try to 

 get some dependable information along the line of supply of such cattle. 

 After consideration of all possible sources of such information, it was 

 decided that the only way it could be secured in the detail desired was 

 directly from the account sales of the various commission firms at the 

 Chicago market. The matter was taken up with the officers of the ex- 

 change and was brought by them before the directors, and the latter 

 passed a recommendation to the members of the exchange that they fur- 

 nish or make available the information desired. This recommendation 

 was incorporated in a letter of introduction, and all the member firms 

 were visited and the matter was taken up directly with responsible mem- 

 bers of the firm. The request met all kind of responses. For the most 

 part, few could see the need of getting such information, nor any value 

 it would have if it were secured; most were unwilling to have anything 

 to do with it if it should involve any additional work on the part of their 



