TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 533 



minds closed to everything but tlieir own opinions and own interests, 

 whether their decisions can be backed up by the support of the interests 

 they represent, and whether they are willing to undertake to try to solve 

 the major problems or confine themselves to some of the minor ones. 



Coming back, now, to the information that has been gathered as to 

 the market movement and disposition of the class of cattle, the study of 

 which was undertaken, it is evident that the usefulness of what informa- 

 tion has been obtained is diminished because of the inability to correlate 

 it and carry it further on the basis of information that it was hoped to 

 obtain from the packers. But the information obtained is of very great 

 value as throwing light on the production end, and there is where the 

 producers' interests are largely centered. The producer is interested, 

 and very rightly so, in the disposition that is made of his product, but 

 under the most favorable conditions the extent to which he can influence 

 this distribution is very limited. In very large part he must confine his 

 activities to the better control of the production and the marketing of 

 his live stock, for it is in this direction that he can exercise the only con- 

 trol possible to him over price — and in the final sifting the question of 

 price is the all-important one. The information that has been secured 

 has therefore been arranged in such form as to indicate the effects that 

 supply and distribution have upon price in order to make possible a con- 

 sideration of the question as to whether there are not better methods than 

 now in operation for the control of the production and the distribution of 

 the supply in the interest of price. 



To this end charts have been made showing the daily fluctuations 

 in the prices of different grade of steers with the daily fluctuations in 

 the wholesale prices at Chicago and at the three leading eastern markets 

 of similarly named grade of western dressed steer carcass beef — the 

 prices in both instances being those of the Bureau of Markets. With these 

 are charted the weekly receipts of the corresponding grades of steers at 

 Chicago, the total weekly receipts of all cattle at Chicago, and the total 

 receipts at the seven leading western markets. The receipts are charted 

 by the week because under the conditions under which they are obtained 

 each day's receipts can not be accurately determined, and also because 

 the effect of receipts on price is largely cumulative for the week rather 

 than determined by each day's receipts. That is, it is each day's receipts 

 taken in relation to the receipts of the preceding days and the estimate 

 for the following day that influences price rather than each day's receipts 

 taken by themselves. 



These charts show quite plainly the close relation that exists be- 

 tween the dressed beef market and the cattle tnarket, and how the two 

 go up and down — if not always exactly together, fairly uniformly. On 

 some occasions, as will be pointed out, the advance or decline appears 

 first in the cattle market, but as a general rule the movement in one 

 direction or the other is inaugurated in the beef market. And as a mat- 

 ter of practical fact, as well as of economic analysis, it is in the beef 

 market that the price of beef cattle are determined; that is, that the pi*ice 

 direction is from the beef and by-products markets to the cattle market, 

 and not from the cattle market to the beef market, as is quite commonly 



