536 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Information has been secured from some of the Chicago packers as 

 to the manner in which the beef from these cattle is sold and as to the 

 consumptive channels into which it goes. Assuming that 60 to 65 per 

 cent of them are slaughtered in Chicago, it is learned that from 70 to 75 

 per cent of the Chicago slaughtered beef is shipped east, which results 

 that the beef from around 85 per cent of these cattle is consumed in the 

 east. Practically all of the eastern slaughtered animals are Koshered, 

 and around 20 to 30 per cent of the Chicago slaughtered. Nearly all the 

 Koshered carcasses are sold as beef cuts and enough more of the regular 

 slaughtered to result that 90 per cent of the entire slaughter is sold as 

 cuts and only 10 per cent as carcass beef. This grade or these grades 

 of beef are scarcely ever frozen, but the whole supply goes into consump- 

 tion as fresh beef, and the practical outside limit that it remains in the 

 hands of the packer after slaughter is ten to fiften days. Of the carcass, 

 only about 35 per cent on the whole goes into the retail trade for house- 

 hold consumption, and 65 per cent is sold either to jobbers or direct for 

 the hotel, restaurant, dining-car, club and similar consumption; and of 

 the 35 per cent to the retail trade the greater part is from the front 

 quarters and the rounds. Between 90 and 95 per cent of the ribs and 

 loins go for public catering consumption, and only between 5 and 10 per 

 cent into the retail trade; so when the local butcher undertakes to assure 

 you that he is selling you a steak or a rib roast from a good or choice 

 steer carcass, you are fairly justified in doubting his veracity. 



There are, then, two very important channels of consumption into 

 which this beef goes — the so-called better cuts go into the kitchens and 

 grills of hotels, restaurants, dining-cars and clubs, and very largely in the 

 east; the greater part of the forequarters go into the Kosher trade in the 

 great Jewish centers of population in the eastern cities. In the Kosher 

 trade, the demand for better beef can only be met by getting it from 

 better carcasses; in ordinary trade the demand for better or more ex- 

 pensive beef is met by getting it from the supposedly-better cuts. Pros- 

 perous industrial conditions among the Jewish population results in an 

 increased demand for beef from better carcasses, while in other consump- 

 tion it usually means an inordinate demand for loin steaks and rib roasts 

 to the neglect of other portions of the carcass. 



If one were seeking then the causes for the falling off in the demand 

 for the beef from these better grades of animals, it should be sought in 

 the conditions prevailing in the hotel and restaurant trade and among the 

 Jewish industrial population. And there is no doubt that the condi- 

 tions existing in both these for the past two months can account in very 

 large part for the course of prices for the better beef carcasses, and it is 

 apparent that the wool grower is not the only agricultural producer who 

 is interested directly in knowing what are the present and prospective 

 conditions among the workers in the clothing and suit industries in the 

 eastern cities; likewise that the feeder of good cattle is not indifferent 

 to conditions influencing the actions of the rich, the near-rich and the 

 would-appear rich, who make up a great part of the clientele of the hotels, 

 restaurants and clubs where almost exclusively the best steaks and roasts 

 are to be found. 



