TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 541 



burgh Packing Company. Of the choice cattle that they bought, I don't 

 think they bought over 15 to 20 per cent, and I doubt if they buy that 

 much of them. 



Member: Fifteen years ago the per cent shipped out of the yards 

 was about the same as it is now, and they were all purchased by outside 

 buyers, and we discover now that we have practically the same per cent 

 shipped out, but only a small per cent being bought by Egan and a few 

 others is worth mentioning. 



Mr. Harlan: It shows the extent to which the handling of beef cattle 

 is concentrated in the hands of the large packers or the subsidiaries that 

 they buy cattle for. 



Of the good steers, of course, it might be useful to try to explain just 

 what is the difference between a choice, medium and good steer, but I 

 will admit it is rather difficult. In a general way, I would say that no 

 steer is considered choice unless it would dress out above 60 or 61 per 

 cent of dressed beef, and then it would have to be of a certain quality or 

 finish to be considered choice. Good steers dress out from about 58 to 60 

 or 61 per cent and upwards, and medium steers would dress from 55 to 56 

 or 58 per cent; but the quality would have something to do with it in 

 either case. A good many steers might dress out 58 or 59 per cent, but 

 on account of quality would not be considered better than the medium 

 steers. 



Of the "good" steers, receipts of which we have recorded show about 

 171,000, and of those 140,521 were heavy and 31,257 light. Of that amount 

 Icwa furnished 84,707, or 49.4 per cent; Illinois furnished 52,668 head, or 

 31.3 per cent; Missouri, 12,958, or 7.5 per cent; Nebraska, 5,076, or 2.9 

 per cent; South Dakota, 3,744, or 2.2 per cent; Indiana, 6,263 or 3.6 per 

 cent and all other states, 5,342, or 3.1 per cent. These other states, I 

 would say that almost all of these good steers in here came from — there 

 were a very few came from Ohio, but nearly all of them came from the 

 Mineral Point section of Wisconsin, and came in during the last two 

 months or two and a half months. 



"Medium" steers have 192,253 head, of which Iowa furnished 96,253, 

 or 50.1 per cent; Illinois, 49,550, or 25.8 per cent; Missouri, 23,514, or 12.2 

 per cent, and other states 22,936, or 11.9 per cent. We kept the record 

 of those steers only from those three states, and then lumped them all up 

 together, which makes 11.9 per cent. 



Choice steers make up 4.4 per cent of the total, and 14.1 per cent of 

 the steers. Good steers make up 26.4 per cent of the steers and 8.3 per 

 cent of the total. Medium steers make up 9.2 per cent of the total and 

 29.5 per cent of the steers. 



With regard to these percentages, the percentage that each grade 

 bears to the total number of beef steers can be considered as fairly exact. 

 Of course, this percentage of the total receipts of cattle is not exact, as I 



