546 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



the smallest was just short of 12,000 in October; so that from this chart 

 you can see that this class of stock has come to market more uniformly 

 during the eight-months period than the other three grades of cattle. 

 (Exhibiting charts of curves.) 



These charts here could be understood better if they were attached 

 together, because they are supposed to be continuous charts showing by 

 these lines, the red line and the blue line, the daily fluctuations in the 

 price of good steer beef. The red line shows the fluctuations at Chicago; 

 the blue line shows the average of the fluctuations at the three eastern 

 markets — Boston, Philadelphia and New York. These are the daily fluc- 

 tuations in price of good and choice steers. The blue line is the price 

 range of good steers, and the yellow of choice steers. This yellow column 

 here shows the weekly receipts at Chicago of choice steers; the blue, the 

 weekly receipts of good steers, and the red is the weekly receipts of all 

 cattle, and the black column is the weekly receipts of all cattle at seven 

 markets. These are on different scales. That is, the scale for the good 

 and the choice is on variations of 1,000, and so on, variations of 5,000, and 

 on up to variations of 20,000. 



Starting at the close of the stock yards strike in Chicago last spring, 

 you will remember the course of the market at that time. As soon as the 

 market opened at that time after the strike, there was quite an advance in 

 cattle, which was followed by very large receipts for the three weeks in 

 April, which broke the price downward to about 11 1/^ to 14 cents, which 

 was the range on good and choice cattle. This chart shows how the beef 

 market fluctuated at that time. The supply of beef was cut off tempo- 

 rarily in the east and Chicago for a while, and the market advanced quite 

 rapidly, and then declined just about as rapidly, and as you go over into 

 May you will see that the price of cattle continued to sag gradually until 

 you reach the last week in May, when it reached practically the lowest 

 level of the spring decline. This doesn't exactly show how low that level 

 was, because, as a matter of fact, medium cattle, good cattle and choice 

 cattle were in such large supply and the price for the cattle in different 

 sections of the yards on different days was so various, that it was hard 

 to classify cattle as to whether they were good, medium or choice; they 

 were selling almost in bulk; so that on this chart it shows the top round 

 about $13.60 for choice cattle, but as a matter of fact, I don't think there 

 \\ere any sales that ran over 13 cents, and the big bulk of those cattle were 

 around 11 and 12 cents, and medium cattle didn't break much below 10 

 cents, so that the range between choice and medium cattle wasn't over 

 $3 a hundred. 



The receipts of these three classes were running about 14,000 this 

 week, about 16,000 this week, over 16,000 this week, and the last week 

 of May the receipts of all cattle in these three classes of cattle fell off 

 very markedly from 10,000 down to 4,700, and then the next week in June 

 there was a falling off of receipts of cattle, and then the beef market 

 advanced very rapidly, and the cattle market advanced almost as rapidly, 

 but not in proportion. 



As I stated before, in the three eastern markets, the price of western 

 dressed beef reached the highest point on record, but as the chart shows. 



