SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART I. 89 



long experience, do not buy stuff because it looks cheap when they do 

 not need it, for the simple reason that holding it 24 to 60 hours in the 

 yards, until killing gangs can give it their ustial warm reception, is 

 expensive. The incidental loss they prefer to saddle on the shipper. 

 Feed bills cost money, and cattle laying around the yards, off their regu- 

 lar teed, do not thrive as you all know. Under these conditions an 

 additional loss to purchaser of 10 to 25c per cwt. may soon be incurred, 

 and frequently is, while quality of the beef deteriorates during the 

 detention. The present two or three-day-market system, according as 

 you may designate it, has evaporated a vast amount of bovine wealth, 

 every dollar of which has been so much money our of the pockets of 

 growers and shippers. 



We are now making joint efforts to remedy this evil. Buyers and 

 sellers are acting in concert. It is a campaign inaugurated two years 

 ago, but not yet completed. We aim to secure equal distriution of sup- 

 ply over five days of the week. During the past two decades the slaught- 

 ering industry has been revolutionized, while we have been plugging 

 along in the same old rut on the market side. We have the buyers with 

 us, every purchasing agency on the market having entered into an 

 agreement to do everything possible to facilitate the reform. Of my 

 own knowledge, I know that some buyers have, on days of excessive 

 receipts, reduced their purchases that they might be in better position 

 to care for the next day's run, thereby keeping faith with the shipper 

 who was showing a disposition to co-operate with them and make this 

 much needed reform an actual fact. 



Long estalished customs are not easily relegated to the past. 

 Business men are laudably conservative, and we did not begin this cam- 

 paign imbued with any degree of confidence that a few week's effort 

 would accomplish the desired end. The territory from which Chicago 

 draws its live stock supplies is vast. On the West it extends to the 

 Pacific, on the South to the Gulf, on the North to far away Alberta in 

 Canada and .in the East to Michigan and Ohio, and to establish such 

 a radical change, even during the two years we have been engaged in 

 the work, would have been phenomenal, but we are making progress, 

 rapid and convincing progress. It is a recognized fact that whenever the 

 supply of cattle is at all evenly distributed through the week, not only 

 are prices better, but the market has better action and the movement 

 toward the scales is earlier and livelier. This means a saving in shrink- 

 age, and shrinkage is always at the expense of the vendor. 



There may be some skepticism as to the honesty of purpose of the 

 buyer in advocating a five-day-market. Are not market gluts to his 

 advantage? is the inquiry propounded. I answer emphatically in the 

 negative. Buyers (I mean the men who buy the cattle in the yards) 

 have everything to gain by the reform. Their records are made on the 

 showing of the dressing sheets. Every animal killed is carefully 

 tested as to percentages of live and dressed weight, tallow, offal and 

 hide, and the buyer whose purchases do not show a profit is soon 

 dropped. Now, with equal distribution, the buyer also salesman has 



