78 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



As I passed out of the yards I looked up at the blackboard and ther^j 

 I saw that the receipts for Monday, day before yesterday, were 38,000 

 head, showing that this week again we are likely to have the same kind 

 of a flood of cattle. As a matter of course the price must drop. I talked 

 with some of the leading packing men there, I asked them what they 

 were going to do, and they said "We do not know where on earth to put 

 these cattle. If we buy them we do not know what to do wath them.'' 

 The normal demand, as we all' know, upon Chicago, for all kinds of meat, 

 for the export trade that we have to-day, for distribution all over, through 

 the refrigerator plants of the great packing houses, is about 60,000 head; 

 that they can dispose of without making any particular break in pricey. 

 But when it runs up 50 per cent more than that, they are at a loss, what 

 to do, as much as we are. Now then that is the condition here. That 

 has been the condition so far as the cattle men are concerned for several 

 years. As I listened to the very interesting talk delivered by our friend 

 Joe Wing on the question of lamb feeding yesterday, I thought what 

 happy fellows you sheep men are and have been for the last few year;;. 

 The country has been educated by abandoning the old wrinkled Merino 

 ram , and come to mutton sheep. There is no trouble about the price 

 of mutton, because the supply fails to keep pace with the demand. But 

 with beef and hogs it is the other way. 



How is it on the other side? The Nations which have big popula- 

 tions, and which have habits similar to ours to-day are enjoying prosperity 

 as we are. We do not need to think that in the last seven or eight years, 

 when we have had such gi'atifying conditions, that we are the only people 

 in the world. Prosperity, as compared with the previous decade, has ex- 

 isted all over the world. The English, the Germans, the French and the 

 Italians, have all felt the upward lift which has been brought about. 

 But what? By any particular tariff schedule, by any particular local 

 legislation? Not at all. The world has had a period of war going on 

 ever since 1898, there have been great wars, either between us and Spain, 

 between the English and the Boers, or later the Titanic struggle, between 

 the Japanese and Russians. There has been an abnormal demand of 

 everything nations could produce. At the same time there has been com- 

 ing from the mines a flood of gold. U is a repetition of the period of 

 1857 when Michael Chevalier wrote his book on the flood of gold, which 

 was saturating the world at that time. So with the unnatural demand 

 as the result of war, with the stimulus which comes from the increase 

 in the money of the world, we have had a tremendous advantage, but we 

 are now face to face with peace conditions, and that is the reason wh.v 

 we have got to consider seriously. Let me give you a statement of the 

 livestock condition of Europe. This was prepared about a year ago by 

 the ablest statistician on this subject I think that there is in the country. 



"Great Britain flocks and herds have, if anything, gone back while 

 the population has gone ahead. The flocks and herds of Ireland have 

 virtually been stationary for a quarter of a century. Twenty-flve years 

 ago France had 188 head of livestock per lOOQ acres of her area. She 

 now has 164 head, or a dead loss of 24 head per ifOO acres of the country. 



