238 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



That is naturlal. It is logical. There are reasons for it which appeal 

 instantly to even the casual thinker. There are a great many excep- 

 tions to this tendency, but if you will look over the work of the world 

 you will find a growing and as I think irresistible tendency to carry 

 the manufactory to the raw material. 



What is our raw material in the State of Iowa? First, cattle; sec- 

 ond, hogs; and I assert to you, and it is a subject to which I have given 

 more than ordinary attention,— I assert that not a fat steer or a fai 

 hog should ever leave the borders of the State of Iowa to be manufac- 

 tured into their ultimate producLs. Take hogs, for instance. It is a 

 blasphemy, almost, to haul hogs three hundred miles or four hundred 

 miles. Take a fat hog, — a carload of fat hogs at Kansas City, and 

 transport them to Chicago, and I care not how go'od attention you give 

 them in transportation, there is an actual loss of anywhere from li^ to 

 3 per cent in meat tissue. That is a loss that can never be repaired. It 

 is irreparable. I do not mean to say that the animal can not again 

 take on his original weight, but if he does he takes it on at the expense 

 of the food that is given to him to replace this loss. 



Now tell me, if you please, why should hogs be taken from the 

 State of Iowa to Kansas City or to Chicago or anywhere else to be manu- 

 factured into meat products? Tell me why j'our fat cattle should be 

 transported by the hundreds of thousands of train loads from year to 

 year to be manufactured in Chicago or elsewhere? There is no reason, 

 but you ask why it is done. I will tell you why it is done; it is done 

 because the adjustment of the railroad rates between the live animal 

 and the dead product is unfair. There are one or two manufactories 

 in Iowa which by reason of their being close to the Mississippi river, 

 and others possibly at the Missouri river, that are able to survive the 

 unfairness in these rates; but manufactories scattered over the State 

 of Iowa can not compete. Mark you, I am not here an advocate for the 

 reduction of railroad rates. I do not know whether railroad rates are 

 too high or too low. I am not quarreling with the returns which the 

 railroad companies are securing upon the business which they do; but I 

 do say that, whether intentional or otherwise, the rates between live 

 stock and dead product are so adjusted that the business which we 

 ought to do, not only for economy's sake but for prosperity's sake, we 

 do not do. Railroad rates in this State, so far as their adjustment is 

 concerned, are much like Topsy, — they have simply grown. They do 

 not bear that relation to each other which a scientific investigation of 

 the subject would require. 



You know, as well as L it is not a question, it is not a technical 

 question, but j^ou know as well as I that the railroad company ought 

 to be willing to deliver a packing house product cheaper than it trans- 

 ports the live animal. There are a great many reasons which lead to 

 this conclusion, reasons which have been investigated, because I am not 

 suggesting anything new, and I am suggesting it to you because it is 

 a matter of vital importance, not only as citizens of this State, not onH- 

 as men who are interested in seeing a general diversification of the 

 work, of our people, but as men who are interested in seeing a market for 

 your product created within the limits of your own State. That is the 



