360 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Mr. Harding : As to this feeding, I believe to a certain extent 

 he may 'be right but the Poland China hog with which Peter Mouw 

 started had not got to its small point. He got hold of some of this 

 stock that afterwards developed to be a small type but under his 

 feeding it did not reduce down. At one time we did not have these 

 small ones. They were all big. He got hold of the type before it 

 degenerated. 



Mr. Carlin : The question of Mr. Mouw 's success is based on the 

 fact that he disregarded size and selected animals that had the 

 promise of proper development. The stuff he started with was not 

 large but by proper selection and the only Mouw system of feeding 

 he has kept it large. 



Mr. Yoder : At the state fair one year I had a breeder ask me 

 why it was that his herd header and its descendants were larger 

 than a litter brother and the descendants of the litter brother. I 

 had not thought of that before but I knew the litter and I knew the 

 ancestry and he had the one male in the litter that was the 

 type of the dam and the others in the litter were the type of the 

 sire and the breeding quality was so strong that it had been carried 

 down the line. You want to look to the type you started with. If 

 you do that and then feed the feed will do the rest but it will be 

 hard to feed it alone. 



Following this general discussion the paper on the subject, "The 

 Meat Situation, ' ' by W. P. Saunders, manager of the Agar Packing 

 Company of Des Moines, was read by the secretary. The paper 

 was as follows: 



"Enough has been said already to show that the increased cost of meat 

 is due to the failure of the animal industry to keep up with the increase 

 in the human population. In some areas of the country there has been 

 an actual decline in the number of farm animals. The Texas Commercial 

 Secretaries' association reports the number of cattle in Texas January 

 1, 1909, to have been 8,794,000, while on January 1, 1910, there were 

 but 5,959,926. 



After all the world's elaborate process of reasoning in regard to the 

 causes and conditions of present business affairs, we shall have to go 

 back to the simple act of blaming the farmer, if we want to put our 

 finger on the spot whence comes all the uncertainty and confusion of 

 this spring. It is highly unfortunate, for the average man wants to 

 find a combination in restraint of trade that is doing all the mischief, 

 and the farmer is not a combination in restraint of trade. What are 

 the grounds of complaints and confusing factors of the times? High 

 prices, the tariff, the political situation and the adverse action of the 

 foreign commerce. Perhaps it can be simmered down to the one fact 

 of high prices. Then what causes high prices? A shortage of those 



