ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 143 



that steer when you see him; third, you must he ahle to hire an 

 expert feeder who can fix up his dope and give it to him as often 

 as he will take it, and keep him groomed, and then exhibit him. 



I would like to have Professor Kinzer tell us what he fed his 

 steer. Did you feed boiled stuff, or what? 



Professor Kinzer : We fed Kansas corn and alfalfa. 



Mr. Smith : It seems to me that there is one phase of the dis- 

 cussion that is being neglected. It is all very well to be able to 

 produce a champion steer, or to produce a carload of steers that 

 will sell to advantage; but I think one of the gentlemen stated — 

 perhaps it was the president — that we are receiving in the neigh- 

 borhood of thirty-eight per cent of what the consumer pays for 

 the stuff. The first gentleman that addressed us this afternoon 

 said that the logical outcome of American farming (not in just 

 those words, but that was what he meant) is smaller farms. Now, 

 can we go on and produce beef on thirty-eight per cent of what 

 the consumer pays for it 1 ? It seems to me that there are problems 

 coming up before us that require as much thought as how to make 

 the most beef or the most pork. This association, with the help 

 of others, undertook to find a way in which our products could 

 be sold, and we receive more than thirty-eight per cent of what 

 the consumer paid for them, but we failed. What next? Are we 

 to go on and spend our energies in the production of meat for 

 thirty-eight per cent of what the consumer pays for it, when this 

 association was organized for the express purpose of finding better 

 markets and better conditions for what we do produce? 



President Waters : The last speaker has certainly put his finger 

 on a very important phase of this subject, and I am glad to see 

 the association here engaged in that investigation. There has been 

 very little of it done. I have been following that up myself as 

 best I could. I do these things as a side issue — as a diversion — - 

 since I have quit the beef -feeding business. There is a tremendous 

 amount of waste going on in our handling of the stock, including 

 the farmers' handling of it, and particularly after it leaves his 

 hands. I don't know how it is here, but at Manhattan, which is 

 right near the great grazing country where hundreds of thousands 

 of cattle are grazed, a man never thinks of going down there to buy 

 cattle to feed ; but he goes to Kansas City. Those cattle are shipped 

 to Kansas City, and then they are shipped back — within fifty miles 

 and oftentimes within ten miles of where they were bred — to be fed 

 again ; and then they are shipped from there to Kansas City and 



