ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 145 



When you stop to think about it, suppose you slaughter at Ames 

 or Manhattan : what are you going to do with the blood ? You can 

 feed it to the hogs to better advantage than to use it as a fertilizer, 

 as they do in the packing house. It is not necessary to send that 

 steer to Chicago and ship it back, and lose five pounds of casings. 

 or head trimmings that that animal would produce. You take 

 the steer and divide it up, and you find that the cost of sending that 

 animal to market and shipping it back, adding to it two or three 

 days' time that the feeder must devote to that, and railroad fare 

 that he is paying one way, is insignificant in comparison with 

 what it costs to produce that steer. We might have central plants 

 and ship the animals there. 



Mr. Doran : I want to congratulate the Corn Belt Meat Pro- 

 ducers for having struck the keynote at last. We know how to 

 make meat, but, as Mr. Smith says, there ought to be more profit 

 than thirty-eight per cent in the production of beef or pork. We 

 sold hogs in Boone County at six and one-fourth cents when our 

 neighbor paid thirty-five cents for bacon. It seems to me that the 

 middleman has the big end of the deal. The solution of that prob- 

 lem I think has been pretty well put before* this association by a 

 gentleman in this room — one of the organizers of this association. 

 He has time and again told us that we should build slaughter houses 

 and cure our own meat. He has had some experience in building 

 slaughter houses, but they have disappeared in the fire. I would 

 like to hear again from Mr. Ryan, of Fort Dodge, and revive this 

 old subject of discussion. 



Mr. Ryan : Mr. Chairman and members of the Corn Belt Meat 

 Producers' Association, I am always pleased to have an opportunity 

 to address the original insurgents of Iowa. That little band of a 

 half dozen men who met at the Kirkwood House a few years ago 

 has grown to have the ability to make more noise — at least in de- 

 manding the rights of the farmer and stockman — than the same 

 number of men that ever met at any time or in any country; and 

 I am glad to know that they are going on with that association in 

 a way to perpetuate it. 



I have been advocating the establishment of packing plants in 

 Iowa because I know the fellows who have made money out of the 

 business. I know that Mr. Cudahy came here from Ireland a poor 

 boy, and he didn't know so very much more than the rest of us 

 Irish; but he died the other day worth nearly $100,000,000, and 

 he made it all out of you farmers. He made it all by giving Mr, 

 10 



