‘ THE TEXAS CATTLE TRADE. | 351 
dred pounds, for thin stock cattle and for well-matured fat beeves, re- 
spectively. In the lower grades Texas cattle have mainly monopo- 
lized the market. The low prices caused by this abundant supply 
have influenced all the markets in the country. In the opinion of intel- 
ligent cattle dealers in Chicago, the immense cattle irruption from the 
Southwest has alone prevented the average price of beef, live weight, - 
from ruling as high as 12 cents per pound in the eastern*markets. Com- 
plaints have been heard from even New England farmers of their being 
compelled to accept lower prices than had been anticipated. There is 
scarcely room to doubt that the Texas cattle trade has been overdone, 
and that the late abundant supply has been secured at the cost of a 
erippled production in the future. 
The influence of the Texas cattle trade has hitherto operated as a dis- 
turbing force, deranging, to some extent, old arrangements of supply 
and demand in the markets generally. Some of its results upon the 
meat production and supply of the country are already foreshadowed. 
The States north of the Ohio have hitherto furnished the main supply 
of animal food to the eastern markets. If the present conditions of 
cheap beef production in Texas should be perpetuated, or if the grazing 
capacities of our great central mountain region should be speedily de- 
veloped, of which there is now ample promise, those States will be com- 
pelled to yield entirely the production of lower grades*ot beef. The 
extension of railroad facilities is constantly enlarging the area of pas- 
turage immediately available for cheap beef production. In the case 
of Texas cattle, many drawbacks to the trade will be removed. The 
long drive of seven hundred miles will be abandoned. Farmers, upon 
land costing from $20 to $200 per acre, in climates requiring four or five 
months’ winter feeding, cannot compete with stock-misers operating un- 
der a sky that demands no shelter, and upon a soil yielding perennial 
supplies of green food where land is now so cheap that a single stock- 
farm includes a whole county. 
The farmers of the Northwest must seeure more valuable breeds of 
stock. They must select animals which, with the same acreage of sum- 
mer pasture and the same amount of winter feeding, will yield beef in 
greater quantity, of finer quality, and of higher market value. 
The more intelligent cattle-raisers in the older States have already 
anticipated this necessity by supplanting their common stocks with im- 
preyed breeds of cattle. The pressure of circumstances will drive the 
farming interest generaily in the wake of these pioneers, and a speedy 
demand for superior animals may be expected. In the next ten years 
we may anticipate an immense improvement in the stocks of the North- 
west. For such there is no danger of a failing market. While wealth, 
under our free civilization, is accumulating and diffusing itself through 
more numerous classes of society, the demand for better food will keep 
pace with any improvement in production that may be made. In this 
branch of the business, Texas cattle-raisers, under their present condi- 
tions of production, can offer but slight competition. To raise the finer 
breeds of cattle will involve a revolution in their whole system. It is 
one thing te send out, from time to time, gangs of Mexican vaqueros to 
lasso and drive in the spontaneous products of wide, unoccupied wastes 
of rich pasture, but entirely another thing to operate within narrower 
limits, and to develop the latent resources of nature by a scientific ap- 
plication of her higher laws. It is unreasonable to expect a sudden 
change in the loose methods of production now employed in the South- 
west; but the time is coming when such a change will be a necessity. 
The pressure of population and the rise in the value of land will soon 
