266 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



income tax and states the price he received for his beef 

 cattle, he is allowed to subtract the price he paid for 

 them as stock animals. On the contrary, if the farmer 

 grows his own beef on the farm and sells the fat steer 

 for $90, the whole selling price must be reported for 

 income purposes. 



These conditions indicate so grave a situation as to 

 require the careful consideration of all who are inter- 

 ested in the future of agriculture. The old system of 

 providing the meat supply of this country has broken 

 down. When we had access to the almost unbounded 

 wealth of the virgin soils of the Middle West and the 

 grazing States, the cost of production of meat was 

 reduced to a minimum. At the same time there arose 

 in this country a method of handling meat animals in 

 large packing houses. There is no question of the fact 

 that the cost of handling in this way is reduced to a 

 minimum. It costs far less to slaughter the meat ani- 

 mals in a large packing house and prepare them for con- 

 sumption than it would cost the farmer who did it at 

 home. 



The meat supply of this country was therefore an 

 abnormal one, due to the cheapness of production on 

 the one hand, and to the efficiency and cheapness of 

 handling on the other. But these benefits to the con- 

 sumers during the last fifty years are hardly to be 

 counted as blessings to the consumers of the next fifty 

 years. The whole theory of meat production must be 

 changed. The production of meat should become uni- 

 versal instead of localized. Every farmer ought to be 

 able to produce a few meat animals more than is neces- 

 sary for his own supply. The meat industry would 

 thus be decentralized and spread over the whole coun- 

 try. The possibilities of manipulation which the 



