304 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN 



first forty-eight years of their existence totaled the 

 unthinkable sum of $9,706,645,548! And there 

 are other markets, and other SWIFTS and ARMOURS. 

 It is true that prices rise and prices fall, now as 

 always the producers ever bearing the larger risk, 

 and sometimes meeting loss. Would that greater 

 stability in values could be assured; would that the 

 sunshine and the rain could always be rightly dis- 

 tributed. But since time began this has not been 

 vouchsafed to those who plow and sow and reap. 

 An undoubted element of chance enters always 

 into the operations of tillers of the soil and feeders 

 for stock-yard markets. There is no denying that. 

 Feasts are sometimes followed by famine; high 

 values succeeded by falling quotations; but the con- 

 servation of our soil demands imperatively the stead- 

 fast maintenance of our live-stock industries, and 

 the forces that can best insure the permanent pros- 

 perity of the growers meet in the library of the 

 SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB. Packers, producers, 

 bankers and kings of the transportation world are 

 alike welcomed and honored under its roof. This is 

 as it should be, for their interests are incontestably 

 identical. 



