254 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



1,165 pounds each. In shipment from my farm to 

 Bennings, which is the abattoir of Washington, these 

 animals lost 45 pounds each in weight, and I received 

 for the weight at Bennings $7.75 per hundred pounds. 

 Having kept a fairly accurate account of the expenses 

 involved in producing these cattle, I found that, ex- 

 clusive of the manure which they furnished, my ac- 

 tual profit on the transaction was a little over $100, or 

 about $3 per head. It is readily seen that a very 

 slight decrease in price of the cattle would have brought 

 me out in debt. 



Moreover, it is hardly probable that under present 

 conditions the price of beef per head to the farmer 

 would undergo very much diminution, unless it be by 

 combinations in restraint of trade whereby the farmer 

 will be frozen out while the consumer will still pay as 

 much as he does at the present time. It is a noticeable 

 fact that when the price of meat animals falls to the 

 farmer, you wait a long time to see the price to the con- 

 sumer diminished. On the other hand, when the price 

 to the consumer is increased, it is a long while before 

 the reflex of this increase shows in the increased profits 

 of the farmer. 



FOBMEB METHOD OF BEEF PBODUCTION ABNOEMAL* 



Up to the present time the production of meat ani- 

 mals, especially beef and mutton, has not been a normal 

 industry. The vast areas of the semi-arid plains, 

 which are open to free grazing, afforded an oppor- 

 tunity of producing beef and mutton under abnormal 

 conditions, that is, under conditions of minimum cost. 

 Animals produced in this way could be sold at a figure 

 which rendered the efforts for the production of beef 

 and mutton more generally throughout the older settled 



