THE PACKERS AND THE CATTLEMEN 49 



City, Omaha, St. Louis, Fort Worth, and St. Joseph, 

 Mo., which are the centres to which almost all of 

 the live meat is shipped. But the packing mo- 

 nopoly extends far beyond the mere buying and 

 selling of meat products. It includes the ownership 

 of the stock-yards, refrigerator-cars, oil-mills, and 

 many banks, all of which work in harmony and 

 under the control of the packers. The packers also 

 control the hide business, tanneries, and the produce 

 of tanneries, as well as glue, button-making, cotton- 

 seed-oil, soap, artificial butter, etc. The combina- 

 tion controls the price of the fertilizer which the 

 farmer uses as well as the refrigerator-cars for the 

 transportation not only of meat but of fruits, fresh 

 vegetables, and other perishable products. In fact, 

 the meat-packers, through their control of banks and 

 railroad- cars and the virtual ownership of the means 

 of marketing, possess a more or less complete mo- 

 nopoly of the foodstuffs of the entire nation. This 

 monopoly is made complete by the ownership of 

 local cold-storage plants in all of the large cities. 

 Local butchers can only buy of the trust because 

 local slaughter-houses have been driven out of busi- 

 ness. The supply of meat is thus under the control 

 of the four or five big packing establishments from 

 the time the cattle are brought to the stock-yards 

 until the meat reaches the consumer. 



One of the reasons for the incredible power of the 

 great packers is that they have at their command the 



