BEEF FATTENING. 75 



it is a very difficult thing to do in this section of the country, 

 for the reason that we cannot raise enough corn to make it. 

 I suppose, of all the cattle that go to Watertown there are 

 ninety-nine that are not fit to slaughter. I presume that the 

 larger part of the cattle that go to Watertown market come 

 from over the Canada line, and the majority of them are 

 grown well enough, but are not well finished ofi". You go 

 into Boston market or Clinton market, where car-loads of 

 fresh beef come every day, and you find it in the same con- 

 dition. You find eight or ten cattle in a car that are fit to 

 put into market. They put about thirty-five head in a car, 

 and, on the average, you will not find more than the number 

 I have stated that anybody would want to take to retail ; 

 and that is the story from one year's end to another. But 

 I must say that although our market away down on Nan- 

 tucket is a small market, we have had some people there, 

 for the last hundred years or more, who have known what 

 good beef is, and they must have it ; they are ready to pay a 

 good price for it ; but the trouble is to get it. But I do not 

 believe that you can raise cattle in this section of the 

 country, put them into the market and get the largest price 

 for them, unless you can devise some method of producing 

 corn to feed them. We hear some reports that corn can be 

 raised at a low price. I read last night an account of a man 

 who had raised 130 bushels of corn to the acre, at fourteen 

 cents a bushel, if I am not mistaken. I do not want to get 

 away from the subject, but let me say a word about that. 

 What would it cost to husk 260 baskets of corn, to say 

 nothing about raising it ? I do not believe there is a man 

 on the face of the globe who can raise corn for fourteen 

 cents a bushel and have his land left in anything like the 

 condition in which it was when he planted it. There is 

 plenty of poor beef brought to market, and as nuich of it 

 comes from this part of the country as any place I know of. 

 Mr. J. D. Pouter of Hatfield. This question of fatten- 

 ing beef is a subject in which I have been interested ever 

 since I was a boy ten years old. Perhaps I cannot en- 

 lighten any of these people here upon it, because I have 

 been doing it on a small scale. IVIany of you remember 

 that twenty-five, thirty, forty or fifty years ago the Connec- 



