BEEF FATTENING. 85 



Mr. Morse, of the fii-m of Morse & Mansfield. Mr. Taffc 

 says he pays two or three cents a pound more for this beef 

 than for Western beef. I do not see how he can get it in 

 any other way, for I have seen cattle driven through the 

 town by himself that were immensely fat ; and I have seen 

 men follow him (I have done it myself), and ask him 

 what he was going to do with that beef, — if he was going 

 to have it in his stall for sale; That beef does command a 

 better price ; he gives a supei-ior price for it and he gets a 

 superior price. Still, he cannot get the number of cattle of 

 this kind that he wants in his business, and he has to rely 

 somewhat upon Western cattle ; but he has very choice and 

 select beef, and gets better prices than many others do. I 

 do not know of any other remedy for the difficulty that the 

 o;entleman has sufi^oested but to raise a sufficient number of 

 fat cattle to supply our markets. 



Mr. HuTCHiNS of Sutton. When I was a lad I did not 

 have to go a great ways in our town to find a pretty long 

 string of oxen. I can remember going up to Worcester and 

 driving a string team of fifty or sixty pairs. To-day you 

 may go the town over and you cannot find but a very few 

 pairs. I am in full sympathy with the gentleman who spoke 

 in regard to oxen. I believe in oxen, and if the essay does 

 not have any other efiect than to turn- our attention to 

 the raising of cattle again, it will do some good, I believe. 

 I should be glad to see the cattle on a thousand hills, or a 

 thousand cattle on these hills, — if there was anji^hing for 

 them to eat. 



There is another thing I should like to see, which I used 

 to see in my boyhood, when I went to the village school. 

 That was sixty or seventy pupils, all the way up like a 

 flight of stairs, — ten or a dozen from one family. Go back 

 and raise a few Yankee boys and girls. I want to see good 

 New England stock raised, — boys and girls, as Avell as oxen. 

 We have a few men in our town who own up to liking 

 oxen, who raise them from calves and sell them to our friend 

 here, when they get to be three or four years old. They 

 make it as profitable now as they ever have. It has been 

 suggested that most of our butter is to be made by the co- 

 operative creamery system. The latest plan is to take the 



