90 Types and Market Classes of Live Stock 



From farm to market.^— Briefly, the steps by which cattle usually 

 pass from the farm and feedlot to the central market, and through the 

 market and to their final destination, are as follows: 



1. Driven from farm to shipping point. 



2. Loaded on car. 



3. Station agent makes out way bill indicating to what market 

 shipped and to whom consigned. 



4. Car delivered by railroad to terminal railroad at destination. 



5. Terminal railroad spots car at market's unloading chutes. 



6. Stock yards company immediately unloads, counts, records, 

 and delivers the cattle to commission company at its pens, and feeds 

 and waters the stock in accordance with instructions from commission 

 company. 



7. Commission company sells to packer buyer, order buyer, 

 speculator, trader, export buyer, or local butcher. 



8. Stock yards company then weighs, counts, records, and de- 

 livers or reships the animals to their final destination. 



9. Commission company immediately remits proceeds of sale to 

 owner, less cost of freight, yardage, feed, commission, and other 

 charges. 



10. Commission company pays for freight, yardage, feed, and 

 other marketing charges, having retained from proceeds of sale an 

 amount sufficient to cover these items and its commission. 



Development of the packing industry. — The term "packer" origi- 

 nated in the early days of the meat business in this country, when the 

 packing or putting down of cured meats, especially pork products, 

 was the principal business of all large wholesale butchers. The first 

 regular packer in the West was Elisha Mills, an easterner who began 

 at Cincinnati in 1818.^ 



As previously mentioned, hogs benefitted from the packing opera- 

 tions of early days to a greater degree than cattle. Packers could not 

 handle beef on a large scale until the invention of artificial refrigeration 

 and the substitution of the tin can for the oak barrel. Arthur Libby 

 introduced canned corn beef in 1874, which was followed by many 

 other palatable canned preparations. James Macdonald, of Aberdeen, 

 Scotland, a noted agricultural writer who visited the Chicago stock 

 yards in 1877, states ^ that about 250,000 cattle were slaughtered at 

 Chicago in 1876, and that more than three-fourths of these were 

 handled by two firms, the Wilson Packing Company and Libby, Mc- 

 Neill and Libby. He further states that about half of the beef was 



1 Rudolf A. Clemen, Economics Dept., Northwestern University: Development 

 of American Meat Packing, National Provisioner, Feb. 12, 1921, p. 18. 

 »Food From the Far West, Edinburgh, 1878, p. 187. 



