398 Tbansactioxs of the Americai^ Institute. 



Mr. J, 13. Lyiaan. — This question of the quality of Texas beef is 

 misunderstood. Some years ago business took me several times over 

 that State. I was repeatedly in western Texas, late in the fall, early 

 in spring, and in midsummer. I never saw a poor animal in all the 

 country where the mezquit grass grows, and never ate more juicy or 

 well-flavored beef than that fattened on these prairies. If the animals 

 can be slaughtered on or near those great plains, Texas will afford 

 us the choicest of animal food in great abundance. But if the half 

 wild bullocks, worried, frightened, thirsty, and starved, tortured by 

 musketoes, and sickened by foul water, are killed and transported in 

 bulk by the Gamgee process, or by the Lowe freezing process, they 

 will give us tenderloins as tough and tasteless as they are cheap. 

 The mezquit grass is a companion of the mezquit bush ; this is only 

 found in western Texas. It is a grass that dries into hay with all the 

 starch and sugar in it, and affords as rich and fattening a bite ia 

 January as it does in June. 



The Ten-IIotjr System. 

 Mr. J. M. Ingalls of Springfield, Otsego county, IT. Y., forwarded 

 a communication giving his ideas on this subject : " It seems to me 

 that no apprehensions need be felt. The relations of capital and 

 labor are not controlled by legislation but by necessity. The ten- 

 hour rule will not apply to farming, because from the nature of 

 things it cannot. Labor from sun to sun will be the rule for the 

 farm, because certain kinds of labor, the care and feeding of domes- 

 tic animals, for instance, must be done at certain hours of the day — 

 early in morning, at noon, and at night. Suppose our Legislature 

 enact a law that ten hours constitute a day's labor on the farm, it 

 amounts to nothing. It does not prevent me from hiring a man to 

 work all day instead of ten hours ; neither will it affect the price of 

 labor one iota. The price of labor, like that of any other marketable 

 product, is regulated by the law of supply and demand. Legislation 

 will hurt no one, and benefit no one. Mr. Powell is reported as 

 desiring a fixed standard for a given number of hours of labor ; for 

 instance, two dollars for nine hours. Nine hours labor in one local- 

 ity may be worth two dollars ; in another, three dollars ; in another, 

 one dollar. The price of labor in the same locality varies with the 

 seasons and flnctuatea like any other market value. Again, there is 

 every degree of capacity and aptitude in the laborer. One man is 

 worth fifty cents a day more than another. Establish a uniform price 



