74 THE WORLD'S MEAT FUTURK 



rapacity. Nothing bul a Lucrative trade could have prompted 

 all this rapid development. There may indeed be some sug- 

 gestion on the face of the figures of the equipment being over- 

 done. But it has to be remembered that a freezing house 

 plant must be equal to the maximum daily demand upon it 

 in the best of good seasons, or else it does not adequately serve 

 the requirements of its district or its clientele. But such 

 maximum call upon it only obtains for a more or less limited 

 season when the grass is at its best, then the supply of stock 

 gradually falls back to a fraction only of what the plant can 

 deal with, but if a given freezing house is not equal to handling 

 the stock naturally falling to it during the heaviest fattening 

 season, the stock will find its way to some competing works. 

 Put it another way. the supply of fat stock must be variable 

 and uncertain, hence this surplus equipment for dealing with 

 a maximum, and not only an average supply. Several times 

 in the history of this business it has been doubted if the 

 equipment had not grown too quickly and outstripped the 

 requirements of the trade. But these doubts never lasted 

 long. The wonderful ease with which the apparently surplus 

 plant has quickly been overtaken again and again by the 

 production has been surprising. 



" One of the features of the trade almost from its inception 

 has been the co-existence of two classes of freezing works, viz. 

 farmers' works and proprietary works ; the latter making a 

 business of buying stock from the farmers, freezing the meat 

 and manipulating the other products for the company's own 

 account ; while the basis in the former case has been that of 

 freezing for farmers' account or for account of any buyer from 

 the farmer, and the treating the by-products in a similar way. 

 Such companies were projected and owned by farmers and 

 their agents in the first instance. Time has modified their 

 working, and many of these companies now also deal largely 

 in stock for freezing, etc., on their own account. The pro- 

 prietary companies also freeze for farmers' account when 

 required, but it is a secondary feature of their business. As 

 near as one can say. seventeen of the forty-one works may be 

 reckoned as proprietary works, leaving twenty-four as farmers' 

 works. The working of the double system gives most of the 



