268 PROFITABLE STOCK RAISING 



beef will cost him little, if any, more than it did 25 

 years ago, while the high price of cattle will give 

 him a high net return. The present is the time to 

 stay in the cattle business, if it is possible to do so, 

 and not the time to quit, even to enter the profit- 

 able sheep business. 



Live stock production, especially that relating to 

 meat animals, is now at a transitional stage in the 

 United States. Old conditions are rapidly passing 

 away. Cheap land and cheap feed we have no 

 longer, and never will have again. The hundreds 

 of thousands of square miles which only a few 

 years ago constituted the free range and the free 

 grass of the West have been reduced to the vanish- 

 ing point, and their ultimate disappearance is only a 

 question of time. The days of cheap live stock 

 production by indifferent methods have gone. The 

 days of very large American export trade in meat 

 have gone also. The domestic consumption so 

 nearly approximates the home production as to 

 leave only relatively trifling amounts of live stock 

 and live stock products for export. With this 

 condition has come a continually increasing popu- 

 lation, which will tend to constantly increase the 

 meat-producing capacity of the United States. If 

 we are to continue as a nation producing its own 

 foodstuffs, it will be necessary to have vast in- 

 creases in our meat production in the relatively 

 near future. Public ranges can no longer be 

 looked to to supply this increase. It must come 

 from the high-priced farms of the Mississippi 

 valley, from the old settled portions of New Eng- 

 land, and from the great undeveloped agricultural 

 empire of the South. In time, the far West may 

 be expected to produce more stock than it does 

 now, but little of this supply can ever again be 



