CHAPTER XXIII. 

 IN FOREIGN FIELDS. 



The question of the future meat supply of the 

 world is one that is now receiving serious consider- 

 a^tion. Whereas the United States but recently ex- 

 ported large numbers of live bullocks for slaughter 

 at British ports, as well as great quantities of 

 dressed beef, the passing of the open range in west- 

 em America and the curtailment of beef cattle pro- 

 duction and feeding by cornbelt farmers, due to the 

 steadily advancing price of lards and grain, has with- 

 in a remarkably short space of time converted us 

 from an exporting to an importing nation. Beef and 

 cattle shipments oversea are, for the present at 

 least, at an end.* Our own ports have been 

 opened to the free introduction of meats from other 

 countries, and the first year's operation under this 

 new dispensation has seen liberal shipments of 

 frozen meats from Argentina to our Atlantic sea- 

 board markets and the arrival of numerous cargoes 

 from Australasia on our western coast. 



Leading American packers are now operating their 



•Owing: to the abnormal situation developed by the great 

 European war. In progress as this volume is written, our packers 

 are selling big lots of canned, corned and pickled meats to the 

 French and' British governments for the maintenance of their 

 embattled forces. But with the return of peace and the resump- 

 tion of normal commercial relations this buying, on an extensive 

 scale, will probably not continue. 



963 



