494 Twenty Years Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies, 
may be rejected as improbable, will America, so much the 
largest of all existing sources of supply, go on for ever in- 
creasing her exports and for ever lowering values here? 
I know the question is usually answered off-hand, by pointing 
to the large stocks and almost limitless areas of Transatlantic 
countries, and comparing them with our own. But the student 
of meat imports will scarcely have learned what the figures reallv 
teach if he imagines that the future can be thus easily pre- 
dicted. It is not always from the largest stocks that the 
heaviest competition comes. It is a complicated series of 
factors which determine the increase or the decrease of a trade. 
The local circumstances of population and consumption, the 
financial and transport facilities, all largely influence the final 
result. Nor must we forget, that the world is not wholly 
engaged in moving meat to man, but that in no inconsiderable 
degree men are being moved to where the meat abounds. This 
counter-current must be reckoned with. Increasing emigration, 
or even its continuance at present rates, may alter the aspect of 
the meat-supply question in future. 
I must not therefore omit some reference to what is hap- 
pening in America, in the changing relations of surpluses to 
wants. Of four pounds out of every five of the beef alive and 
dead which now comes here, the country of origin lies across 
the Atlantic. Yet the citizens of the United States themselves 
are not unconscious of the fact that their attention must ere 
long be directed quite as much to what they can produce for 
their own use at home, as to what they can send us. 
The recent course of the live imports from our Canadian 
fellow-subjects has tended to separate their case from that of 
the United States. Their trade, despite the low prices of the 
day, steadily if slowly grows, while the imports from the States 
fall. An average of 66,000 head of cattle is now shipped 
annually from the St. Lawrence, and Canada is thus contending 
with Denmark for the second place in the roll of our cattle 
importers. She no doubt owes something to the free entry 
to our markets which she, like Denmark, enjoys — the result 
and the reward of the wise jealousy of both these Governments 
over the health of their native stock. Still, I would not say that, 
thanks to her own meat-making capacity, we may not yet hear 
more of Canada materially increasing her supplies. Her grassy 
ranches in the North-VVest have yet got elbow-room, and 
while the extent of her exporting ability is a factor as yet unde- 
termined, I would not consider that we must necessarily make 
for her precisely the forecast which may be made for the United 
States. 
If in any countries it is important to compare the relative 
