304 Report on the American and Canadian Meat Trade. 
An abundance of cheaply produced corn and general feed- 
ing stuffs gives the American farmer an immense additional 
advantage in the production of meat ; and a great deal of 
the former which we have been in the habit of receiving from 
them, and which has already become indispensable to the rent- 
paying farmers of this country, will in the future come to us 
in the manufactured form of meat. Instead of sending us their 
cheap corn in such enormous quantities for us to turn it into 
animal food, they will to a great extent send it to us already 
converted into flesh. And from this new departure the American 
farmer will reap a double advantage : he will send us his con- 
verted corn at a smaller rate of freight than he could send it in its 
original form. Converted into animal matter, the carriage on it 
will be lighter than if it were sent as a vegetable production. 
The second advantage consists in the improvement which will 
accrue to the Western farms from the consumption on them of 
large quantities of corn in the process of fattening animals, as 
contrasted with sending the corn itself to this country. Hitherto' 
a system of continual cropping and sending the grain to Europe, 
has tended in many portions of America to impoverish the 
land. In some of the Southern States, more particularly, this 
system has been carried on to such an extent that much land 
has been abandoned because it ceased to yield a remunerative 
return to the farmer. 
With a view to stock-feeding, maize — or, as it is specifically 
termed throughout the States, " corn " — is the most important 
cereal grown. Sown early in May, this crop grows at a mar- 
vellous rate. In the first week of September I have seen it 
flourishing grandly, 10 to 15 feet high, so that a man on horse- 
back could not be seen riding down between the rows of it. It 
is generally ripe by the end of September, but is commonly 
allowed to stand longer, until a frost or two have been on it, 
when it is said to " husk " the more readily. It is a crop easy 
of cultivation, and its value to the Western farmer is very great, 
a value which is enhanced on so much of it as can be turned into 
flesh. We have already seen that the estimated area under 
"corn," in the year 1875, was 44,800,000 acres ; and, according 
to the same official statistics, the estimated yield from this 
enormous area of land, in the same year, was 1,321,069,000 
bushels ! Hitherto the farmer, owing to the limited demand 
for fat cattle, has not had much inducement to turn his corn into 
the more concentrated form of meat ; but that the new trade 
in beef which has suddenly and successfully opened out will 
provide the lacking inducement, is now placed beyond a doubt. 
The freight on a car-load of cattle, say five tons, from Chicago 
or St. Louis to New York or Philadelphia, is about the same as 
