150 American Cattle Marlcets and the Dressed Beef Trade. 
offered as an argument that a considerable portion of the cattle 
killed at Chicago and other points is diseased. This is a foul 
calumny, and it has turned effectively the Western interests 
against them. In the beginning of the fight — for it has existed 
for several years past — the sympathy of the public was with the 
butchers to a great extent, but recent developments show that 
the dispute is not got up entirely for the public good. 
Leaving this question alone, as it is rapidly developing into 
a party fight, we propose to show why the dressed beef trade 
has increased so rapidly. The writer has probably as large an 
acquaintance and interest as any one in the cattle trade, being 
both a producer, a feeder, and also senior partner in a large com- 
mission house in Chicago, with connections in Kansas City and 
Omaha. Two reasons present themselves as in favour of dressed 
beef : first. Humanity ; secondly. Economy. 
Those two reasons hang together, but to a certain extent are 
separate. The first, without the second to follow and rest upon, 
would not give the average American or British cattle-man much 
thought, and yet at the same time the sentiment in the former 
appeals to nearly every impartial man. The system of trucking 
or " earring " is very similar in both countries. In England they 
load seven or eight steers to the truck or car, while in America 
about twenty cattle are put in a car. For the shipper the Eng- 
lish way is much the better, while the railroad company benefits 
here. The Street Palace Car Company have partially adopted the 
English system by dividing their car into three compartments 
holding seven cattle each. But, whatever way shipping is done, 
it is brutal enough, and the animals suffer severely. Every mile 
saved, therefore, is less of cruelty to animals, and consequently an 
economy. In old days the cattle from Nebraska and further west 
were shipped to Chicago, a distance of 1,000 miles, or there- 
abouts ; then they were loaded up again after being sold, and had 
another journey of 1,000 miles to the sea-board. Three-fourths 
of those cattle are now slaughtered at Omaha and Chicago, the 
carcasses being shipped forward. On the ground of humanity, 
the dressed beef business is at least a success. It saves the ani- 
mals themselves from torture, and it is in this respect commer- 
cially a great economy. 
A revolution of this kind in a single decade, or thereabouts, 
was sure to stir up a great fight by the vested interests which 
controlled the cattle trade, for not only were the butchers con- 
cerned, but the railroads objected seriously to having their freights 
cut down. A car of live cattle numbered twenty head, whereas a 
refrigerator car of the same size conveyed about thirty-eight head 
from Chicago to New York or any other objective point. The rail- 
