American Cattle Marlcets and the Dressed Beef Trade. 151 
road figlit is ever present. Sometimes it lies quiet for a month, 
or two, but ever and anon it breaks out afresh, and in these days 
of active competition among railway managers it is a subject of 
frequent and fertile disputes. The rates, however, are equalised 
to a certain degree, so that the different railroads have not lost 
so much as is apparent at first sight. The dressed beef men, 
notwithstanding all those difficulties, have pushed ahead and 
placed their products practically in every town of any conse- 
quence in the continent. To have beaten the railroad corpora- 
tions of this continent in many a pitched battle, to have cut off 
to a great extent the local bvitchers, is a work which must have 
the backing of something intrinsically strong and economical in 
its nature and progress. It is an old joke that when you are 
taken round the great packing-houses of Chicago your guide ex- 
plains quite solemnly that the only thing wasted, so far as the 
hog is concerned, is the " squeal "; but as the steer has no squeal 
and bellows but little, we may say that nothing is lost under 
the methodical management employed. It has been shown how 
every portion of the animal is made use of. What chance has 
the old style of local butchering against this system? At the 
small country slaughter-house the blood ran away, often the head 
was partially neglected, the hoofs and shanks were thrown to the 
hog-pen, the entrails were sent the same road, and it was waste 
at every corner. To-day in Chicago this is reversed. From a 
national point of view a great gain has been made, and at least 
one of the products of the soil in this prodigal country is made 
the most of by this magnificent system. The offal can be worked 
off" in large cities to great advantage, while on the very item of 
hides a considerable profit can be realised over the old plan. 
The hides are more carefully taken from the animal, and, accu- 
mulated in large quantities, they can be sold to better advantage. 
The hide-dealer can proceed to the slaughter-house and buy ten 
thousand hides at one deal, whereas it might take weeks to gather 
them up from the country districts. 
But the dressed beef business can only subsist, in a whole- 
sale way at least, at the gi-eat central markets of the country. 
The system is, to a great extent, an enlarged butchers' business, 
as it is supported by a host of retailers, who, instead of being 
butchers on the old style, have turned to meat-cutters. In San 
Francisco there are no butchers, the city draws its retail supplies 
of meat, &c., from a large class of meat-cutters, who buy their 
goods from day to day from the wholesale slaughterers. So it 
is with our dressed beef interest. They forward daily so much 
meat to the East, South, or West to be distributed at the differ- 
ent points where their eroods are in demand. The work has to 
