Oil- Wci<jhi)t(j Live- Stuck. 
447 
XXV. — On Weigldnrj Live-StocJc. By ALBERT PelL. 
The universal use of the weighing-machine for live-stock in 
the United States of America, and the almost universal re- 
jection of it in the mother country, require some explanation. 
It seems hardly possible to give one that will be sufficient and 
satisfactory. Up and down the streets, along the side walks, in 
every town in the cattle districts of the United States, not one, 
but several Howe or Fairbank platform machines are seen in 
constant service. If coals, or lumber, or hay, or corn, or fodder, 
are marketed by weight, they are so treated for the sake of 
convenience, despatch, and absolute accuracy in one particular. 
Every one even in England, in practice, makes this admission, 
but animated nature escapes the ordeal. In America there is no 
grace for hogs or oxen. A waggon-load of live hogs goes to the 
scales as a matter of course. There the ox telling his weight 
appears to know his weighing machine, as well as the ass his 
master's crib ; but over here the ox does not tell, and his owner 
does not consider. He guesses and " goes away backward." 
Why is this ? Are we, like the Jews, a perverse people ? We 
may or may not be, but we certainly are stiffnecked as to the 
rule of thumb. Two motives seem to impede progress : self- 
interest on the part of the expert, and conceit on the part of his 
victims. One class of experts, the butchers, are continually 
checking their judgment of live cattle by weighing the car- 
casses ; they are therefore better guessers than those who feed 
for them. The feeder however, if he is ever so poor a judge, 
likes to be thought a judge, and feels that if he goes to the 
scales for information it is an admission in the face of all the 
world of incapacity in his business. He is not sure, too, that 
the experts, if they come to know that he has " tried the 
juachine," will not leave him out in the cold as knowing too 
much, or at all events spying into their peculiar arcana ; so to 
maintain his character he disavows any such curiosity, avoids, 
in a noble spirit, the test of the balance, and thus, purposely 
purblind, haggles with those whose method of business enlightens 
them. So thus it comes that he is worsened, and they, as a 
rule, bettered. 
But even in Great Britain there are differences. A return 
ordered by the House of Commons to be printed December 21, 
1888, headed "Cattle (Places of Sale)," which exhibits the 
general indifference or antipathy to the use of the weighing 
machines in the markets, describes weighing as taking place 
only " in exceptional cases ; " adding, " neither purchaser nor 
vendor will use the machine ; " " the machine has only been 
G G 2 
