.74 
Pigs and Bacon. 
subsidiary foods are undoubtedly potatoes and milk, though 
bran with barley meal has in many cases been found*to yield 
exceedingly good results. It is perhaps unnecessary to say 
that the dairy farmer possesses a great advantage in the 
profitable production of bacon hogs, but to the very many 
feeders who are without this advantage I would say that, with 
care, they may safely supplement their barley meal with pea 
or bean meal as well as bran. West of England bacon owes a 
great deal of its supremacy to the fact that dairy bi-products 
have been so largely utilised for feeding purposes together 
with the best meal obtainable, and to the very limited use of 
maize meal by all feeders anxious to produce the highest class 
pigs. Those fed on maize may be depended upon to yield soft 
and bad quality meat ; they are more susceptible to disease, 
whilst — though a minor point — their bones are much more 
brittle, with the result that in transit they sustain greater 
damage in the way of broken legs, &c. 
This brings me to the question of 
Railway Service. 
This is a subject of vital importance to the pig and bacon 
industry. Not only is the cost of removing live and dead 
stock from one point to another very oppressive, but on the 
contrary we find our foreign competitor enjoying railway and 
shipping rates such as materially assist him in his efforts to 
oust us from our own market. It is scarcely credible that it 
costs West of England curers more to deliver bacon in Edin- 
burgh or Glasgow than it does the Chicago packer to deliver in 
London, entailing though it does a thousand miles of rail in 
the States, three thousand miles on the water, and then the 
distance from Liverpool or Southampton to London. Or take 
the case of Denmark. The Danish State Railway delivers 
bacon from 200 miles inland to the port of shipment at the 
rate of 10s. per ton, as against its costing my company the 
same amount to deliver to Bath (18 miles). Again the rate 
from New York to Cape Town is 15s. per ton, whilst from 
Southampton (700 miles less) it is ills. and so on. Needless 
to add, equally wide differences exist in the case of the carriage 
of live stock ; and it is too obvious to need much emphasising 
that this is proving a serious handicap to the home producer, 
for not only is the curer’s trade restricted, which i-eflects on 
the farmer because less pigs are required, but having to pay 
these heavy transit charges on the business he is doing, the 
curer has to pay correspondingly less for his raw material. 
The State op Things Abroad. 
If, as has been argued, foreign supplies of hog products 
affect the home market so considerably, is it not desirable that 
