82 
American Meat Exports. 
of the population, 47 lb., as against 23 lb., as we did in 1886-90. 
Now although the American quota is somewhat diminishing 
in the last few years, it is still much the greatest source 
of the aggregate foreign and colonial supply, which consider- 
ably exceeds 900,000 tons per annum, while the States are also 
sending us five-sevenths of the cattle and more than four-fifths 
of the sheep which reach us alive. It cannot therefore be 
otherwise than a matter of the keenest interest to watch what 
are the prospects of American meat exports. 
It would require an examination far more detailed than 
could be entered on in the scope of a passing note, to analyse and 
explain the methods of Mr. Holmes’ new investigation. That 
it would repay such attention is obvious by a glance at the 
sixty-one tables of this little volume of elaborate statistics, but 
two things stand out clearly of which it is well to take serious 
note. First of all the vast growth of the American population 
— as was forecasted twenty years ago in these columns — is 
pressing more closely on its stock of meat animals ; and the 
growing volume of these exports has not got behind it an 
equivalent expansion of the herds from which it is drawn. If 
Mr. Holmes is right we are to understand that out of an annual 
slaughter of 93,500,000 animals (cattle, sheep and swine) 
yielding upwards of 19,000,000,000 pounds of meat (dressed 
weight and extra edible parts), seven-eighths of the whole is 
now required at home for the sustenance of the 84,000,000 
inhabitants of the States, and only one-eighth is available for 
export to the rest of the world. That eighth, however, is of 
goodly dimensions, for it exceeds considerably 2,000,000,000 lb. 
or in round numbers over one million tons, while besides this 
there is spared a net export reckoned in this report at 276,000 
live animals. 
By another method of computation Mr. Holmes translates 
the weight of dead meat exported, after satisfying the wants of 
his own people, into the equivalent it would represent were an 
actual exodus to occur in live animals of each class. Adding 
this hypothetical figure to the total of the live trade he tells us 
the States send abroad a net export equal to 1,321,000 cattle, 
11,000 sheep and 8,659,000 swine or very nearly ten million 
animals “ live or computed ” in the space of a single twelve 
months. The proportion these great totals represent to the 
whole stock of potential meat producers in the States was greater 
in 1900 than it was in 1890— or some 12’68 per cent, as against 
8 per cent, only — but we are led to conclude that this increasing 
export is not likely to be maintained in any further accelerating 
volume, since the estimates here offered of the domestic con- 
sumption suggest that the augmented outfiow has been effected 
by a reduction of the rate of consumption at home. Whether 
