^S' i hS j3IS 
 
 I
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 I'll I LI I* I). ARMOUR
 
 THE PACKERS 
 AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 J. OGDEN ARMOUR 
 
 (0/ the Armour Cunning Company, Chicago) 
 
 ILIA: STRATH D 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. WERNER LAURIE 
 CLIFFORDS INN
 
 ?3f}7tr
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 THE writing of tlie articles which have 
 appeared in the Saturday Evening 
 Pout, and which forms the basis of 
 this book, was undertaken with great reluc- 
 tance. First, because of an entire lack of 
 any disposition to thrust my views regard- 
 ing any subject upon the public; second, 
 because I was equally undisposed to assume 
 to speak for anybody but myself. On the 
 other hand, I could not deny the existence 
 in the public mind of a feeling that the 
 traditional corporation policy of silence 
 under attack is sometimes a tacit confession 
 to ihe truthfulness of the charges brought 
 about by hostile and mistaken agitators. 
 
 Finding myself the responsible head of a 
 
 business founded by a father who had put 
 
 into its upbuilding the best energies of a 
 
 long, active life and a very considerable 
 
 v
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 genius for affairs, 1 found it increasingly 
 difficult to keep silent under a long series 
 of onslaughts by the professional agitators 
 of the country, knowing those attacks to be 
 unfair, unjust, untrue, and in most cases 
 maliciously bitter. When at last this con- 
 dition forced upon me the conviction that 
 1 must depart from all traditions and cus- 
 toms of corporation practice and speak out 
 plainly, I realized more keenly than ever 
 how much more appropriately such an 
 appeal to the common sense of the Amer- 
 ican people would be if made by my father 
 or by some other of the little group of vet- 
 eran packers who pioneered the industry. 
 However, this being impossible, I put aside 
 my own unwillingness, believing such a 
 course to be dictated by my duty to the 
 interests directly entrusted to my care, to 
 the packing and private-car line industries 
 in general, and finally to the American 
 people. 
 
 The only color of propriety in my taking 
 vi
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 up this unwilling work was to be had, it 
 seemed to me, from tlie fact that the agita- 
 tors in general, and tiie yellow magazines in 
 particular, liad selected the Armour house 
 as their special point of attack as the type 
 of all that they held to be objectionable. 
 For this reason, and not because the heads 
 of other packing and car line establishments 
 could not better present the case of their 
 industries, I have assumed the respon- 
 sibility of attempting to present to the pub- 
 lic of this country the falsity of the state- 
 ments made by the sensation-mongers of 
 the country who, for their own selfish pur- 
 poses, have singled out the packing and the 
 car line industries for a campaign of slan- 
 der, abuse, and misrepresentation without 
 precedent. 
 
 Let me disclaim at the start all superior 
 motives, and admit that I am inspired by 
 that kind and degree of selfishness which 
 moves any man to protect his own, to be 
 loyal to his responsibilities and to hit out 
 vii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 against assailants who come at him with 
 tactics that would not be tolerated in the 
 prize-ring, on the foot-ball field, or in any 
 form of contest where a fair fight is the 
 accepted and enforced standard. 
 
 via
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I p AG E 
 
 The Evolution of the Private Freight Car 15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Quality of the Service 42 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Magazine vs. Actual Profit 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 What the Private-Car Line has Done . . 90 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Packers and the Cattlemen 11<> 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 A Campaign of Slander 126 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Cattle and Cattle Markets 142 
 
 ix
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII page 
 
 Public Prejudice Inevitable 162 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Another Contribution to Progress .... 185 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Once More the Private-Car Line 210 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Juggling the Facts 244 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Theory vs. Condition 276 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 As to Expert Business 284 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Growth of Pork Packing 325 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 As to Cleanliness and Sanitation 358
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Philip D. Armour Frontispiece 
 
 Loading Track and Icing Platform, Nor- 
 folk, Va Facing Page 48 
 
 A Bunch of Steers for Armour & Com- 
 pany's Packing House, Chicago, III., 
 
 Facing Page 116 
 
 Birds '-Eye View of Armour & Company's 
 Plant, Union Stock Yards, Chicago, III., 
 
 Facing Page 192 
 
 Putting Up Meat Extracts, Armour & Com- 
 pany's Plant, Chicago, III., Facing Page 204 
 
 Finishing and Testing Cans, Armour & 
 Company's Plant, Chicago, III., 
 
 Facing Page 288 
 
 Entrance to the Union Stock Yards, 
 
 Chicago, III Facing Page 362 
 
 Government Microscopical Inspection, 
 Union Stock Yards, Chicago, III., 
 
 Facing Page 368 
 xi
 
 THE PACKERS 
 
 THE PRIVATE GAR LINES 
 
 AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRIVATE FREIGHT CAR 
 
 A CLEAR and fair understanding' of 
 the private freight-car problem is 
 wholly impossible without some 
 knowledge of why and how the private car 
 came into existence and how the system has 
 been developed to its present proportions. 
 Equally important to a right conclusion in 
 this matter is a knowledge of the source and 
 the animus of the present agitation, the 
 avowed purpose of which is to put the 
 private car out of business. Unless these 
 things are clearly set forth the meat of the 
 whole contention is missed. 
 
 But before I attempt to present those 
 15
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 essential facts let me say that I believe in 
 the fairness of the American people, and 
 that when once they get a clear understand- 
 ing of a cause they will render a righteous 
 judgment. President Roosevelt has put 
 the disposition of this people most descrip- 
 tively in declaring that they are "for a 
 square deal. " It is because I believe this so 
 profoundly that I make the statements con- 
 tained in this book. Any man who has a 
 just cause need not, I believe, fear to appeal 
 to the American people when he can be sure 
 of reaching practically the whole people 
 direct, and is also assured that he is not, in 
 stating his case, liable to be misquoted or in 
 any manner misrepresented. 
 
 The storm-centre of the present contro- 
 versy is the private fruit and produce-car; 
 consequently this must for the moment 
 command the greater attention. The fact 
 remains, however, that the meat-car was 
 the pioneer in the private field, and that 
 the fruit-car was a direct evolution from it. 
 16
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 It has always seemed to me that the very- 
 manner in which the private car came into 
 being is enough clearly to justify its ex- 
 istence in the mind of any fairly-disposed 
 man of affairs. 
 
 In the old days cattle were moved from 
 the Middle West to the East alive and on 
 the hoof. This movement from the prairies, 
 where the cattle could be most cheaply 
 grown, to the centres of population in a 
 part of the country ill-adapted to grazing, 
 but where the demand for the meat was the 
 strongest, was found to be very expensive, 
 inland transportation then being both poor 
 and costly. A steer weighing one thousand 
 pounds would dress five hundred and fifty 
 pounds. This is only another way of say- 
 ing that shipping on the hoof meant paying 
 high freight charges on four hundred and 
 fifty pounds of what was then practically 
 all waste material, and quite a large por- 
 tion of the five hundred and fifty pounds 
 2 17
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 of dressed meat also consisted of bone and 
 other waste matter that could not be eaten. 
 Of course, dressed meat could be shipped 
 for a limited distance in freezing weather, 
 but always with great risk, transportation 
 then being slow, crude and uncertain. Dur- 
 ing the warmer months traffic in dressed 
 meats was therefore confined to the local 
 field. 
 
 Under these conditions it did not require 
 any marvelous amount of acumen to see 
 that the business could not be expanded 
 beyond the local field, as far as the warmer 
 months were concerned, unless some ade- 
 quate means of protecting the meat against 
 the effects of high temperature while in 
 transit and until sold could be devised. 
 Probably it is fair to say that the packers 
 would have been decidedly obtuse if they 
 had failed to see that the salvation and ex- 
 pansion of their business was locked up in 
 the then undiscovered secret of how to ship 
 dressed meats under some kind of cooling 
 18
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 process that could be depended upon to 
 keep them in good condition, and that 
 should not be too expensive. 
 
 On the one hand, in the prairies of the 
 West was the natural basis for almost un- 
 limited expansion in the growing of cattle 
 at the minimum of cost; on the other hand, 
 the cities and the more thickly-settled sec- 
 tions of the East and South were calling for 
 this meat from the prairies. The expense 
 of shipping cattle from the "West to the 
 East was practically prohibitive so far as 
 the natural growth of the cattle industry 
 was concerned. The hour had struck for 
 that great economic and industrial step, 
 the appearance of the first crude meat re- 
 frigerator-car. 
 
 Properly speaking it was not a refriger- 
 ator-car at all; simply a big ice-box on 
 wheels with the cargo of meat heaped upon 
 the ice and coming directly in contact with 
 it. Mr. Hammond, then of Detroit, is 
 believed to have made the first fairly suc- 
 19
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 cessful experiment in the building of a meat 
 refrigerator-car, in 1871. Although sta- 
 tionary refrigerators were at that time in 
 limited use, the facilities of the average 
 eastern butcher or retailer for keeping 
 meats were poor, and the western killers 
 had, of course, no branch houses or dis- 
 tributing stations. The meat which came 
 in contact with the ice became discolored 
 and spoiled quickly when taken off and sub- 
 jected to the inadequate refrigeration then 
 almost universal. To remedy this difficulty 
 cars were so equipped that the meat could 
 be suspended from the rafters and ceiling, 
 with the result that when the car was in 
 motion and going around curves the halves 
 of meat were set swinging like pendulums 
 and finally communicated their motion to 
 the car. Several wrecks occurred which 
 were attributed to this cause, and the hos- 
 tility of the railroads was awakened. 
 
 The next step in this evolutionary proc- 
 ess was that of partitioning off one end of 
 20
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the car into an ice-bin, or bunker, the meat 
 being suspended in the body of the car in 
 a proper manner. This was a decided im- 
 provement, and the meat carried in these 
 cars arrived in better condition. However, 
 the true principle of car refrigeration 
 eluded the experimenters for several years, 
 but finally one of them hit it squarely and 
 brought out the fact that a draft of air 
 passing through a bunker, or ice-chest, in 
 the upper corner of a car becomes chilled, 
 so that it is heavier than the air which it 
 meets, and consequently it drops down, cir- 
 culating through the car, and finally, after 
 it has lost its chill and becomes lighter than 
 the incoming current, rises and passes out 
 of the ventilator. Thus a current of fresh 
 chilled air is constantly circulating about 
 the meat, which is securely racked and does 
 not touch the ice at all. 
 
 About the time this principle of car re- 
 frigeration was clearly established my 
 father recognized its permanence and its 
 21
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 relation to the future of the meat business. 
 He saw that the meat refrigerator-car 
 hitched the packing business to the growth 
 of this country, that it annexed to the west- 
 ern ranges and prairie pastures the thickly- 
 populated manufacturing and commercial 
 centres of the East. Perhaps the other 
 packers saw this as clearly as he did; cer- 
 tainly they were all interested in the de- 
 velopment of the refrigerator-car. But he 
 was tremendously in earnest in this matter, 
 and went to the management of the rail- 
 roads over which he would naturally ship 
 the most meat and asked for the building of 
 a small number of these cars. He was very 
 promptly informed that this could not be 
 done, that the demands for expenditures 
 in the ordinary avenues were too great to 
 justify going into a side issue of this kind. 
 This brought him face to face with an 
 emergency of almost critical importance. 
 He saw that refrigerator-cars for the ship- 
 ment of dressed meats were an absolute 
 22
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 necessity, that their hour had arrived, and 
 that the packer who did not recognize 
 as inevitable this great change in the in- 
 dustry and make the most of it would drop 
 behind in the irresistible movement oi' 
 events. 
 
 On the other hand, his own business was, 
 like that of the railroads, growing faster 
 than his capital ; he had hard work to keep 
 up with it and needed more money in the 
 routine expansion of the industry than he 
 could command, without putting thousands 
 of dollars into cars of the most expensive 
 kind. All the vigor with which he could 
 urge his case, his confidence in the great 
 volume of business to be developed by the 
 meat refrigerator-car, failed to move the 
 railroad managers to whom he appealed, 
 and he finally found himself absolutely 
 forced as a matter of self-protection to the 
 building of the first private car of the 
 Armour system. To do this was then a de- 
 cided hardship, an alternative which he
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 adopted only because he saw it to be a 
 matter of the sternest necessity. At that 
 time the cars cost something more than 
 twelve hundred dollars each, and because 
 of the demand which he felt for money in 
 the regular channels of his growing busi- 
 ness he could build only a small portion of 
 the cars which he really needed. 
 
 The meat refrigerator-car accomplished 
 all that my father expected and more. In- 
 dustrially it influenced the most important 
 economic development of the packing busi- 
 ness the utilization of waste material in 
 the manufacture of by-products. What 
 this phase of the industry means to the peo- 
 ple of the United States and to the packers 
 I shall tell further on; but it is merely 
 suggested in the statement that by its 
 economies the packers are able to ship meat 
 into thousands of localities remote from the 
 great source of supply in the West and sell 
 a superior "cut" at a lower price than the 
 butcher can sell an inferior "cut" taken 
 24
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 from a home-grown meat animal killed in 
 his own slaughter-house. 
 
 But the refrigerator-car was destined to 
 do more than revolutionize the meat indus- 
 try. It was to place upon the tables of the 
 people in cities and towns delicate and de- 
 licious fruits, berries, and vegetables grown 
 in remote localities, as it had already 
 brought to them the fresh meats from 
 the prairies and ranges. Very early in 
 the history of the meat refrigerator-car 
 my father, who had been a farmer-boy in 
 the fruit belt of New York state, became 
 thoroughly convinced that refrigeration 
 was the magic that would work as great a 
 liberation and expansion for the fruit busi- 
 ness as it had for the cattle industry. 
 
 After watching the results of experi- 
 ments in shipping California fruits in 
 ordinary meat refrigerator-cars he became 
 so enthusiastic in his belief in what re- 
 frigeration would do in the handling of 
 fruits that he called Mr. George B. Bobbins 
 25
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 (now president of the Armour Car Lines) 
 into his office, discussed various points of 
 difference in the requirements of a re- 
 frigerator-car adapted to carrying fruits 
 and one for the shipping of meats, and 
 finally said : 
 
 "Embody all these ideas in a plan and 
 then place an order for the building of one 
 thousand of the cars." 
 
 "But," cautiously suggested Mr. Rob- 
 bins, "where are we going to get the busi- 
 ness for so many cars?" 
 
 "Build them!" exclaimed my father in 
 his hearty and decisive way. " I '11 pay for 
 'em; then you do your best to run them 
 right." 
 
 While the cars were being built men were 
 sent out into the fruit-growing sections to 
 hustle for business. "When the growers of 
 a district were first solicited to ship their 
 fruits in a refrigerator-car they scouted 
 the idea and declared that the fruit would 
 be frosted and spoiled. In their minds re- 
 2G
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 f rigeratioii aiid freezing were synonymous, 
 so far as the handling of fruits was con- 
 cerned. Through sensible arguments and 
 the testimony of growers who had once 
 tried the experiment, sufficient business was 
 secured to employ the new cars as they 
 came out of the shops. 
 
 About this time my father took an ex- 
 tensive trip through the South and came 
 back filled with the idea that it held won- 
 derful possibilities for fruit-growers. At 
 once he sent out a force of missionaries to 
 see if the facts to be gained by a careful 
 and scientific investigation would confirm 
 this opinion. When the reports of these 
 men came in he ordered another thousand 
 fruit refrigerator-cars from the shops. 
 These missionaries came into closest con- 
 tact with the people and almost literally 
 helped to plant and start one after another 
 of the now famous fruit and berry districts 
 of the South. These soon made themselves 
 27
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 felt, and the third thousand of cars was 
 soon under construction. 
 
 At length the pinch of hard times began 
 to be felt throughout the country, and Mr. 
 Mysenburg, of the Wells & French Car 
 Works, confessed that if unexpected orders 
 were not secured a shut-down seemed 
 inevitable. My father immediately placed 
 an order for two thousand more fruit-cars 
 and advanced the money for their construc- 
 tion. From this time on he had a continued 
 and increasing interest in the development 
 of the fruit industry a personal interest in 
 the industry itself over and above that 
 which he felt in the refrigeration business 
 and its profits. 
 
 The growing of fruits and berries has 
 been developed from the plane of compara- 
 tively an inconsequential avocation to the 
 dignity of an immense industry. The num- 
 ber of private fruit refrigerator-cars in the 
 Armour Lines has increased to twelve thou- 
 sand. The operation of the private fruit 
 28
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 refrigerator-car has changed the growing 
 of fruits and berries from a gamble to a 
 business, from a local incident to a national 
 industry, bringing millions of dollars annu- 
 ally to districts where land was worth only 
 two to ten dollars an acre before the general 
 distribution of fruit was made possible by 
 this agency. 
 
 It is quite natural, then, that the lay 
 reader should ask: If the private car has 
 done all this for the grower of fruit, why all 
 this outcry from the fruit men against the 
 private car? I am glad to have the ques- 
 tion raised, for the people, as a whole, do 
 not know the truth of the matter; it is time 
 they did, for they will be fair as soon as 
 they see the real situation fairly. Their 
 present views are based on misinformation 
 and malicious misrepresentations by those 
 who have an axe to grind, but who do not 
 care to come into the open to do it. 
 
 The fact of the matter is that this whole 
 agitation started with the commission men 
 29
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 of the country and not with the growers; 
 these middlemen are the manipulators of 
 the campaign that is being prosecuted for 
 the express purpose of putting the private- 
 car lines out of business. With Washing- 
 ton, D. C, as a centre, these commission 
 men are pushing an extensive propaganda 
 based on the cry that the grower is being 
 oppressed by the private-car lines, and that 
 this is the grower 's fight for a chance to do 
 business at a profit. All of the cunning at 
 the command of these men is focused on the 
 one purpose of spreading everywhere the 
 impression that the private car is an 
 "octopus" that is strangling the fruit- 
 growing industry. 
 
 What are the facts in the case? The 
 growers are satisfied with the private car, 
 with its service, and with the system, which 
 they recognize has been the biggest factor 
 in building their business to its present 
 proportion and stability and in opening to 
 them the markets of the entire country. 
 30
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 This, I repeat, is not the fight of the grow- 
 ers, but of the commission men. The real 
 attitude of the growers toward the private 
 car was cleverly expressed in a speech by a 
 representative of the Georgia Fruit-Grow- 
 ers' Association, who publicly declared: 
 
 "We have trained and chained the 
 octopus so that it will feed out of our hands. 
 The only thing we are afraid of is that this 
 pounding of the refrigerator service by the 
 commission merchant interests will cause 
 the octopus to break its chains, jump the 
 fence, and leave us, as in former times, with 
 no octopus but with all our peaches!" 
 
 This is the sentiment of the growers 
 everywhere. I do not believe there is one 
 exclusive grower in this country who does 
 not recognize that the private refrigerator- 
 car is the salvation of and the mainstay of 
 his business and absolutely vital to its pros- 
 perity and expansion. Also I as firmly be- 
 lieve that there is not one large grower in 
 the country, having no interest in the fruit 
 31
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 commission business, who does not clearly 
 recognize that the private-car line, operat- 
 ing on the principle of the exclusive con- 
 tract, is the only practical plan of handling 
 fruit refrigeration, and that it gives the 
 shipper a quality and reliability of service 
 impossible under any other scheme of oper- 
 ation. Scores of fruit-growers' associa- 
 tions and hundreds of individual growers 
 have given public testimony to that effect, 
 and hundreds of pages of such testimony 
 have been given in the form of legal evi- 
 dence under oath. 
 
 Why, then, are the commission men so 
 interested in putting the private refriger- 
 ator-car lines out of business? Because the 
 private car has been steadily and irresist- 
 ibly liberating the grower from the clutches 
 of the commission man ; because the private 
 fruit refrigerator-car has compelled the 
 commission man to quit doing business 
 upon the capital of the growers and forced 
 him to become an actual buyer and a 
 32
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 merchant in fact. Under the old condi- 
 tions of shipping fruit and berries the 
 growers were absolutely at the mercy of the 
 commission men. Fruit shipped without 
 proper refrigeration stood a good chance of 
 arriving in a more or less damaged con- 
 dition, and this likelihood was the strategic 
 stock in trade of the commission men, who 
 were not slow to make the most of it. 
 
 Many reliable growers have testified that 
 in the days before the private car invaded 
 their territory they considered themselves 
 lucky if the commission merchant did not 
 demand a check from them to make up 
 what the reported net results from the sale 
 of their fruit fell short of the amount of the 
 freight charges and of the middleman's 
 commission. The consignments of fruit 
 acknowledged by the consignees to have 
 arrived in good condition were, in those 
 days, about as rare as honest packers are 
 now popularly thought to be. Or, if the 
 grower's shipment was not reported to have 
 3 33
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 arrived in damaged condition, he was likely 
 to be told that the market was glutted, that 
 the finest fruits were selling for what the 
 poorest should bring, and that the shipper 
 would do well if he did not have to send 
 money to make up the freight. 
 
 Of course, it is true that without modern 
 refrigeration great quantities of fruit did 
 arrive at market in bad condition, and that 
 a glutted market was altogether too com- 
 mon. But this situation was diligently and 
 assiduously used by the commission mer- 
 chants as a club over the growers' heads. 
 A thousand pages could be filled with the 
 evidence of growers who have suffered 
 this sort of thing. 
 
 The coming of the private fruit refriger- 
 ator-car into a district put an end to this 
 kind of tyranny. Tt carried the fruit of the 
 growers into the usual market in precisely 
 the same condition in which it left the 
 orchards. There was no dodging this fact ; 
 it was so clear to the grower, the railroad 
 34
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 and the commission man that it was beyond 
 question or dispute. That did away with 
 the time-worn excuse of the commission 
 man that the shipment was received in 
 badly damaged condition. The backbone 
 of that stock claim was broken. 
 
 By the same token, the private refriger- 
 ator-car put the other stock excuse of a 
 middleman out of service. The glutted 
 market became a vanishing quantity under 
 the ability of the private fruit refrigerator- 
 car to take its cargo in prime condition to 
 remote as well as near markets. In a word, 
 not only did the private fruit refrigerator- 
 car multiply the markets open to the grower 
 and shipper, and insure the good condition 
 of his fruit in transit, but the private-car 
 system permitted him to divert his car at 
 will and while in transit from its original 
 destination to another less congested. In 
 short, the private car enabled the grower to 
 know that he could put his fruit into a good 
 market in good condition. 
 35
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Now these changes from the old line-up 
 completely overturned the business of the 
 commission merchant. The grower was no 
 longer helpless in his hands, and the result 
 was that the middleman had to get out and 
 hustle for business; he had to go to the 
 grower and treat with him on something 
 like a fair basis. The history of every fruit 
 district in which the private refrigerator- 
 car has operated for a period of years 
 shows that its advent was followed by the 
 buyers, who went out to get their share of 
 the crop and to bid against each other in 
 order to do so. 
 
 It is clearly impossible to more than 
 touch the high spots in a controversy of the 
 magnitude of that which has thus been 
 stirred up about the private-car lines and 
 to do so in merely a suggestive way at that. 
 So far I have attempted little more than an 
 introduction to the subject, but further on 
 I shall deal in detail with facts and con- 
 ditions. 
 
 36
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Several of the most important phases of 
 this fight must be indicated by at least a 
 passing statement. One of these is the 
 matter of rebates. The propaganda put 
 out by the men who have set themselves the 
 task of driving the private car off the tracks 
 of the railroads of this country proclaims 
 that the private refrigerator-car is simply a 
 device contrived to evade the law forbid- 
 ding the giving or receiving of rebates. 
 This has been pounded into the ears of the 
 people until, broadly speaking, they accept 
 it without question. 
 
 So far as the Armour private cars are 
 concerned, natural conditions, the force of 
 circumstances, and the positive refusal of 
 the railroad companies to put any money 
 into "new-fangled refrigerator-cars" sim- 
 ply compelled my father to build them him- 
 self. He found that the refrigerator-car 
 worked a wonderful expansion in the meat 
 industry, and thought he saw that he could 
 do as much for the fruit business. He 
 37
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 backed his faith with his money, and pio- 
 neered the way in the development of the 
 fruit, berry, and produce industry. 
 
 This development was not only natural 
 but inevitable. Accident seemed to decree 
 that the meat and fruit refrigerator-car 
 should be builded by private enterprise, and 
 certain industrial laws seemed to have 
 further decreed that the private car should 
 remain in private hands, and that its pri- 
 vate operation and control give a far better 
 service to the industries which employ it 
 than could a refrigerator-car owned by a 
 railroad. All this is very remote from a 
 " device" artificially called into being to 
 dodge the rebate law. 
 
 In fact, the Armour private car is not 
 used as a device to secure, directly or in- 
 directly, rebates, discriminations, or con- 
 cessions to the car line owning it, to the 
 shipper using it, to the individuals or any 
 one of them owning the Armour Car 
 Lines, or to any individual near or remotely 
 38
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 connected with the industry. It was de- 
 termined when the prohibitive law against 
 rebates went into effect it was to be obeyed 
 and not evaded ; that a policy of indirection 
 and evasion was a poor policy from any 
 standpoint and would not be countenanced 
 by the Armour interests. 
 
 That there is a considerable difference 
 of opinion between the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission and the railroads, relating to 
 the transportation of property from in- 
 terior cities of the United States upon a 
 through tariff over railroads and steam- 
 ships to foreign countries, is undeniable. 
 The situation has provoked much comment. 
 However, it is not clearly determined 
 whether the matter is within the province 
 of the Interstate Commerce Act and that of 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. The 
 fact is that the recent indictment of railway 
 and packing officials at Kansas City for 
 alleged rebating relates exclusively to ship- 
 ments from Kansas City to Europe. Speak- 
 89
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ing for my own company, the regular es- 
 tablished public rates have been paid in 
 full; and there has not been "any rebate, 
 concession, or discrimination" of any char- 
 acter to shippers in this relation. 
 
 It seems to me that an "indictment" is 
 neither the fairest nor the easiest method 
 by which to arrive at an answer as to 
 whether the railroads are required to file 
 through tariff schedules relating to foreign 
 shipments with the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission or not. Shipments of other 
 commodities, as, for instance, cotton, so I am 
 informed, have always been made identi- 
 cally the same as the meat shipments in- 
 volved in these indictments against the pack- 
 ers, but I do not recall any action being 
 taken against the shippers of cotton. The 
 manner of shipment in both cases has been 
 fully understood by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission; there has been no con- 
 cealment whatever in this respect. 
 
 This is purely a technical matter, a law 
 40
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 point which the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission has long been urged to determine 
 one between the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission and the railroads on jurisdictional 
 grounds whether the tariff sheet must be 
 filed by the railroads with the Commission 
 a question that rightly involves neither 
 the packers who are indicted with the rail- 
 roads nor any other shippers to foreign 
 markets. There is nothing in the Kansas 
 City indictment that conflicts with my state- 
 ment in the preceding paragraph. 
 
 Another element in the situation which 
 has been subjected to bitter and sensational 
 attack is that of the "exclusive contract." 
 This also demands careful and detailed 
 treatment, and will receive it later. Of 
 course, this feature is inseparably associ- 
 ated with that of the reasonableness of the 
 rate charged. 
 
 41
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE QUALITY OF THE SERVICE 
 
 IT should be explained, for the benefit of 
 the general public, that the service for 
 which the shipper pays the private-car 
 line is that of refrigeration and not hauling. 
 The private-car lines take care of the fruit 
 from the moment it enters the car door 
 until it arrives at its destination; it has 
 nothing whatever to do with the freight 
 charges. 
 
 Only the commonest kind of selfish com- 
 mon sense is required to arrive at the policy 
 of keeping these refrigeration rates down 
 to a point that will foster the fruit and 
 berry industry and stimulate it to the 
 broadest possible expansion. Any line of 
 action less liberal than this would be short- 
 sighted and suicidal. This is the policy 
 that has steadily been pursued by the 
 42
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Armour Car Lines, and no doubt by their 
 competitors. The assertion that the rates 
 charged for refrigeration of fruits by the 
 Armour Car Lines have decreased in every 
 district in which it has operated cannot be 
 controverted. As the volume of business 
 developed has increased, the rates charged 
 have been voluntarily lowered. For ex- 
 ample: When five different car lines were 
 competing for the Georgia peach refrigera- 
 tion business the rate was ninety dollars a 
 car to Xew York. Afterward, under an 
 exclusive contract with the Central of 
 Georgia Railroad, it was reduced to eighty 
 dollars a car. Again, in 1901, owing to an 
 increase in the volume of business, and a 
 slight decrease in the cost of ice, we volun- 
 tarily reduced the refrigeration charges to 
 sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents. 
 
 The reductions made by the Armour 
 Lines in the refrigeration fruit rates from 
 California since 1895 vary from twenty- 
 seven per cent, to fifty-five per cent., 
 43
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 according to kiud, loading-point, and des- 
 tination. Everywhere throughout the whole 
 Held of operation the same consistent 
 policy of reduction has been in force, and 
 this has been brought out and substantiated 
 in thousands of pages of evidence taken 
 before the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion, the United States Congressional 
 Committees, and the other bodies which 
 have had the private-car lines on the grid- 
 iron. The attitude of the grower is simply 
 this : 
 
 "We want lower rates if we can get them 
 but, above all things, let nothing be done 
 in an effort to get them that will interfere 
 with or deprive us of the private-car-line 
 service as it now stands, for we're prosper- 
 ing and growing under it and we can't 
 afford to have it jeopardized." 
 
 "When it comes to deciding whether re- 
 frigeration rates are reasonable or unrea- 
 sonable we must consider the quality of the 
 service, its cost to those furnishing it, and 
 44
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the hazards and liabilities which have to he 
 shouldered by the car lines. That the 
 service is indispensable to the grower, that 
 he has paid far higher rates in the past 
 than he now pays, and that his business has 
 marvelously expanded under these rates, I 
 have already indicated. 
 
 The quality of the service is so high that 
 growers are of one voice in its praise. 
 Broadly speaking, they have no complaints 
 to make on this score. Of course there are 
 individual complaints, but these are so in- 
 significant as compared with the total num- 
 ber of shippers or the number of shippers 
 who have put themselves on record as de- 
 lighted with the service that my statement 
 stands without qualification. Here is one 
 incident, typical of scores of others demon- 
 strating the growers' appreciation of the 
 quality of the private-car service: 
 
 P>enton Harbor, Michigan, is tapped by 
 three railroads. Two of these, during the 
 peach season just passed, furnished re- 
 45
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 f rigerator-cars to shippers and did icing at 
 the cost for ice of two dollars and fifty 
 cents per ton. The private-car line oper- 
 ating over the other road charged its 
 regular refrigeration rates. The apparent 
 difference was great; but, in spite of this, 
 sixty per cent, of the peach crop of that 
 place was shipped by the private-car line, 
 and eighty per cent, would have been 
 carried if the road over which it operated 
 had had engines enough to haul the trains. 
 
 A large proportion of the labor required 
 in this service is above the ordinary in the 
 matter of cost. Inspections, to be of any 
 value, must be intelligent and dependable, 
 and this kind of labor cannot be had at a 
 cheap price. Private cars are inspected 
 not only at the shipping-point, but at vari- 
 ous points along the route. 
 
 Then let us look at the matter of hazards. 
 Failure of the entire fruit crop in whole 
 districts is one of the hazards. This hap- 
 pens altogether too frequently. It means, 
 4G
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 first, a total failure of revenue from that 
 region, but that is only the beginning of the 
 loss side of the account. Let me illustrate 
 this by an actual occurrence representative 
 of a routine feature of the business. 
 
 In 1898 the big ice-houses at Marshal 1- 
 ville and Fort Valley were stored with ice 
 to refrigerate the Georgia fruit crop; we 
 had to ship that ice in vessels from Maine 
 to Savannah and from there by rail to the 
 inland peach country; this was expensive, 
 but a big crop was expected the next season. 
 A late frost wiped out the entire crop, and 
 not one car of peaches was shipped out of 
 the state. There was no way in which to 
 use the ice and it melted. The ice hazard 
 is one which catches the private-car lines; 
 both coining and going. A fruit crop that 
 is abundant beyond all calculations often 
 finds the local ice supply insufficient. There 
 is only one thing to do, and that is always 
 done. Ice enough is shipped from the 
 nearest points (often quite remote), and 
 47
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 this heavy addition of expense is on our 
 shoulders and not on the shippers ' ; we get 
 no more for the refrigeration because of 
 this emergency outlay. 
 
 Under the exclusive contract the private- 
 car line is obligated to do its part to have 
 the cars on hand to handle the crop, and if 
 it fails to do so it is responsible to the grow- 
 ers, and settles with them for the fruit lost 
 because the refrigerator-cars were not there 
 to take care of it. A very practical exam- 
 ple of doing still more than this is had in 
 an incident which cost our lines seventy-five 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Because of the extreme congestion of 
 traffic on a certain railroad our refriger- 
 ator-cars were not at the shipping-point of 
 the North Carolina strawberry districts at 
 the critical moment. Therefore the berries 
 could not be shipped before they became 
 damaged. Did the growers suffer from 
 this? Not at all. They received the mar- 
 ket price for their crop, even a higher price 
 48
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 than if their berries had actually reached 
 the market, for the market was short the 
 number of car-loads for which we settled. 
 We had contracted with the railroad tap- 
 ping that territory to deliver so many cars 
 to receive the ripened crop. Through no 
 fault of our own the cars were not on hand, 
 but we "made good." 
 
 There are many other reasons besides the 
 one of liability pointed by this incident why 
 the private car is the onlv logical agency 
 by which the fruit business can be handled, 
 and why the exclusive contract is the only 
 logical basis upon which the private car can 
 be operated. There is scarcely a railroad 
 in this country operating in a fruit territory 
 whose traffic officials have not testified 
 under oath that it would be impractical, if 
 not impossible, for their road to own fruit 
 refrigerator-cars enough to take care of its 
 own fruit business. Why? Because the 
 peach season or the berry season, for exam- 
 ple, lasts only three or four weeks; these 
 4 49
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 cars cost over one thousand dollars each 
 and are unsuitable for any other kind of 
 traffic; the handling and care of them is a 
 peculiar service which the railroads admit 
 they are not equipped to perform; a rail- 
 road furnishing its own cars would not 
 only have to furnish service along its own 
 rails but beyond and wherever the cars 
 might be. 
 
 Now, a private-car line doing business 
 under an exclusive contract can accomplish 
 practically all the essentials of good service 
 which the railroads operating their own 
 refrigerator-cars could not give short of a 
 cost which would be absolutely prohibitive. 
 Tt has a special and experienced service, 
 its organization covers the entire United 
 States, and wherever there is a natural 
 highway for this kind of traffic there will 
 be found its ice-houses or plants and its 
 stations for re-icing and inspection. Tt 
 commands the entrance to and the outlook 
 over the markets of the country, and the 
 50
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 grower has the advantage of this scope in 
 every particular. He can send his fruit 
 into any market and divert it en route if he 
 desires. 
 
 As to the exclusive contract, it should be 
 said that ice supplies, to be reliable, have to 
 be stored up many months in advance of the 
 fruit crop; cars have to be "parked" or con- 
 centrated long before they are used. Then 
 an immense expenditure looking to the 
 future has to be put out in ice-plants, other 
 buildings, and for other equipment. Re- 
 cently the Armour Car Lines put one hun- 
 dred and twenty-five thousand dollars into 
 an ice-plant at Las Vegas, Nevada, on the 
 line of Senator Clark's new road that runs 
 through the Mojave Desert and Death Val- 
 ley, an arid and undeveloped region. Such 
 an outlay would have been absolutely im- 
 possible and unwarranted if the car lines 
 were debarred from making a long-time 
 exclusive contract with the railroad looking 
 toward and providing for the systematic 
 51
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 development of a great fruit district and a 
 great fruit traffic. 
 
 In almost every district where the ex- 
 clusive contract prevails, at least so far as 
 our lines are concerned, the growers them- 
 selves requested the railway to make an 
 exclusive contract. They declared that 
 under competition the supply of cars and 
 the supply of ice was fluctuating and unre- 
 liable. No one knew just how many cars 
 they would be called on for, and they had 
 either too few or too many when the days 
 of shipment came. Also they complained 
 of the quality of the service under the com- 
 peting system, declaring that it did not 
 minister to the systematic development of 
 the territory. 
 
 There are two or three features in the 
 Armour system of distributing dressed 
 meats which demand at least passing at- 
 tention. I have shown, in detail, how the 
 development of the modern refrigerator- 
 52
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 car completely revolutionized the meat busi- 
 ness of the world. 
 
 In accomplishing this wonderful trans- 
 formation of food conditions, the refriger- 
 ator-car had a powerful and indispensable 
 ally in the form of the packers' " branch 
 houses," or distributing agencies, contain- 
 ing a reserve of fresh meats in the best of 
 refrigeration, awaiting the call of the local 
 retailers. 
 
 Not only does the branch house relieve 
 the local butcher of the burden of providing 
 extensive refrigeration facilities of his own, 
 but it also allows him to carry a smaller 
 stock than he would otherwise be able to 
 carry without danger of disappointment to 
 his customers. 
 
 Quite as important as either of these con- 
 siderations is the fact that the local 
 "branch" keeps at the demand of the re- 
 tailers a supply of choice cuts, ripened to 
 just the right point. At call, the retailer is 
 able to go out and get for his most select and 
 53
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 discriminating customers the best cuts in 
 the best of condition. 
 
 No feature of the packing and dressed- 
 meat business is more important than these 
 branch houses none more important to the 
 public as well as to the packer. Neither 
 expense nor attention to minutest detail is 
 spared to make them models of what meat- 
 houses should be, perfectly adapted to the 
 purpose which they serve. They are built of 
 the best materials that money can buy, and 
 they are built on the best lines that inge- 
 nuity and experienced skill can contrive to 
 secure perfect refrigeration and absolute 
 cleanliness. 
 
 In the up-to-date branch house building- 
 materials that are practically imperishable 
 and impervious to outside influence are 
 employed wherever possible. The floors 
 are of cement. Storage and cooling rooms 
 are lined with glazed tile, spotlessly white 
 and smooth as glass. Not a cranny or crev- 
 ice is left in which dust might gather or a 
 54
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 germ hide from the frequent cleansings. All 
 in all, they are as near dirt-proof, taint- 
 proof and germ-proof as a building can be 
 made. 
 
 These branch houses complete the pack- 
 ers' chain that takes the animal from farm 
 or range, converts it into meat, and sets it 
 down at the retail meat-merchant's door. 
 
 We would hear less criticism of the pack- 
 ers if consumers could follow a steer from 
 pen to slaughter-house, see it converted 
 into "quarters" and "cuts" and hung in 
 the cooler, transferred thence to a clean, 
 cold car, transported under ice to the 
 farthest part of the country, and finally 
 deposited in the branch house. That would 
 bring home to the consumer, as nothing 
 else can, the fact that no part of the people 's 
 food-supply receives more careful handling 
 than does the meat that comes from the 
 large packing-houses. 
 
 Tn the absence of such a comprehensive 
 inspection it would bo a distinct benefit to 
 55
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the packers if the general public would take 
 pains to visit and scrutinize the branch 
 houses. They are always open to visitors. 
 If there is a branch house of Armour & Co. 
 in your vicinity, you are- cordially invited 
 to see for yourself just how the hated 
 packer takes care of your meat-supply. 
 
 The number of these branch houses main- 
 tained by the packers is very great. Ar- 
 mour & Co. have about three hundred of 
 them in the United States alone. From the 
 vast number of requests received from 
 many sections of the country, asking for the 
 installation of branch houses, it is very clear 
 that these branches are looked upon by the 
 people as being of great benefit to both the 
 retailer and the consumer. Our aim is to 
 protect the retailer and assist him in build- 
 ing up a secure and permanent trade. 
 
 In addition to the branch houses, we 
 have, in many sections of the country, es- 
 tablished smoke-houses. Pickled hams, 
 etc., are sent green to these points and are 
 56
 
 CAR LINES AND THE TEOPLE 
 
 there smoked under our owu supervision, 
 after which they are sent to the branch 
 house. This enables the dealer to get 
 freshly smoked meats. 
 
 One part of the system by which the 
 packer distributes fresh meats to the peo- 
 ple, through the local dealers, has been sub- 
 jected to much criticism and most un- 
 justly, too. I refer to the " route car," bj 
 which meat is distributed to those towns not 
 large enough to maintain a branch house 
 or a distributing agency, or even to enable 
 the retailer to order his meats in car-load 
 lots. 
 
 The accusation is that the cars arc used 
 to "peddle" meats and thus hurt the busi- 
 ness of the local butchers. It is not true 
 that this is a peddling proposition. These 
 cars are certainly of great advantage and 
 benefit to the local butchers as well as the 
 consumers, and were brought into exist- 
 ence to meet the present requirements of 
 the community at large, and are not fairly 
 57
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 to be considered as an advantage to the 
 packers so much as an advantage to the 
 people. 
 
 If the community were sufficiently large, 
 car-load lots could be shipped to these va- 
 rious points to much greater advantage to 
 the packer and at a considerable less ex- 
 pense. But the demand in the small place 
 is as urgent as it is limited; the retailers 
 and the consumers there must have fresh 
 meats, but they cannot take them in large 
 shipments; therefore the route car is in- 
 dispensable to the people of the small 
 towns. 
 
 It is far more expensive to ship in this 
 way than to ship by the full car-load. 
 Every time one of these cars is cut out of 
 a train and put on a siding, the packer must 
 pay from three to five dollars in addition 
 to all the other transportation charges 
 and a car makes many such stops in the 
 course of covering the route of small 
 towns. 
 
 58
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 The question might be asked: Why not 
 ship by local freight? Because meat would 
 not arrive in good condition. Another rea- 
 son for not shipping by local freight is 
 that no dependence can be placed upon the 
 arrival of meat thus shipped at a certain 
 destination at any specific time. In short, 
 this way is too slow and too unreliable for 
 the transportation of fresh meats and meat- 
 products. 
 
 The car-route salesman visits all the 
 towns along his route and takes orders for 
 shipments to be made on a specific day, 
 stipulating that the car shall arrive at each 
 place at a certain day and hour to be met 
 by the wagons of the retailers of that town. 
 This method of delivery is carried out reg- 
 ularly once or twice a week, as occasion de- 
 mands, insuring the consumer the delivery 
 of his meats in the very best condition. 
 
 We do not sell to consumers, but reach 
 thorn through the meat-dealers in the va- 
 rious towns, and our method of putting the 
 59
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 meats in their hands enables them to get a 
 fresh supply at very short notice, which 
 could not be done without the route car. 
 
 Showing the practical working of this 
 method of distribution, let me relate an in- 
 stance. Mr. Boyd, formerly one of our 
 branch-house managers at St. Louis, Mis- 
 souri, is now extensively engaged in the re- 
 tail meat business at Adrian, Michigan. 
 From his wide experience in the branch- 
 house meat business, he certainly knows 
 whether it is now to his advantage, as a re- 
 tail butcher, to secure his meats from these 
 route cars. 
 
 Mr. Boyd is now getting the bulk of his 
 beef-products from the route car running 
 through his town, although he does, occa- 
 sionally, go to the local butcher or slaugh- 
 terer for some of his meats but this only 
 when he finds what he considers a " bar- 
 gain.' ' 
 
 Government inspection is another im- 
 portant feature of the packers' business. 
 60
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 To the general public, the meat-eating pub- 
 lic, it ought to appeal as one of the most im- 
 portant features of any and all business in 
 the whole country. It is the wall that 
 stands between the meat-eating public and 
 the sale of diseased meat. 
 
 This government inspection alone, if 
 there were no other business or economic 
 reasons, would be an all-sufficient reason 
 for the existence of the packing and 
 dressed-meat business on a mammoth scale. 
 It should, if understood, make the general 
 public a partisan supporter of the large 
 packers. 
 
 Strangely enough, in view of its vital im- 
 portance, this government inspection has 
 been the subject of almost endless misrep- 
 resentation of ignorantly or maliciously 
 false statements. 
 
 The public has been told that meat ani- 
 mals and carcasses condemned as diseased 
 are afterwards secretly made use of by the 
 packers and sold to the public for food in 
 Gl
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the form of botli dressed meats and canned 
 meats. 
 
 Right here I desire to brand such state- 
 ments as absolutely false as applied to the 
 business of Armour & Co. I believe they 
 are equally false as to all establishments 
 in this country that are classed as packing- 
 houses. 
 
 I repeat: In Armour & Co.'s business 
 not one atom of any condemned animal or 
 carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, 
 from any source, into any food-product or 
 food-ingredient. 
 
 Every meat-animal and every carcass 
 slaughtered in the Union Stock Yards, or 
 stock-yards at any of the markets of 
 the United States, is carefully inspected 
 by the United States government. This 
 inspection by the national government is 
 supplemented, in practically all cases, by 
 state or city inspection, or both. The live 
 animals are inspected on the hoof and again 
 when slaughtered. 
 
 62
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 The inspection by the United States gov- 
 ernment is not compulsory on the packers 
 in the strict legal sense of the term; it is 
 more binding than if it were compulsory. 
 It is business. Attempt to evade it would 
 be, from the purely commercial viewpoint, 
 suicidal. No packer can do an interstate 
 or export business without government in- 
 spection. Self-interest forces him to make 
 use of it. 
 
 Self-interest likewise demands that he 
 shall not receive meats or by-products from 
 any small packer, either for export or other 
 use, unless that small packer's plant is also 
 "official," that is, under United States 
 government inspection. 
 
 This inspection is carried on under the 
 direction of the Bureau of Animal Indus- 
 try of the "Department of Agriculture. The 
 packer has nothing to say about the em- 
 ployment of the inspectors. They are as- 
 signed by the United States government. 
 63
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 The government likewise is judge of their 
 qualifications. 
 
 It requires of them, first, that they shall 
 have taken a full three-year course in vet- 
 erinary science as long a course as most 
 states require for the admission of physi- 
 cians* and surgeons to practice. Then 
 these educated veterinarians are selected 
 by rigid civil-service examination. 
 
 Every meat-animal that comes to the 
 stock-yards is first inspected on the hoof, 
 as stated, by representatives of the Bureau 
 of Animal Industry. All that show signs 
 of disease are segregated and tagged as re- 
 jected by the United States government 
 inspectors. At regular intervals they are 
 slaughtered (in Chicago under direction of 
 the state officers) and consigned to other 
 than food uses. 
 
 All carcasses cattle, calves, sheep, 
 
 hogs are again rigidly inspected after 
 
 slaughter. The internal organs affected 
 
 by the various diseases to which meat-ani- 
 
 64
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 mals are subject are examined. On the 
 slightest sign of disease the carcass is re- 
 jected, and so marked that it cannot escape 
 observation. 
 
 From the moment it is rejected, that car- 
 cass is in the custody of the United States 
 government agents and it is by them per- 
 sonally followed to the rendering-tank. 
 It is hacked into small pieces, thrown into 
 the tank, and emerges only as grease or fer- 
 tilizing material. This tanking product is 
 in such form that it could not by any possi- 
 bility be renovated to become a food-prod- 
 uct even if any packer were dishonest 
 enough to attempt that. 
 
 And if it were possible to evade inspec- 
 tion and use condemned carcasses or prod- 
 uct from an " unofficial" packing-house 
 self-interest would again prevent it, because 
 the packer would subject himself to speedy 
 detection and exposure (if not endless 
 blackmail) by the hundreds of employees 
 who would be cognizant of his trickery. 
 5 65
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 This government inspection thus be- 
 comes an important adjunct of the packer's 
 business from two viewpoints. It puts the 
 stamp of legitimacy and honesty upon the 
 packer's product, and so is to him a busi- 
 ness necessity. To the public it is an insur- 
 ance against the sale of diseased meats. 
 
 66
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 MAGAZINE VS. ACTUAL PROFIT 
 
 IN actual business experience I have 
 found nothing so immensely satisfac- 
 tory as the profit percentages which 
 certain writers are able to figure on the 
 Armour Car Lines and packing business. 
 The way these enterprising journalists can 
 pile up paper profits for me reminds me of 
 nothing so much as the net returns to be 
 realized in the breeding of Belgian hares 
 on paper. Some of my readers may have 
 had a little practical experience in breeding 
 these creatures for market and trying to 
 make the actual profits coincide with those 
 so elaborately set forth in the prospectus 
 sent out by the breeder of stock hares. In 
 the prospectus the scale of profits is an 
 ascending one in which nothing short of 
 G7
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 arithmetical progression is capable of com- 
 puting the increase. 
 
 The net profits in the private car and the 
 packing business are arrived at, by these 
 entertaining writers, by the same process 
 of figuring that the prospectus-maker used 
 to determine the cumulative profits of rais- 
 ing Belgian hares. There is a world of 
 difference between the actual earning of 
 actual profits and the figuring of paper 
 profits, where the total revenue is arrived at 
 in a broad, generous and offhand way with 
 a large ignorance and comprehensive dis- 
 regard to costs, expenses, and all the prac- 
 tical elements and details really involved. 
 If these writers could actually deliver the 
 profit percentages which they are able to 
 produce on paper they could command 
 higher salaries in the packing or private- 
 car business than any magazine in America 
 can afford to pay them. 
 
 If any business man who reads, in these 
 articles put out by the magazine writers, 
 68
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the statement of our profits is inclined to 
 believe them, I have only this little act of 
 justice to ask him : 
 
 Go to some neighbor who already has a 
 profound conviction that you are making 
 too much money, and let him figure, from 
 hearsay information, the profits which you 
 make. If you are then honestly content to 
 be judged by a showing arrived at in such 
 manner I will find no fault if you will accept 
 as true the profits figured for the Armour 
 Car Lines by these writers who start out 
 with a necessity of making a case by show- 
 ing exorbitant profits, and who are unham- 
 pered by information and have a splendid 
 indifference to all matters of cost. 
 
 Just try this experiment ; you will find it 
 hugely entertaining. Perhaps also it will 
 teach you how far you fall short, as a finan- 
 cial genius, of the expectations and ideas of 
 those who feel that you are making more 
 money than you have any business to make. 
 This may be a little dampening to your 
 69
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 pride right at the start, but it will suggest 
 to you what you could accomplish if you 
 could somehow contrive to eliminate the 
 matter of expenses, and to use your best 
 day's business as an " average" by which 
 to multiply the business of the three hun- 
 dred business days in the year. 
 
 The profits of the private-car business 
 cannot, with any fairness, be judged on a 
 harvest-time basis which the critics of the 
 enterprise seem to insist upon doing. . It 
 would be unfair to take the profit for a 
 whole year and judge the business upon 
 that basis. Why? Because this is a busi- 
 ness of lean years as well as fat years. Then 
 the period of profitable and established 
 operation should be averaged with the 
 years in which the business was in a strug- 
 gling and pioneer stage. Absolute fairness 
 would go further than this and take into 
 account the exigencies of the future such, 
 for example, as the possibility that modern 
 inventive genius may render practically 
 70
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 useless and obsolete an equipment now 
 representing an investment of millions of 
 dollars, and this possibility is by no means 
 so remote that good business prudence 
 would not take it into account. 
 
 Again I urge each business man who 
 attaches any weight to the profits of the 
 Armour interests as they are figured in the 
 magazines to act on this suggestion. The 
 injustice of criticism and attack based on 
 this kind of figuring will be so apparent to 
 the man who tries this experiment that he 
 will never again be tempted to place any 
 confidence whatever in assertions arrived 
 at by such a process. I deny that the 
 profits of the private-car-line business and 
 the packing business are extortionate. I 
 have no desire to deny that both these in- 
 terests do pay a profit. I should consider 
 it a poor compliment to the manner in which 
 I have discharged my responsibilities if this 
 were not so. Let it be said, too, that the 
 aggregate of these profits is respectable 
 71
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 to many it probably looks immense; but it 
 is not excessive or disproportionate when 
 the immense volume of capital invested is 
 considered. 
 
 Perhaps I am not called upon to say so, 
 but I will make the statement that had I 
 put my holdings, at the time I came into 
 them, into railroads, national banks, and 
 other enterprises, I should have made more 
 money, made it with less trouble, and been 
 subjected to less attack than I have been 
 subjected to in the lines which I have fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 More than that, I sincerely believe in the 
 making of that money I should have been 
 of far less service in the industrial develop- 
 ment of this country than I have been in 
 the private-car-line and the packing busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Mind you, I am not posing as a philan- 
 thropist or asking for any credit on that or 
 any kindred score. Just common-sense 
 selfishness and the regard for the well-being 
 72
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of humanity that the ordinary decent citi- 
 zen has are all the motives that I lay claim 
 to in the conduct of my business ; but I do 
 confess to a sense of personal satisfaction 
 in the fact that the prosperity of the prop- 
 erty of the Armour Car Lines and the 
 Armour Company has been inseparable 
 from that of the fruit, produce, and cattle 
 industries of the country ; that thousands of 
 men in these lines have been enabled to 
 make independent fortunes by the activities 
 of the private car ; that, as an incident to a 
 business success, the whole people of this 
 country, and of other countries for that 
 matter, enjoy comforts and luxuries other- 
 wise impossible; that the standard of the 
 world's living, in a sanitary and economic 
 sense, has been immensely improved by 
 reason of the operation of a business run 
 for personal and selfish gain. 
 
 A reasonable amount of pride in these 
 facts is, I believe, quite pardonable, and the 
 satisfaction I get from this consideration 
 73
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 is, I confess, quite as tangible and satisfac- 
 tory a kind of dividend as I have been able 
 to draw. I believe most profoundly that 
 there are very few industries in existence 
 that have contributed so much to the com- 
 fort and progress of this nation as the 
 packing and private-car industries have 
 contributed, and these benefits have been to 
 all the people, for there are few who are 
 not able to enjoy, to some extent, the fresh 
 fruit, vegetables, and meat that the private 
 refrigerator-car has guaranteed at all times 
 to the public. 
 
 Too much emphasis cannot, in fairness, 
 be placed upon the fact that the growers 
 everywhere hail the private fruit-car as the 
 direct agency of their prosperity and ex- 
 pansion, and that the cost of this service 
 has certainly not been so great as to choke 
 or stifle their development. Instead, they 
 freely declare that the private car has liber- 
 ated them from conditions which were 
 choking and smothering their business. 
 74
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Careless writers and persons with axes of 
 their own to grind have sought to create 
 the impression that " refrigeration service" 
 as applied to fruit transportation is only a 
 high-sounding synonym for "selling ice." 
 Nothing could be further from the truth. 
 Refrigeration service furnished by the pri- 
 vate-car lines is exactly what the term 
 implies. It is service a special service 
 that insures to the grower or shipper of 
 fruit a certain supply of the highest type 
 of modern cars, careful loading, prompt 
 moving, frequent inspection, and delivery of 
 the fruit in good condition. 
 
 This service is comprehensive, highly or- 
 ganized, and expert. Transportation of 
 fruit, care for a highly-perishable com- 
 modity, is its special and only work. Cost 
 of ice is but one item in the expense of 
 maintaining it. Its efficiency lies in the 
 maintenance of a large and complex or- 
 ganization of trained men who are charged 
 with the task not only of taking care of 
 75
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 fruit in transit, but of seeing that the 
 grower or shipper has cars, and the right 
 kind of cars, in first-class condition, when 
 he needs them, and not about when he needs 
 them. 
 
 The charge for refrigeration service also 
 covers maintenance, repair, and replace- 
 ment of the tools employed in the business 
 the ice-making plants, ice-houses, icing- 
 stations both in the fruit-growing sections 
 and throughout the country along the 
 routes from the growing locality to the 
 market, repair-shops, and the cars them- 
 selves. These cars cost from one thousand 
 dollars to twelve hundred dollars each a 
 third and sometimes half more than the 
 ordinary box car. They are easily dam- 
 aged. Almost every car needs more or less 
 repairs every trip. They wear out more 
 quickly than ordinary freight-cars, and are 
 more easily put out of service from many 
 causes. When returning empty, railroads 
 frequently press them into use for other 
 76
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 freight. If loaded with anything that 
 leaves an odor drugs, kerosene oil, etc., as 
 happens often the car is likely to be made 
 useless for further service in the fruit- 
 carrying trade. 
 
 To convey a concrete idea of what this 
 fruit-refrigeration service means let us fol- 
 low the shipping of a car-load of oranges 
 from California to Boston. 
 
 California is a district in which a field 
 organization must be maintained practi- 
 cally the year round. We have to maintain 
 our own car-repair shops and icing-stations, 
 and when fruit is moving a band of more 
 than fifty men as inspectors, supervisors, 
 etc., whose traveling expenses, as well as 
 salaries, have to be paid, are up and down 
 through the district superintending the 
 loading and icing, enforcing prompt move- 
 ment of cars, and pushing all details of the 
 work. All told, we have a force of more 
 than two hundred men in California during 
 the season. 
 
 77
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Before the fruit-shipping season opens, 
 cars enough to handle the crop must be as- 
 sembled at points convenient to the shipping- 
 stations. More than half of them go West 
 empty and are subject to many delays; 
 some may be loaded with clean package 
 freight. These will be from fifteen to 
 thirty days en route from Chicago to Los 
 Angeles, and unloading there may be de- 
 layed. During all this period, before a 
 pound of fruit is loaded, the car line com- 
 pany must keep track of these cars, trace 
 them from point to point, and know whether 
 they are empty and available for immedi- 
 ate use or loaded and unavailable. Finally, 
 the car we are following lands at our Los 
 Angeles shop, where a large force of car 
 repairers is employed at all times; they 
 thoroughly overhaul the car, put new pad- 
 ding on doors and hatch-plugs, clean and 
 repair tank-pans, drains and drain-traps, 
 and attend to any other repairs needed, 
 78
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 from supplying a new roof to a new set of 
 trucks. 
 
 After the car is thoroughly overhauled 
 and inspected to see that it is sweet and 
 clean and in proper condition to carry a 
 perishable load of fruit, its tanks are filled 
 with about ten thousand pounds of ice. This 
 initial icing alone in Los Angeles is a heavy 7 
 expense. Wonderful things are grown in 
 California, but no one, not even the won- 
 derful Mr. Burbank, has been able to grow 
 a natural crop of ice in southern Cali- 
 fornia. For northern California we must 
 haul the ice from the mountains at heavy 
 expense for freight and shrinkage. We 
 also buy enormous quantities of manufac- 
 tured ice. In 1905 we bought more than 
 one hundred and twenty thousand tons of 
 ice in California. 
 
 When the car is iced it is sent out to the 
 loading-point to receive its load. During 
 this process there is a further heavy shrink- 
 age of ice in the tanks. The car may have 
 79
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 been standing for days in a railroad yard. 
 The fruit loaded into it and the packages 
 containing that fruit are also hot soaked, 
 as it were, in California sunshine. The car 
 and its load must be brought down to a low 
 temperature. Every board, every nail, 
 every orange, every piece of wood, exudes 
 heat. Much ice must be melted, obviously, 
 to bring the hot car and its load down to 
 a low temperature. 
 
 The car, when loaded, is sent back to Los 
 Angeles (to Bakersfield if going East by 
 the northern route), its ice tanks are re- 
 filled, it is thoroughly inspected again by 
 car-line men, and is started on its journey 
 East. If it takes the southern route it 
 stops first at Tucson, Arizona, to be re-iced 
 under the supervision of a car-line agent, 
 who not only sees that the tanks are prop- 
 erly filled to capacity, but also makes a per- 
 sonal inspection of all drain-pipes, etc. The 
 car then passes on to El Paso, where car- 
 line agents are waiting for it. It is again 
 80
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 thoroughly re-iced and inspected and sent 
 on to Fort Worth, where another agent is 
 in waiting to perform the same service. 
 This process is repeated seven or eight 
 times more before the car reaches Boston- 
 Kansas City; Davenport, Iowa; Chicago; 
 Galion, Ohio ; Hornellsville, New York ; and 
 East Deerfield, Massachusetts. 
 
 The same careful attention is given it at 
 each of these icing-stations as was given at 
 the beginning of its journey. The same 
 facilities are maintained on all the various 
 routes. If slow time by the railroads or 
 weather conditions necessitate a larger 
 amount of ice than usual at any point, extra 
 icing-stations are put in immediately. This 
 is watched very carefully by an elaborate 
 system in the Chicago office, and is also 
 supervised by the traveling inspectors. 
 They drop in on the various icing-stations 
 unannounced. This work, however, is 
 more of a precaution than a necessity. The 
 agents who are strung across the country in 
 81
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 nearly all cases have been with the car lines 
 a long time, and are men who take a per- 
 sonal pride in the welfare of the business. 
 
 Let us not be understood that any of this 
 frequent re-icing and re-inspection has been 
 done at random. "When the car leaves Los 
 Angeles, the car number, its condition, and 
 digest of the way-bill are all taken by a car- 
 line inspector and filed with the district 
 agent in charge of that territory. The car- 
 line agent at the next station Tucson. in 
 this case is notified by mail, or by wire if 
 necessary, that the car is on the way to him. 
 This checking and notification of stations 
 ahead continues without break until the car 
 reaches destination. From the first icing 
 until delivery at destination the car is under 
 the eye of the car-line organization every 
 hour and is kept moving. 
 
 "When the car finally reaches Boston it is 
 
 met again by a car-line inspector. He 
 
 notes its condition, sees it opened, inspects 
 
 condition of its load, and reports all details 
 
 82
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 to the head office. This emphasizes the in- 
 surance the service gives the shipper. No- 
 body in Boston ventures to report to the 
 shipper in California that a car handled and 
 watched as described has " arrived in bad 
 condition. ' ' 
 
 The history of this car as traced from 
 California to Boston is typical. The same 
 thing, generally speaking, happens to every 
 private fruit refrigerator-car, no matter 
 from what point it starts or to what point 
 it is billed. Therefore, I repeat, the cost 
 of this service embraces many items, to 
 wit : Expensive ice in a hot, non-ice-bearing 
 country, at the beginning of the journey, 
 just where the most ice is needed; mainte- 
 nance of repair-shops at various places 
 (Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Fort 
 Worth, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and many 
 other points) ; salaries of inspectors wher- 
 ever cars are iced; salaries of executive 
 officers and clerks; cost of maintaining 
 83
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 icing-stations ; repairs ; depreciation ; inter- 
 est on the investment, etc. 
 
 The item of repair is a heavy one. Dur- 
 ing a short, rush season, as in handling 
 Michigan and Georgia peaches, time does 
 not permit sending cars to the shops, but 
 car-repairers have to be sent into the field. 
 In Michigan last fall three car-repair su- 
 perintendents were maintained in the field, 
 and each had from five to ten men with 
 him, at the expense of the car line. .In 
 view of these facts I submit that a tariff 
 rate of seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents 
 Los Angeles to Boston on the car outlined 
 above is as low as good and proper service 
 will permit. It was only a few years ago 
 that the rate was ninety-five dollars, but we 
 were able to reduce our operating-expenses 
 and gave the shippers the benefit of it. 
 Just as soon as conditions will warrant it 
 the rate will again be reduced. 
 
 The private-car-line service also enables 
 the shipper to control the destination of his 
 84
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 product and to avoid glutted markets. It 
 works this way: A shipper starts a car of 
 peaches from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to 
 Boston. After the car has left, he learns 
 that the Boston market is full. At any 
 place along the route of that car Detroit, 
 Buffalo, Albany he can change its destina- 
 tion to New York, Providence, Philadel- 
 phia, Baltimore, or any other point that 
 promises a better market. In 1904, during 
 the one month of July, more than five hun- 
 dred ears of Georgia peaches, an average 
 of more than sixteen a day, were caught at 
 Cincinnati alone, diverted from their orig- 
 inal destination, and sent to other places 
 that promised better results. This diver- 
 sion of a car from one point to another is 
 most practicable with the kind of an organi- 
 zation maintained by the private-car lines. 
 The point I desire to emphasize with 
 these details is that the refrigerator-service 
 tariff is not an arbitrary charge. It is 
 based mathematically upon the service to 
 85
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 be performed, and is earned by the service 
 rendered. This view is held with practical 
 unanimity by all growers and shippers who 
 have had experience both with private-car- 
 line service and with refrigeration service 
 furnished by the railroads. One example 
 of this will suffice. 
 
 In 1901 a certain railroad touching 
 Benton Harbor, Michigan, was undertaking 
 to furnish refrigeration service at cost of 
 ice. Private cars were operating on an- 
 other road reaching that same point. Mr. 
 Roland Morrell, of Benton Harbor, one of 
 the best fruit-growers in America, had 
 twenty-five cars of choice peaches to ship. 
 He was within three miles of a loading-sta- 
 tion on the road which provided refrigera- 
 tion at cost of ice. To reach a loading- 
 station of the private-car lines his peaches 
 had to be hauled five miles, part of the way 
 uphill. Yet he turned his back upon the 
 alleged low-price service, made the five- 
 mile haul, shipped in private cars, and paid 
 86
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the tariff of fifty-five dollars a car to Boston 
 rather than take a chance on railroad re- 
 frigeration service. Asked why he paid 
 this "unnecessary" charge, he said: iC X 
 raise peaches to sell. I am not raising 
 peaches to be spoiled in transit and paid for 
 by the railroad." 
 
 Mr. John K. Wylie, of Shelby, Michigan, 
 said to one of our representatives: "For 
 long shipments we prefer the private-car- 
 line service, with all its cost, to ice at actual 
 cost with the imperfect service of the trans- 
 portation companies." 
 
 At the close of the last Michigan peach 
 season the Fennville Herald, which is the 
 organ of one of Michigan's heaviest peach- 
 shipping points, a paper that has never 
 shown friendliness toward private-car lines, 
 and is edited by the secretary of the Michi- 
 gan State Horticultural Society, said that 
 had it not been for the good work done by 
 the Armour private-car lines in furnishing 
 plenty of first-class cars and looking after 
 87
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the prompt icing of same in transit, that 
 section would have been ruined the last 
 season. 
 
 Almost every fruit and vegetable grow- 
 ing district in this country is a living wit- 
 ness to the pioneering work and the effi- 
 ciency of the private-car line. These lines 
 have served both to develop new fields and 
 to widen the market of the fields already in 
 existence when they entered business. This 
 one fact alone should be sufficient to 
 demonstrate the truth of that statement: 
 there are practically no reliable statistics 
 to be had anywhere in the country in rela- 
 tion to the fruit industry save those gath- 
 ered by the private-car lines. A caller at 
 the Agricultural Department in Washing- 
 ton, D. C, a few weeks ago asked for statis- 
 tics on the fruit crop of Idaho. He was 
 told that the department had none, and that 
 aside from the apple crop the Agricultural 
 Department had no fruit statistics what- 
 ever.
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Is it not remarkable that so many people 
 should be eager to legislate definitely in 
 relation to an industry that amounts to more 
 than four hundred million dollars a year, 
 yet on which there is so little information 
 that the Agricultural Department of the 
 government has no statistics whatever? 
 
 89
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHAT THE PRIVATE-CAR LINE HAS DONE 
 
 UP to ten years ago practically no fruit 
 was shipped out of Michigan under 
 refrigeration. Practically all of the 
 crop was dumped into Chicago by boat and 
 by ventilated cars. The Chicago market 
 was uniformly low in consequence, and 
 Chicago commission men made handsome 
 profits by re-shipping Michigan peaches to 
 other points, even back into Michigan. 
 
 The private-car line began to investigate 
 the Michigan field some years ago. The 
 car-line agent discovered that Michigan 
 growers and shippers would not ship to 
 eastern markets, such as Boston, New 
 York, Pittsburg, etc., because they had no 
 personal acquaintance with firms handling 
 fruit at those points. The agent made it 
 his business to get into communication with 
 90
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 eastern fruit-dealers. Many of them were 
 skeptical as to the statement that they could 
 buy fancy peaches in Michigan. They 
 were told to send their buyers into that dis- 
 trict and, if they found that the results did 
 not justify the effort, the car lines would 
 pay the expense. Several of them took ad- 
 vantage of that offer ; they came, were con- 
 vinced, and bought. 
 
 This practice of sending buyers to the 
 door of the grower buyers who buy for 
 cash and do not require the grower to ship 
 on commission has spread to all parts of 
 the country. This is not the least of the 
 advantages that the private-car lines have 
 brought to the fruit-growers. It gives the 
 grower a market at his own door, and his 
 product is disposed of without risk to him- 
 self. 
 
 Since 1889 the fruit and vegetable indus- 
 try in California has grown practically ten 
 times in volume; and financially it is in 
 better condition than at any previous time 
 91
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 in its history. California shipped, in 1905, 
 thirty thousand cars of lemons and oranges 
 at an increase in profit over 1904 of more 
 than one hundred dollars per car. At this 
 writing two hundred cars a day are coming 
 out of that state. The orange and lemon 
 industry of California would not have been 
 developed without the private car. 
 
 A few years ago head lettuce was a rarity 
 in northern markets. The private-car line 
 has developed this trade and has made 
 many Florida farmers rich thereby. In 
 the beginning, not more than half a dozen 
 years ago, one car a day of head lettuce was 
 sufficient to supply the New York market. 
 New York alone now absorbs forty to fifty 
 cars a day during the winter months. 
 
 A car-line agent interested strawberry- 
 growers around Nashville, in 1903, to ship 
 eight or ten cars as an experiment. Re- 
 sults were so good that the shipments rose 
 to twenty cars in 1904 and to sixty cars in 
 1905. Humboldt, Tennessee, used to send 
 92
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 out about fifty cars of tomatoes a season 
 3ix or seven years ago. The tomatoes had 
 to be shipped green and ripened in the com- 
 mission man's storeroom, which, of course, 
 impaired the quality. Humboldt now ships 
 in a season five hundred cars of tomatoes 
 that are allowed to ripen on the vines and 
 therefore bring a much better price. 
 
 The new prune-plum district of Idaho 
 has been developed entirely by the private- 
 car-line missionary work and within a very 
 few years. The far northwest now sends 
 to market from two thousand to three thou- 
 sand cars a year. Other important new 
 districts are being similarly developed in 
 northeast Texas, in Utah, Colorado, Ari- 
 zona, Arkansas, and Missouri. 
 
 The principal fruit-growing districts of 
 the country in 1899 shipped under refriger- 
 ation only nine thousand one hundred and 
 sixty-four cars; the same districts in 1905 
 shipped forty-two thousand nine hundred 
 and eighty-two cars. In particular districts 
 93
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 during this period shipments have been 
 multiplied to ten and even twenty times 
 over so far as the Armour lines alone are 
 concerned. 
 
 A phase of this development that is not 
 to be minimized is the increased value given 
 to the permanent investment in the fruit 
 and vegetable growing lands. Michigan 
 peach lands undeveloped are worth only 
 from six to ten dollars and never more than 
 twenty-five dollars an acre; with bearing 
 peach orchards they command two hundred 
 dollars to three hundred dollars an acre. 
 Florida lands that were almost worthless 
 are now yielding to growers of head lettuce 
 and other early vegetables an annual re- 
 turn of five hundred dollars to one thousand 
 dollars an acre. There are districts in 
 Georgia where lands bought for one dollar 
 an acre are now worth, with peach orchards 
 in bearing, three hundred dollars an acre. 
 California orange and lemon bearing lands 
 are worth one thousand dollars an acre. 
 94
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 It is impossible to overemphasize the de- 
 velopment work of the private-car lines in 
 providing for the grower a sure market and 
 a profitable market. The grower wants to 
 know before he lays ont money on his land 
 that he will be able to deliver his products 
 to markets in prime condition ; the private- 
 car-line service gives him that assurance. 
 The shipper wants to know, when he loads 
 a car of perishable fruit, that everything 
 possible will be done to carry that fruit to 
 any market or to the best market in good 
 condition, so that it may command a fair 
 price there; the private-car-line service 
 gives him that assurance. The business of 
 both the grower and the shipper is thus, as 
 it were, insured. 
 
 That growers and shippers all over the 
 country take this view is proclaimed in the 
 reams of sworn testimony given in the past 
 year or two before the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission and in testimony before the 
 Senate and House Committees of Congress 
 95
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 at Washington. Mr. C. A. Sessions, of 
 Shelby, Michigan, aptly summarized this 
 phase of the question a few weeks ago in 
 conversation with one of our agents. Mr. 
 Sessions is essentially a grower one of the 
 most successful in the country one who 
 makes his peach orchard pay him all the 
 way from fifty dollars to one hundred and 
 twenty dollars an acre net profit. 
 
 "With private-car-line service," says 
 Mr. Sessions, "buyers come to us to our 
 very doors because they know this service 
 will deliver in good condition what they 
 buy. That makes a good market. Indif- 
 ferent service keeps out the buyers. That 
 makes a poor market and throws our fruit 
 into Chicago, where the market is almost 
 always glutted with fruit that goes across 
 the lake by boat. Chicago commission men 
 work to keep it glutted. We have had 
 commission-house solicitors running up and 
 down our streets here soliciting shipments, 
 when they knew Chicago was already over- 
 96
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 stocked. That was to get our fancy peaches 
 at a low, glutted market price, so they could 
 be reshipped to other points at a profit. 
 
 1 ' The effect of such a situation growers 
 deprived of efficient refrigerator-car service 
 is doubly bad. It depresses prices and it 
 causes quality to deteriorate. In an over- 
 stocked market fancy peaches will not bring 
 enough more than common ones to pay for 
 the extra cost and labor put into growing 
 high quality. One of the greatest benefits 
 of the private-car service is that it has en- 
 couraged us to strive for quality. With 
 that service, when we grow fancy peaches, 
 we know we can get a good market for 
 them." 
 
 Mr. J. R. Wylie, of Shelby, Michigan, 
 supports Mr. Sessions with this testimony 
 on Chicago as a market: "This last summer 
 I shipped plums to two points, Chicago and 
 Dayton, Ohio. The same kind of plums went 
 to both places. My Chicago shipment 
 averaged eighty cents a bushel net; my 
 7 97
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Dayton shipment averaged one dollar and 
 forty-five cents a bushel net. ' ' 
 
 A leaf from our own experience corrobo- 
 rates both Mr. Sessions and Mr. Wylie. 
 Last fall representatives of two large 
 eastern fruit-houses came West to buy 
 Michigan peaches. They wanted to ship in 
 private cars. At the Michigan points 
 served by private cars they found compet- 
 ing buyers. They also discovered that 
 quantities of Michigan peaches were being 
 dumped into Chicago by boat and by rail 
 from points not covered by the private-car 
 service. Those agents forthwith came to 
 Chicago, went on the open market in South 
 Water Street, and there bought Michigan 
 peaches for shipment East at lower prices 
 than they would have had to pay over in 
 Michigan at points served by private cars. 
 More than four hundred cars were thus 
 handled. 
 
 According to commission men of a cer- 
 tain kind the kind who are the source of 
 98
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 practically all agitation against the car 
 lines the private cars check rather than 
 develop the fruit-growing industry. In 
 view of what has been shown as to growers' 
 and shippers' views it may be asked: 
 "Have the commission men a motive?" 
 Let us look at an example of what used to 
 be a not infrequent experience of fruit- 
 shippers before the guarantees of the pri- 
 vate-car service were thrown around the 
 business. 
 
 Not many seasons ago a grower in 
 Georgia shipped two cars of peaches to an 
 Indiana city. The consignee wired the 
 grower that both cars arrived in "bad con- 
 dition," intimating that the price would 
 have to be cut, The grower asked the car- 
 line agent's advice as to what he should do 
 about it. He was advised: "Those cars 
 left here in good condition and are, un- 
 doubtedly, in good condition now. Our 
 reports will back up a lawsuit and probably 
 enable you to collect for your peaches; but 
 99
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 law is always expensive and you will prob- 
 ably save money by going yourself to 
 Indiana now." 
 
 The grower took that advice. His 
 peaches had reached their destination on 
 Friday; he did not reach there until Mon- 
 day. Going as a buyer to the consignee 
 firm (its members did not know him per- 
 sonally), he found some of his own peaches 
 exposed for sale in fine condition. 
 
 "Got one hundred and fifty crates as 
 good as those?" he asked, indicating pack- 
 ages stenciled with his own name. 
 
 ' ' Sure, ' ' was the prompt answer. ' ' We Ve 
 got parts of two cars still on track fine 
 peaches all the way through. Come down 
 and see 'em." 
 
 The grower accompanied the commission 
 man, saw his own peaches still in good con- 
 dition after lying on a side track nearly 
 three days, and then told his name. He 
 was paid, without discount for bad con- 
 dition. 
 
 100
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 A final word of testimony from the car 
 lines' enemy the Fruit Trade Journal is 
 the organ of the commission men in their 
 fight on the car lines. In the issue of Sep- 
 tember 23, 1905, forecasting the Michigan 
 crop situation in a letter from St. Joseph, 
 Michigan, that paper said: 
 
 "It is now evident that the Michigan 
 peach crop will foot up six million bushels. 
 . . . The marketing of fruit in southwest- 
 ern Michigan has been completely revolu- 
 tionized within the past few years. There 
 was a time when the entire crop was thrust 
 upon Chicago and Milwaukee, and the 
 grower suffered materially from low prices 
 resulting from a glutted market. Now the 
 fruit belt, from the beginning of straw- 
 berries in June until the picking of the 
 latest apples in October, is the Mecca of 
 fruit buyers from every part of the country, 
 and the refrigerator-car and steamboat do 
 the rest." 
 
 In some quarters it has been made to 
 101
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 appear that the convenience of the public 
 is deliberately defied and made to suffer 
 through the operation of the private freight- 
 cars. A cunning attempt to prejudice the 
 public is made by the assertion that the 
 railroads are so subservient to the Armour 
 interests that they sidetrack passenger 
 trains to let trains of these private cars 
 pass; that the American citizen is held up 
 on a switch so that the train of private 
 freight-cars may have the right of way and 
 not be interrupted in the work of earning 
 mileage for a rapacious corporation. 
 
 Now it may be a fact that in some isolated 
 instances local passenger trains have been 
 sidetracked to let pass a through freight 
 containing private cars. I do not know of 
 such an instance, but it is possible that the 
 exigencies of practical railroad operation 
 might have brought this about in rare in- 
 stances, but it is not a fact that this sort of 
 occurrence is a part of the system of our 
 operation or a logical result of it. Is there 
 102
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 any reader of this book who frequently 
 travels on local passenger trains who has 
 not, at some time or other, been in a side- 
 tracked coach that has been passed by a 
 freight train made up of cars of miscella- 
 neous kind and ownership? I think we 
 have all had that experience. Certainly 
 the experience is common enough to render 
 absurd the insinuation that the railroads of 
 this country are so dominated by the 
 Armour or any other private-car lines or 
 packing interests that they make a practice 
 of giving trains of such cars precedence 
 over their passenger service, and thereby 
 subject the traveling public to delay, in- 
 convenience, and indignity. Incidentally, it 
 may be said that the slow passenger time 
 from Chicago to New York is thirty hours 
 and that the fastest " private-freight" time 
 is sixty hours. 
 
 However, I make no denial of the fact 
 that the private-car service, so far, at least, 
 as the Armour lines are concerned and I 
 103
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 am willing to concede as much to com- 
 peting lines is so organized that its cars 
 are not permitted to lag on the way, to 
 loiter at division-points, or in any way to 
 fail in delivering their cargoes at their 
 destinations in the shortest possible time 
 consistent with sound, safe, and reasonable 
 railroad operation. In other words, energy, 
 diligence, and perseverance are used in a 
 systematic way to facilitate the transporta- 
 tion of fruits, produce, and meats as quickly 
 and in as perfect condition as may be. 
 
 The perishable nature of the product de- 
 mands ' ' RUSH, ' ' and it is believed that this 
 is distinctly a service to the grower, the 
 shipper using the cars, and to the public 
 buying the fresh fruits, vegetables, and 
 meats carried in them a service that needs 
 no apology. If the "fast" fruit and meat- 
 car service were allowed suddenly to lapse 
 and fall back to the old-time running sched- 
 ules, the result would be a public outcry 
 and protest which would be shared in by 
 104
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the very people who are now sharpest in 
 their criticism of the "fast" private-freight 
 trains, and which would astonish the entire 
 public. 
 
 Some critics of the private-car system are 
 at great pains to create the impression that 
 the mileage which the railroads pay the 
 owners of the private cars as rental is so 
 large that there should be no charge at all 
 to the shipper for refrigeration. I will not 
 ask the reader to accept my own statement 
 that such a revenue would be a wholly 
 inadequate compensation, but I will refer 
 to the testimony of a practical railroad 
 man not interested in the Armour car lines. 
 Mr. J. S. Leeds, of the Santa Fe, made this 
 statement under oath: 
 
 ' ' The fact of the business is, the mileage 
 that a car earns in the California fruit 
 business will not maintain it. It will not 
 pay the interest on its cost and pay for ad- 
 ministration expenses of the organization 
 and the replacements out of the mileage that 
 105
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 it would earn. If this is true the refrigera- 
 tion of these commodities should pay a 
 profit and should also pay its share of the 
 maintenance and the expense of the opera- 
 tion of the line." 
 
 It should be noted that the California 
 business gives the longest haul, the most 
 profitable mileage in the country. 
 
 Sensational periodicals have indulged in 
 much and violent comment regarding the 
 freight-rates given to the packers on 
 dressed meats and other packing-house 
 products as compared with the rates on live 
 cattle, contending that when a rate on prod- 
 ucts as low or lower than that on live cattle 
 is given a natural and fundamental law of 
 rate-making is controverted. 
 
 More than this, it is contended that such 
 a circumstance is prima facie evidence that 
 the packers have a dominant and "monopo- 
 listic" power over the railroads and their 
 freight-rates, and that those United States 
 statutes known as the Interstate Commerce 
 106
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Act and the Elkins Amendment have been 
 violated. This matter was thoroughly- 
 tried out in the famous " Cattle Case" 
 heard by Judge Bethea in the United States 
 Circuit Court sitting at Chicago. 
 
 In his opinion, filed December 2, 1905, 
 Judge Bethea, after a careful consideration 
 of over one thousand pages of testimony 
 taken before the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, and about three thousand 
 pages of testimony taken in his own court, 
 made the following findings of facts: 
 
 ' ' That the live-stock rates are reasonable 
 in themselves; these rates are equal to or 
 less than the rates on dressed meats and 
 packing-house products between the same 
 points. 
 
 "That the cost of carrying live stock is 
 greater than that of carrying dressed meats 
 and packing-house products. In these 
 cases, as to the particular commodities in 
 question, the evidence shows that the de- 
 107
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 fendant railroad companies pay out a much 
 larger amount in damages for losses arising 
 from the carriage of live stock than they do 
 for losses arising from the carriage of 
 dressed meats and packing-house products, 
 in proportion to the value of the products 
 carried, and more in damages per car re- 
 gardless of the value. This makes the risk 
 of carriage greater for live stock. 
 
 "The rates in question given to the 
 packers at Missouri River and St. Paul 
 were the result of competition. 
 
 "That the competition in question did not 
 result from agreement of the defendants, 
 but ivas actual, genuine competition. 
 
 "That the rates for carrying packers' 
 products and dressed meats were remu- 
 nerative. 
 
 "That the welfare of the public, includ- 
 ing the shippers, consumers, and all local- 
 ities and markets, does not seem to be 
 materially affected by the present rates." 
 
 The essential finding of the court as to the 
 108
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 law was as follows : ' ' The evidence above 
 shows that Section 1 has not been violated 
 the rates were not unreasonable." 
 
 Commenting upon this, the Chicago 
 Legal News said: " Judge Bethea, in his 
 opinion, declares that the prima facie case 
 as made by the findings of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission has been over- 
 thrown by the evidence taken before him. ' ' 
 
 This whole contention could not have 
 been more thoroughly thrashed out than 
 in this trial, which lasted a month and in- 
 volved examination of four thousand pages 
 of testimony. The finding of the court 
 should, it seems to me, most effectively 
 settle this phase of the controversy, both 
 as to the facts and the principles involved. 
 
 109
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PACKERS AND THE CATTLEMEN 
 
 LET me make it clear that no one ap- 
 preciates more than myself the fact 
 that the cattle industry and the pack- 
 ing industry are inseparable in their for- 
 tunes. The one cannot prosper at the 
 expense of the other; their interests are 
 mutual, not to say identical. If the cattle- 
 man suffers the packer must suffer with 
 him, and if the cattleman prospers the 
 packer will naturally share in that pros- 
 perity. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the cattlemen under- 
 stand this quite as well as do the packers. 
 It is a truism to say that without cattle the 
 packer could not do business beef busi- 
 ness. It is equally true that without the 
 packing and dressed-beef establishments 
 the cattle market would be small and un- 
 110
 
 CAE LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 stable compared with what it is to-day. 
 The progressive cattleman will not, I 
 think, question this statement. And my 
 purpose is not to tell the cattlemen that 
 packers have done much for them to boast 
 of benefits conferred. Far from it. The 
 packers have done only what progressive 
 and enlightened self-interest has dictated, 
 and, for one, I have no inclination to pose 
 in the role of a benefactor. The cattlemen 
 would be fully justified in sharply resenting 
 any such attitude. This, I repeat, is en- 
 tirely remote from my real feeling quite 
 as remote as any disposition on the part of 
 the cattlemen to assume that they are the 
 benefactors of the packers. 
 
 But the sensational magazines have per- 
 sistently pounded it into the people at large 
 that the cattlemen and the packers are in a 
 perpetual state of warfare; that their in- 
 terests are antagonistic; that loss or hard- 
 ship to the cattleman must spell gain and 
 prosperity to the packer ; that the packer is 
 111
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 a daylight robber, whose destiny is to prey 
 upon the cattleman. 
 
 This malicious misrepresentation of facts 
 and conditions is what demands a plain dis- 
 cussion of the relations between the cattle- 
 men and the packers. The people should 
 know whether the packers are robbing the 
 cattlemen or whether they are pursuing an 
 industry that is really the bottom and back- 
 bone of the cattle business. And the 
 packers have a right that the public should 
 understand the situation. Not even the 
 possibility that some cattlemen may mis- 
 construe the purpose of a plain statement 
 of the advantages which the packing in- 
 dustry incidentally affords the cattle busi- 
 ness should be longer permitted to stand 
 as a bar against getting at the root of this 
 matter. 
 
 Any fair-minded person who takes even 
 a casual survey of the meat business will 
 quickly recognize the fact that it was revo- 
 lutionized and has been developed to its 
 112
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 present immense proportion by the refrig- 
 erator-car, the modern system of canning 
 meats, and by the scientific utilization of 
 by-products all of which are the fruits of 
 the packers' ingenuity and enterprise. 
 
 One of the results of these elements has 
 been the establishment of a cash market for 
 every kind of cattle every business day of 
 every year. There are some things which 
 become so firmly established that familiar- 
 ity with their routine operation has a 
 tendency to cause their acceptance as a mat- 
 ter of course ; they are so near and so com- 
 monplace to us, so unfailing in their 
 operation, that we come to regard them as 
 existing by force of nature "by act of 
 God" as the law puts it that we lose sight 
 of the fact that they were not always so 
 from the beginning of things. 
 
 This, T think, is about the attitude of the 
 
 average man towards a cash cattle market 
 
 which is made possible by the operation of 
 
 the great packing plants. He does not stop 
 
 8 113
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 to think that there was a time when a steer 
 might have been shipped to a market and 
 without promptly finding a buyer when, in 
 fact, car-loads of cattle were shipped to 
 market and could not be sold for cash; 
 when there was no cash market ready to 
 take the shippers' or the drovers' cattle 
 at a going price and give him the money 
 for them right on the call and without 
 regard to the kind or quality of his offer- 
 ings. 
 
 Look at Chicago, the great central mar- 
 ket: forty thousand cattle is not by any 
 means a record day in the matter of re- 
 ceipts. Is it not a marvel that this 
 enormous influx of cattle could be disposed 
 of and for cash? Is it not a wonder that 
 they did not go begging and simply swamp 
 the buyers? Could this task have been 
 accomplished or anything like it had not 
 the great packing-houses been here to 
 utilize this monster herd and do it without 
 delay? The official report of the Union- 
 114
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Stock Yards and Transit Company of Chi- 
 cago states that this market handled, in 
 1905, cattle to the number of three million, 
 four hundred and ten thousand, four hun- 
 dred and sixty-nine, and to the value of one 
 hundred and sixty-three million, nine hun- 
 dred and forty-one thousand, six hundred 
 and twelve dollars ; also three hundred and 
 eighty thousand, eight hundred and thirty- 
 five calves, valued at three, million, eight 
 hundred and sixty-five thousand, four hun- 
 dred and seventy-five dollars. It is true 
 that forty per cent, of the cattle received 
 were shipped out, but the remainder, going 
 mainly to the packers, is so immense that 
 the importance of the packing industry to 
 this central cash market is too apparent to 
 need argument. And remember that every 
 market is a spot cash market. Hundreds 
 of millions of dollars are invested by the 
 packers in this industry, which is really a 
 great manufacturing and distributing agent 
 for the cattlemen. 
 
 115
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Not only have the packers built up a 
 great central cash market, but they have 
 gone out to meet the cattlemen by establish- 
 ing subsidiary markets in the heart of the 
 cattle-country. These outposts of the pack- 
 ing industry have had their advantages to 
 their owners, but I believe they have carried 
 still greater advantages to the cattlemen. 
 
 One of the great advantages of the aux- 
 iliary market to the cattleman is the fact 
 that it shortens his haul to market. This 
 not only sometimes means a saving of 
 freight, but the avoiding of shrinkage in 
 weight and deterioration in quality. It also 
 means that at the time of sharp demand he 
 can get his cattle into the near market in 
 time to realize the high price, while he 
 would not, perhaps, be able to rush them 
 into the distant central market before the 
 extraordinary demand would be satisfied 
 and prices drop back again. 
 
 In the big central market there is 
 naturally a larger call for cattle for export 
 116
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 and for the fancy trade demanding choice 
 cuts, but it is a fact that all grades bring, 
 in the auxiliary markets, prices as high as 
 they do in the central market. 
 
 Another consideration not to be over- 
 looked in this connection is the fact that the 
 subsidiary market has immensely influ- 
 enced the general production of a better 
 quality of beef by facilitating the feeding 
 or ' ' finishing ' ' of cattle brought in from the 
 ranges. Named in about the order of their 
 establishing, the principal subsidiary mar- 
 kets developed by the packers are : Kansas 
 City, South Omaha, East St. Louis, St. 
 Joseph, Sioux City, South St. Paul, and 
 Fort Worth. The extension of the packing 
 industry to these points has changed the 
 agricultural map of the states tributary to 
 these auxiliary markets, making them the 
 richest feeding-grounds in the country. 
 
 The farmers of these regions go into the 
 near-by markets and pick up herds of cattle 
 brought in from the range, take them to 
 117
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 their barns and pastures, and subject them 
 to a finishing process which puts them into 
 a much higher class, as beef animals, than 
 that in which they belonged when they left 
 the range. 
 
 Also the outpost plants of the packing 
 industry and the markets created and main- 
 tained by them have immensely stimulated 
 the breeding of fine high-grade cattle. 
 There is scarcely a locality in the Middle 
 West where the leading farmer has not his 
 herd of fine Heref ords, Shorthorns, Aber- 
 deen-Angus, or Galloways, and who is not 
 striving to increase his income by improv- 
 ing the quality of his cattle. This means 
 the placing of more and more good beef on 
 the market year after year. 
 
 Right here is the place in which to note 
 the effect which the auxiliary markets 
 and the central market, too, for that matter 
 have upon the growers of corn. The 
 feeding of beef-cattle in states tributary to 
 118
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 these markets has greatly influenced the 
 corn market. 
 
 B. W. Snow, the well-known crop expert, 
 is authority for the statement that more 
 than eighty per cent, of the corn crop of this 
 country is consumed practically upon the 
 farms where it is grown. Or, to put it more 
 exactly, less than twenty per cent, of Amer- 
 ica's corn crop is moved out of the county 
 in which it is produced. When it is remem- 
 bered that the average corn crop of the 
 United States is two and one-half billion 
 bushels annually, the extent of our feeding 
 operations may be dimly realized but only 
 dimly, for the figures go beyond the scope 
 of the imagination of most of us. 
 
 What it means to feed more than two 
 billion bushels of corn right on the farm 
 producing the crop is not to be grasped 
 without some analysis and consideration. 
 For one thing, it means that the farmers 
 who grow and feed this vast volume of corn 
 are manufacturers who turn out a finished 
 119
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 product, and by so doing, get the advan- 
 tages and benefits of by-product utilization. 
 This is just what the packer does ; if he did 
 not do it, his annual balance sheet would 
 make a sorry showing under present con- 
 ditions. 
 
 By feeding his corn right on the ground 
 where it is grown, the farmer retains for 
 the enrichment of his land the benefit re- 
 sulting from the animal digestion of his 
 crop a value amounting in the aggregate 
 to millions of dollars a year. The vast ex- 
 tent of the feeding business is a substantial 
 testimony to its profitableness a testimony 
 so convincing that additional evidence is 
 scarcely required. Only those unfamiliar 
 with the subject or who come to it with a 
 prejudice will dispute the flat statement 
 that, generally speaking, the growing and 
 feeding of corn is profitable and that the 
 main element in the prosperity of this 
 branch of agriculture is the packing indus- 
 try. If the business of killing cattle, hogs 
 120
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 and sheep was in the undeveloped stage in 
 which it was when the evolution of the 
 packing industry began, would our western 
 farmers be growing two-and-a-half billion 
 bushels of corn a year and feeding to their 
 own stock more than eighty per cent, of that 
 crop? I do not think any reasonable and 
 intelligent person will say that such would 
 be the case. 
 
 The fact is, that nothing short of the vast 
 and highly organized packing industry as it 
 stands to-day, with its immense capital and 
 its immense and constant demand for raw 
 material, could sustain so great an agricul- 
 tural business as that of the combined corn- 
 growing and corn-feeding industry. In 
 other words, if the farmer could not sell his 
 stock any day in the year and for cash, the 
 present development of corn growing and 
 corn feeding would be impossible. 
 
 When it comes to the matter of our for- 
 eign trade, the dependence of the corn- 
 grower upon the packing industry is most 
 121
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 clearly apparent. It is not too much to say 
 that our large export trade in dressed meats 
 and meat products is due wholly to the 
 packers ; but of this I shall speak in greater 
 detail elsewhere. 
 
 What kind of farm lands has shown the 
 greatest advance in the last fifteen years 
 the period in which the packing industry 
 has been mainly developed ? 
 
 Corn lands! In that time the average 
 value of corn lands west of the Allegheny 
 Mountains and north of the Ohio River has 
 doubled, broadly speaking. In Illinois, fif- 
 teen years ago, sixty dollars an acre was a 
 good price for corn land ; to-day the ruling 
 price is from one hundred and twenty-five 
 to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. In 
 Iowa, Nebraska and eastern Kansas the 
 proportionate advance has averaged still 
 greater. 
 
 Every year this nation devotes eighty 
 million acres to corn. Our national corn- 
 field is larger than many a European king- 
 122
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 dom which looks big in the eyes of the 
 world. This fact, it seems to me, is a clear 
 indication that the business of manufactur- 
 ing meat on the farm is a profitable one 
 and that the packing industry has fulfilled 
 a useful service in furnishing the distrib- 
 uting organization for putting this product 
 into the markets of the world. 
 
 If the prop of the feeding business, which 
 rests upon the packing industry, were with- 
 drawn, the corn-producing states would be 
 dealt a blow which would send prices down 
 to the low figures which prevailed before 
 the feeding business was developed by the 
 packing industry prices so low that they 
 now sound strange and almost unbelievable. 
 The foundation upon which the great cash 
 corn market rests is the feeding of cattle 
 and hogs, and this great branch of modern 
 agriculture is almost wholly dependent 
 upon the packing industry, as that term is 
 understood in its broadest sense. Strike 
 out the business of feeding, and the farmer 
 123
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 who raises corn would stagger under the 
 weight of an almost hopeless calamity. 
 
 The cry of "monopoly" and "combine" 
 is not new not even in the meat and cattle 
 industry. Not a man would to-day deny 
 that the establishment of the Chicago Union 
 Stock Yards, taking the place of a half- 
 dozen yards scattered all over Chicago, was 
 one of the best things that ever happened 
 to the live-stock industry. The Union 
 Stock Yards were opened Christmas Day, 
 1865. Less than a year later in Novem- 
 ber, 1866 the Prairie Farmer of Chicago 
 had scented a "combine," and proceeded 
 to expose it in these words : 
 
 "A mischievous combination of buyers 
 and sellers to prevent the producer from 
 learning correct values has destroyed pub- 
 lic confidence in great measure. 
 
 "There is no disguising of the fact that 
 through the manipulation of a few unprin- 
 cipled buyers and sellers styling themselves 
 'the board,' the prestige that Chicago has 
 124
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 heretofore enjoyed of being the great live- 
 stock centre of the great northwest is fast 
 slipping from her grasp. 
 
 "A majority of dealers in the country 
 look upon the great Union Stock Yards as 
 a market where swindlers and live-stock 
 shysters 'most do congregate.' A reform 
 is needed. The public demands it, and un- 
 less this demand is heeded the combination 
 on the Union Stock Yards will find their 
 occupation gone. ' ' 
 
 Yet the live-stock industry and the Union 
 Stock Yards waxed greater in spite of the 
 "combine," handling three million, four 
 hundred and ten thousand, four hundred 
 and sixty-nine head of cattle, worth one 
 hundred and sixty-three million, nine hun- 
 dred and forty-one thousand, six hundred 
 and twelve dollars in 1905, as against four 
 hundred and three thousand, one hundred 
 and two head in 1869. 
 
 125
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER 
 
 THE sensational periodicals have the 
 advantage of the packers in their 
 campaign of slander. Human na- 
 ture is such that an attack on an individual 
 or an institution always helps to sell the 
 periodical containing it, but the packers 
 cannot sell their meats by abusing these 
 publications which assail them. These 
 magazines have the further advantage of 
 us in their peculiar character. They are 
 constructed not for the careful, but for the 
 careless reader. They are written and 
 edited with one thought in mind to pro- 
 duce an effect, to make a point quickly, to 
 leave with the hasty reader an impression 
 that will forward the purpose of the pub- 
 lisher, whether that purpose be political, 
 sociological, or commercial. Hence it comes 
 126
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 that Jhe writers and editors of these maga- 
 zines have borrowed from the stage a form 
 of dramatic license, and dress up their lit- 
 erary merchandise to produce an effect 
 upon the reader, just as the playwright ex- 
 aggerates his situations and the actor 
 resorts to the exaggerations of " make-up" 
 to produce an effect. These assailants of 
 the packing industry have not hesitated to 
 deal in half-truths and "cooked-up" evi- 
 dence, and to distort and juggle plain facts 
 into absolute falsehoods. 
 
 One magazine writer employed a series 
 of cartoons a diminishing series of pic- 
 tures of a steer to show how the price of 
 the cattleman's stock has been crowded 
 down by the " trust" since 1900. He care- 
 fully omitted a representation of prices in 
 1902, when cattle-prices were at the highest 
 point ever reached in twenty years. 
 
 The same writer, with much use of black- 
 face type and capital letters, set forth that 
 "forty Iowa banks were forced to close 
 127
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 their doors" in 1903-04. The statement 
 was so framed as to appear, on hasty read- 
 ing, as if the Iowa State Auditor's office 
 was authority for the whole statement 
 instead of only that part of it which gave 
 the names of the Iowa banks that had failed 
 within a certain period. When this state- 
 ment was called to the attention of the Iowa 
 State Auditor's office, Chief Clerk Cox, of 
 the Banking Department, denounced it as 
 utterly untrue, tabulated the list of banks 
 and gave the reasons for each failure, which 
 reasons all came under the head of unwise 
 speculations and reckless banking methods. 
 Another magazine writer stated to bolster 
 up the allegation that the "Beef Trust" 
 forces the railroads to discriminate against 
 others and in favor of the "trust" -that 
 beef, the high-priced product, is shipped at 
 eighteen and a half cents, and cattle, a low- 
 priced product, shipped at twenty-three and 
 a half cents. Movement of live stock and 
 its product, or packing-house products, 
 128
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 from the Missouri River points to Chicago 
 is referred to. 
 
 The above statement, though technically 
 true, is entirely misleading. While some 
 of the railroads publish a local rate of 
 twenty-three and a half cents on live stock 
 from Missouri River to Chicago, less than 
 one per cent, or practically none of the 
 business is moved under this rate. Live 
 stock from Missouri River points come in 
 there from the West, and all of such busi- 
 ness, when reshipped to Chicago, takes the 
 proportional rate, varying from thirteen to 
 seventeen cents per hundredweight from 
 Missouri River to Chicago, so that, in fact, 
 the live stock is carried at a less rate per 
 hundredweight than the product. 
 
 The local rate on the "product" from 
 Missouri River to Chicago is also twenty 
 cents per hundredweight instead of eight- 
 een and a half cents, although the propor- 
 tional rate on the product from the 
 Missouri River to Chicago on shipments 
 y 129
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 consigned through to eastern points is 
 eighteen and a half cents. 
 
 One more incident: When known corn 
 conditions foreshadowed very high prices 
 for cattle, a Chicago paper printed an 
 analysis of conditions and a forecast of 
 consequences higher-priced cattle and 
 higher-priced beef as a part of its regular 
 market report away in the back pages of 
 the paper. That article was written by a 
 market expert as a reflection of market 
 facts, to be read and judged by men in the 
 business, most of whom knew the facts. A 
 little later, when the conditions outlined in 
 the market report were commencing to 
 work and prices began to go up, the same 
 paper printed a sensational article on its 
 first page relating how the "Beef Trust" 
 was putting up the prices of the poor man's 
 food. 
 
 The dressed-beef and packing industry 
 is not in the hands of a "monopoly com- 
 bine," never has been in the liands of such 
 130
 
 CAB LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 a "combine," and never will be. It cannot 
 become a "monopoly." 
 
 The business of the packers is not shel- 
 tered by tariff nor builded upon patents of 
 secret processes. Their raw material is 
 not to be gathered from the bosom of the 
 earth at no cost beyond the mere expense 
 of extracting it. Armour & Co. do not own 
 or control the sources of their raw material, 
 and are not even interested a dollar's 
 worth in the production of raw material, 
 and I do not think any of the packers are 
 so interested to any extent. They do not 
 own or control the transportation avenues 
 over which the raw material comes to 
 market. They do not, or could not if they 
 would, control the means of distribution to 
 the consumer, because this product goes, 
 not to comparatively a few large users, but 
 to each family individually that helps to 
 make up the total of millions on millions 
 of eaters of American meat on this conti- 
 nent and throughout the world. 
 131
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Without control of some, or at least of 
 one, of the commercial instrumentalities 
 mentioned no industry can be monopolized. 
 Consider a further bar against monopoliz- 
 ing it: the kind of food it deals in can 
 be produced, made merchantable, and dis- 
 tributed to the consumer in each state, each 
 county, and each township of the entire 
 United States and many other countries 
 as well. Every farmer cannot find an oil- 
 well or a deposit of iron-ore in his back 
 pasture-lot, because Nature has planted 
 them only at rare intervals, and he cannot 
 grow sugar-beets in every field, because 
 sugar-beets require a peculiar character of 
 soil ; but every person who owns a little land 
 that is not absolutely barren can engage, to 
 some degree, in meat production, and al- 
 most every man who has a knife and a saw 
 can engage in the slaughtering business. 
 
 In the language of the United States 
 Census report of 1900: "The process of 
 converting live stock into food for human 
 132
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 consumption is an industry which, directly 
 and indirectly, furnishes employment to a 
 considerable portion of the United States, 
 and sustenance to all." 
 
 The industry of the packers is dependent 
 U])on supply and demand to a degree that 
 prevails in no other large industry. If it 
 were of less magnitude it might be fittingly 
 called a hand-to-mouth business. It is, 
 broadly speaking, a manufacturing busi- 
 ness, and one that in some respects is more 
 hazardous than any other. 
 
 The general run of manufacturers of any 
 considerable size handle raw materials 
 which are not perishable in the usual sense 
 of the term. Even when their raw mate- 
 rials are perishable they become less so, if 
 not practically imperishable, as soon as 
 passed through the manufacturing process. 
 
 The packer uses a material that is quite 
 perishable, and a large part of his finished 
 product fresh meats is highly perish- 
 able; so he is taking risk at both ends of his 
 loo
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 business. He cannot "scalp the market" 
 or "discount the future," take advantage 
 of a temporary market condition and load 
 up with raw material to be manufactured 
 at his leisure and at a great profit; nor 
 can he, when the demand slumps, continue 
 to run his plant and store up finished prod- 
 uct against the day of higher prices. 
 
 The "frozen cuts" of beef furnish the 
 only exception to this statement, and they 
 amount to only about two per cent, of the 
 finished product. And this frozen-cut busi- 
 ness is of distinct advantage to the cattle- 
 man because it enables the packers to take 
 care of the immense floods of cattle which 
 come in from the ranges in the fall of the 
 year. From day to day, almost literally, 
 his purchases of raw material and his sale 
 of finished product must balance. His 
 profit, if he make any, must come from 
 stopping every leak, saving waste, and turn- 
 ing his money over rapidly at a small 
 134
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 margin of profit on a large volume of busi- 
 ness. 
 
 The industry exemplifies the ideal busi- 
 ness theory of " quick returns and small 
 profit. ' ' It gathers the product of the mil- 
 lions of small producers throughout the 
 Western Empire stretching from the Alle- 
 ghenies to the Rocky Mountains, converts 
 their product into merchantable commodi- 
 ties, and distributes them to the consumers 
 of the whole round world. For the service 
 it performs it is none too well paid in the 
 profit it makes an average of less than 
 two per cent, on the volume of business 
 handled. 
 
 To all practical purposes, the packer is 
 the agent of the cattleman, handling his cat- 
 tle, as the official report of Commissioner 
 Garfield says, for an average fee of ninety- 
 nine cents a head. This vast distributing 
 agency is as readily at the command of 
 the man who has a herd of ten or a hundred 
 cattle as the man whose herd numbers a 
 135
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 hundred thousand and on precisely the 
 same terms, too. But in one respect this 
 way of looking at the packer as agent or 
 commission man acting for the cattleman is 
 inadequate for the packer pays cash 
 every day in the year. He does business 
 strictly upon his own capital and pays "at 
 the drop of the whip. ' ' 
 
 The character of the packing business, I 
 repeat, and the wide distribution of it pre- 
 clude making it the property of a monopoly. 
 The business methods, practices, and neces- 
 sities pertaining to it are a further bar 
 against monopoly. 
 
 On one side stands the cattle-grower. He 
 has absolute control of his product. He 
 can ship to market to-day if he will, or 
 he can wait a day, a week, a month, in or- 
 dinary cases, without much risk. 
 
 The packer looks to him for raw material 
 live stock and cannot get it until it 
 comes to market. 
 
 On the other side stands the retailer of 
 136
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 meats. His is a from-day-to-day business. 
 He buys only as the demand tells him to 
 buy. The packer must market his finished 
 product through the retailer. He cannot 
 force or induce him to buy one pound more 
 than he wants to buy. Between these two 
 commercial factors stands the packer. He 
 must do all the guessing at both ends of the 
 line. If he does not buy cattle fast enough, 
 the demand from the retailer outruns his 
 supply and he loses the business. If he 
 buys too many cattle he must hold them 
 at heavy expense (for he is without facili- 
 ties for storing cattle) or convert them into 
 meat for which there is no demand, and 
 run the risk of having it spoil on his hands. 
 It is up to the packer correctly to judge 
 the balance between the supply and the 
 demand. Thus each day's business be- 
 comes a separate business. He cannot 
 know, his buyers cannot know, when the 
 cattle market opens on any given morning, 
 what the market for that day will be or 
 137
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ought to be. He and his buyers may know, 
 in a general way, what the market and 
 prospects for meats are, based on the day 
 before, but each day's cattle market is a 
 new market with a new lot of cattle, re- 
 sembling in no way, perhaps, the cattle of 
 the day before. 
 
 No combination that could be formed 
 would serve to keep a "Beef Trust" ad- 
 vised of the character or number of cattle 
 coming into market on any one day from 
 all points of the compass. Yesterday may 
 have brought a heavy run of choice beeves. 
 To-day's receipts may be common. To- 
 morrow cows may predominate. The 
 packers have no advance information, and 
 their cattle-buyers have only general in- 
 structions as to the needs of the house for 
 that day. They exercise their wits and 
 their judgment, buy as closely and as care- 
 fully as they can, drawing the line between 
 buying too much and too little. They 
 draw that line very fine. Their jobs de- 
 138
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 pend upon it, and that is the whole mystery 
 of cattle-buying. 
 
 The cattle market at Chicago, Kansas 
 City, South Omaha, and everywhere else is 
 an open market. Every buyer of cattle in 
 a market, whether buying for a packer, for 
 reshipment East or across the water, or for 
 his individual account as a feeder or specu- 
 lator, stands on absolutely even terms with 
 every other buyer. The competition is such 
 that almost every good bunch of cattle will 
 draw out several bids, instead of the one 
 bid the " trust* ' exploiters allege. 
 
 Large packers will not deny that they 
 can slaughter, pack, work up by-products, 
 and sell to better advantage than some of 
 their smaller competitors. Each packer 
 thinks he can do all that better than any 
 other packer. If he did not think so there 
 would be little excuse for his remaining 
 in the business. Every merchant thinks he 
 is, in some particular, a better merchant 
 139
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 than his competitor. That is why he is a 
 merchant. 
 
 If a packer ever buys cattle to better ad- 
 vantage than his competitor, it is because 
 his cattle-buyer is a better judge of cattle 
 than his competitor's buyer, and that brings 
 in the personal equation one man's brains 
 and judgment against another man's and 
 that cannot be governed by a monopoly. 
 
 The cattle market, I repeat, is an open 
 market, and no person who has even, a 
 chance acquaintance with a cattle market 
 in action will venture to suggest that any 
 packer or group of packers can "take his 
 pick" or buy any particular bunch of cattle 
 cheaper than the smaller buyer in the mar- 
 ket. If that were to happen you would 
 hear a roar of protests from buyers and 
 from cattlemen alongside which the present 
 cry against the "Beef Trust" would be 
 tame and flat. 
 
 There is no cleaner competition any- 
 where than among the cattle-buyers on the 
 140
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 live-stock market. This competition, to- 
 gether with the marketing methods fol- 
 lowed, automatically regulates the market, 
 keeps it an open market, and prevents con- 
 trol of it by any "combine." To make this 
 clear, let us look into the ways this selling 
 and buying of cattle is carried on. 
 
 The buyers in the market at the Union 
 Stock Yards of Chicago leaving out buy- 
 ers of feeder cattle may be classed as 
 buyers for the large packing-houses, buyers 
 for the smaller packers and slaughterers, 
 buyers for shipment to the seaboard and 
 to the Old World, buyers for speculators. 
 These different classes of buyers have 
 nothing in common. They are always at 
 war, commercially speaking. 
 
 141
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CATTLE AND CATTLE MARKETS 
 
 THE packers are always in the market 
 for cattle. They have large plants, 
 which if allowed to lie idle do so at 
 great loss. As long as they pay the top 
 price always with an eye to the selling 
 market for the product on the other side of 
 the slaughter-house they get their choice 
 of the cattle. But if buyers for the large 
 packers should combine to depress prices, 
 what would happen? The moment prices 
 went to a point that promised a little extra 
 profit on the slaughtered product, the buyer 
 for small packers, for shipment, and for 
 speculation, would sweep the market, and 
 back prices would go over the heads of a 
 badly rattled "combine." 
 
 There may be an impression that the buy- 
 ing capacity of all except representatives 
 142
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of the large packers is too limited to have 
 much effect on the market. The best an- 
 swer to that lies in the official figures. In 
 1904 the receipts of cattle at the Chicago 
 Union Stock Yards were three million, two 
 hundred and fifty -nine thousand, one hun- 
 dred and eighty-five head ; of these one mil- 
 lion, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, 
 three hundred and thirty-two head were 
 reshipped to feeders, the seaboard pack- 
 ers, to Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, 
 Pittsburg, Indianapolis, other cities, and to 
 Europe. During 1905 receipts were three 
 million, one hundred and eleven thousand 
 and twenty-nine, and the shipments were 
 one million, four hundred and five thousand, 
 seven hundred and eight. Thus more than 
 forty per cent, of the cattle received were 
 bought for shipment. 
 
 It is important to remember in this con- 
 nection the fact that there is not a slaugh- 
 tering establishment in this country that is 
 regularly run at its full capacity. See what 
 143
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 this means so far as the control of the cat- 
 tle market by any "combine" is concerned. 
 The instant cattle prices became depressed 
 so that there was an attractive margin, the 
 smaller packers and killers would jump in, 
 get the cattle, and kill extensively. There 
 are hundreds of these smaller houses which 
 make a business of waiting upon the turns 
 of the market for the hour of opportunity, 
 killing at certain times two, three, and four 
 times as many cattle as they do when prices 
 rule above a certain low point. 
 
 If the packers could regulate the cattle 
 market they would prefer to have a steady 
 market with an even inflow of cattle about 
 the same number each day. Their profits 
 depend upon the rapid turning of the 
 money invested, upon shortening as much 
 as possible the period between the moment 
 when steers arrive and the time when their 
 beef is sold. When their plants lie idle they 
 lose. Every manufacturer's aim is to keep 
 his plant in even and continuous operation. 
 144
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Right here it should be remembered that 
 the large packer must have, every day, a 
 certain amount of high-grade cattle. The 
 only way he can get this is to go into the 
 market when it opens. If he were to hang 
 back he would get left on this imperative 
 material; he would get only the "tail 
 ends." His only protection in this partic- 
 ular is to buy early. The sort of buying 
 methods attributed to "trust buyers" 
 would leave him in the lurch on this score. 
 
 An important chapter in any compre- 
 hensive history of the development of the 
 cattle business would be the chapter on cat- 
 tle loan companies. These companies as- 
 sisted to develop and stimulate and make 
 a business of cattle-raising in a measure 
 difficult to overestimate. Among the first 
 one of these was the Omaha Cattle Loan 
 Company, organized nine years ago by 
 Thomas B. McPherson. The packers 
 backed it with their money and credit as 
 they backed others at Omaha, Kansas City, 
 10 145
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 St. Joseph, and Chicago for selfish rea- 
 sons, of course. 
 
 These loan companies, managed by men 
 who knew cattle, made a specialty of loan- 
 ing money on cattle, and thus put life into 
 the industry. Before their time, cattle- 
 raising on a large scale was practically 
 closed to the man of small capital. The 
 local banks, where there were banks, were 
 too weak to take the risk ; but with the cattle 
 loan companies in business the capable cat- 
 tlemen were able to go into the business 
 on a large scale. These companies helped 
 develop the growing of higher-grade stock. 
 An idea of the importance of this feature 
 may be gathered from the fact that the 
 Omaha concern loaned ten million dollars 
 annually almost entirely on ranch and 
 feeder cattle. 
 
 True, these companies are all out of 
 business now put out by two causes. En- 
 forcement of the no-fence law by the United 
 States government has made loaning on 
 11H
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 large herds extra hazardous. Then the 
 prosperity of the West, to which the cattle 
 business, stimulated by the cattle loan com- 
 panies, has contributed no small share, has 
 filled the local banks with money and has 
 enabled the local banker to loan the money 
 on cattle that used to come from these cat- 
 tle loan companies. 
 
 Now consider recent low prices. Natural 
 causes have continued to hold cattle prices 
 down with the break of 1903. Chief among 
 these causes has been the breaking up of 
 the big western and northwestern range 
 herds consequent upon enforcement of the 
 no-fence law by the United States govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Since the buffalo gave way to the steer 
 on the western plains in the late seventies, 
 a considerable proportion of the beef-cattle 
 supply has come from the western ranges. 
 As the packing industry developed and, by 
 making an assured market, converted 
 range-cattle-raising from an adventure 
 147
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 into a settled business, the cattlemen 
 learned that it was better to fence the 
 ranges than to herd the cattle on the open 
 plains. 
 
 All around him in Montana, western 
 Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and 
 the Dakotas were millions of acres of grass- 
 land fit for nothing but cattle-grazing, and 
 fit for that only where water could be had. 
 By acquiring ownership of a small tract 
 surrounding or adjacent to a water-supply, 
 he could practically control thousands or 
 millions of acres surrounding him. If it 
 was public land he used it for nothing. If 
 it was Indian Reservation land he rented 
 it for a cent or a fraction of a cent an acre 
 a year. With a barbed-wire fence he could 
 inclose what he needed and go into the cat- 
 tle business on a large scale. 
 
 A few years ago the United States gov- 
 ernment began to enforce the law against 
 fencing these lands. The range cattle- 
 man has not found and cannot find a substi- 
 148
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 tute for the fenced range of which he has 
 been dispossessed. Without fences his herds 
 cannot be kept together. This increase in 
 the hazard of the range-cattle business has 
 made this class of cattle a poorer loan risk. 
 Loans have been withdrawn, thus imposing 
 an additional burden upon the cattleman. 
 Therefore he has bowed to the inevitable 
 and has broken up his herds. 
 
 Some of the cattle from range herds so 
 dispersed have found a market among west- 
 ern feeders, but the bulk of them have 
 come to market and have been sent to the 
 slaughter-houses. Then, too, the wonder- 
 ful abundance of grass helped to make 1905 
 almost a record year in the number of cat- 
 tle sent to market. The West, from Texa3 
 to Canada, has been literally a garden as 
 to pasturage. 
 
 These cattle have been a weight on the 
 
 market for the past two years. During 
 
 1905 three hundred and eighty thousand 
 
 head of range cattle were marketed in Chi- 
 
 149
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 cago alone a larger number than was ever 
 received in this market during a similar 
 period except in 1894. At all the market 
 points for western cattle the receipts will 
 total about three-quarters of a million head. 
 
 Very many of the big range herds have 
 already been broken up. Nineteen hun- 
 dred and six will, I think, see fewer range 
 cattle in the market than in 1905, and the 
 year after still fewer. If one were in a pro- 
 phetic mood he might say that these condi- 
 tions will produce, in a few years, much 
 higher-priced cattle and consequently high- 
 er-priced beef. We shall continue to raise 
 beef-cattle in this country, but at greater 
 expense. 
 
 It has taken, on the range, ten to twenty 
 acres to produce a steer, but these acres 
 cost practically nothing, and the steers made 
 good beef. Sometimes they competed with 
 choice fed steers for the export trade. 
 Fewer acres will produce a steer on a west- 
 ern farm, but acres, many or few, will rep- 
 150
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 resent much money five dollars to one 
 hundred dollars an acre invested in the 
 bare land, and that will mean a costlier 
 steer. 
 
 Sheep prices are now high very high. 
 There is a big demand for both mutton and 
 wool, and the supply does not keep pace 
 with it. Hog prices have averaged very 
 high for a period covering the past four 
 years. Now, the handling of hogs is almost 
 as big a part of the packers' business as is 
 the killing of cattle and the sheep depart- 
 ment is not much behind either of these 
 branches. If all the packers, or any of 
 them, were in a combine to depress prices, 
 why should they neglect sheep and hogs? 
 To do this would be to fall far short of the 
 business shrewdness with which their ene- 
 mies credit them. 
 
 In the last few years raisers of sheep and 
 hogs have universally made great profits, 
 while the cattlemen have suffered to a con- 
 siderable extent and all because of nat- 
 151
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ural conditions wholly beyond the control 
 of the packers. The cattle business has 
 been in a transitional condition the sub- 
 ject of fundamental changes which have 
 thrown immense numbers of cattle on the 
 market and forced a period of low prices. 
 This is the whole story. 
 
 Sober-minded men never would cry 
 "monopoly" in relation to the business of 
 the packers if they understood that busi- 
 ness. While the meat industry is probably 
 the largest in the country, it is less known 
 than many of far less consequence. Its 
 character and magnitude have never been 
 comprehensively presented to the public. 
 A comprehensive and authoritative com- 
 pendium of this industry is to be found 
 nowhere outside of government reports. 
 Unfortunately for a clear understanding 
 of many questions of public moment, these 
 reports are not popular and widely-read lit- 
 erature compared with the "best sellers" 
 of the book-stores. The last census figures 
 152
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 are now five years old, of course the facts 
 they express are still "new" to a majority 
 of the people but because they are the 
 only official figures extant they will be used 
 to illustrate points in this article. The 
 conditions they reflect still hold in the 
 main. Any changes that might be made in 
 them would strengthen rather than weaken 
 the packers' case. 
 
 This alleged "Beef Trust" cannot be 
 seriously regarded as monopolizing the 
 dressed-beef and packing industry in the 
 face of official government figures, backed 
 by the investigation recently made under 
 Mr. Garfield, Chief of the Bureau of Cor- 
 porations of the Department of Commerce. 
 It is admitted now, even by most of its crit- 
 ics, that the so-called "Beef Trust" handles 
 less than fifty per cent, of the beef and 
 packing industry of the country. This is 
 the statement in Mr. Garfield's report, and, 
 as will be shown later, that the industry 
 holds this moiety of the business only by 
 153
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the advantages of foresight, superior or- 
 ganization, and superior business methods. 
 But these advantages are not enough to 
 give such a "combine" a monopoly of the 
 dressed-beef and meat-packing industry. 
 
 The industry is too widely distributed, is 
 too deeply rooted in too many widely sep- 
 arated localities to be monopolized. With- 
 out having analyzed the figures in this ex- 
 press relation, I feel safe in asserting that 
 the packing industry holds a higher rela- 
 tive position as to value of product in more 
 states and cities than any other industry 
 in the country. 
 
 There were, in 1900, nine hundred and 
 twenty-one meat-packing establishments in 
 the United States. This figure did not in- 
 clude establishments that slaughtered only : 
 those were classified separately in the cen- 
 sus reports of 1900; it included only those 
 that both slaughtered and performed the 
 other functions classed under the head of 
 packing and utilization of by-products, and 
 154
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 there were nine hundred and twenty-one of 
 them. 
 
 These packing-houses were distributed 
 among forty-two of the forty-nine states 
 and territories and the District of Colum- 
 bia. All of these states except nine had 
 three or more packing-houses. In twenty- 
 six of them the industry amounted, back in 
 1900, to more than one million dollars each 
 annually. 
 
 This industry ranked first among manu- 
 facturing industries in value of product in 
 each of six states Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, 
 Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. In Cali- 
 fornia it ranked second only to sugar-refin- 
 ing. Maryland never thought of as a 
 meat-packing state gave it fourth place, 
 as did Minnesota, Oregon, and Washing- 
 ton. It held seventh place or higher prob- 
 ably much higher now in widely different 
 states, each having several specialties 
 New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Rhode Island, 
 Texas, and Wisconsin. Does that look as if 
 155
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 it were a monopoly confined to the five or 
 six Western States where the large packers 
 had their business concentrated? 
 
 In looking at the packing industry alone 
 we find, of course Chicago having devel- 
 oped it that Illinois led in 1900 in volume 
 of product, with over one-third of the total. 
 Kansas and Nebraska were second and 
 third, on account of the large houses at 
 Kansas City, Kansas, and South Omaha, 
 Nebraska, each with almost ten per cent, of 
 the total. But what other state do you 
 think ranked fourth in packing-house prod- 
 ucts ? None other than New York, and In- 
 diana was fifth. The next eight named in 
 the order of their rank as packing states 
 were : Missouri, Massachusetts, Iowa, Penn- 
 sylvania, Ohio, California, New Jersey, and 
 Wisconsin. Each of those eight produced 
 in 1900 one and seven-tenths to five and 
 one-half per cent, of the country's total 
 packing-industry product. 
 
 The packing industry is thus widely dis- 
 156
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 tributed and deeply rooted because it is a 
 supply-and-demand business that can be 
 established wherever natural supply and 
 demand conditions permit. No other in- 
 dustry of comparable importance is so close 
 to the people in all aspects or so closely 
 knitted into the fabric of national prosper- 
 ity. It has grown as the nation has grown, 
 and has contributed its share I might 
 truthfully say more than its proportionate 
 share to general and individual prosper- 
 ity. In the fifty years from 1850 to 1900 
 the total paid for the raw material used in 
 the industry, the product of American 
 farms, was raised from nine million, four 
 hundred and fifty-one thousand and nine- 
 ty-six dollars to six hundred and eighty- 
 three million, five hundred and eighty-three 
 thousand, five hundred and seventy-seven 
 dollars was multiplied by seventy-five. 
 
 The period of most rapid development 
 was the decade from 1870 to 1880; that was 
 due to the development of the refrigerator- 
 157
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 car for shipping fresh beef, development of 
 the export trade, development of the can- 
 ning feature of the business, and develop- 
 ment of by-product utilization one hun- 
 dred and twenty distinct by-products now 
 being made by the packing-houses. During 
 the next decade, 1880 to .1890, the great 
 Chicago packing-houses took commanding 
 position. 
 
 The stock-grower or cattleman who 
 makes a business of raising, finishing, and 
 marketing beef-cattle does not need to be 
 told that there is no combine of packers to 
 depress the price of his stock. His smaller 
 neighbor, who raises a few cattle as a "side 
 line" in connection with his farming oper- 
 ations, and who does not closely follow mar- 
 ket reports, crop reports, and who does not 
 analyze conditions in the cattle business, 
 may be easily led into error along with the 
 unanalytical general public. 
 
 Go where you will throughout the cat- 
 tle country the grazing states or the feed- 
 158
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ing states where range cattle are "fin- 
 ished" for market and you will find cattle- 
 men among the prosperous men of the 
 community. They are a wide-awake, ener- 
 getic, progressive class. They are raising 
 and marketing cattle, not for fun or for 
 their health, but to make money. 
 
 They do make money not in all seasons 
 of each year, nor every year; few do in 
 any business; but in the long run a good 
 proportion of them have prospered. It is 
 obvious that any combine of cattle-buyers 
 that would put down prices so that these 
 men could not make money would ruin the 
 cattle business, cut off the live-stock supply 
 upon which the packing industry depends, 
 and thus ruin the packing business. Do 
 business men knowingly commit business 
 suicide! 
 
 The packers could not by a combination 
 
 control the market price of live cattle. The 
 
 very nature and character of the business 
 
 forbids that. They would not do it if they 
 
 159
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 could. That would be business suicide. 
 The packers have greatly helped to develop 
 the cattle business. That they have been 
 moved by no philanthropic motive, but by 
 cold business sense, does, not alter the fact. 
 They had a business of their own, they saw 
 opportunities, wide as the world, for devel- 
 oping and extending that business; but to 
 utilize those opportunities they had to en- 
 courage development of the cattle business. 
 This they did, not merely by building an in- 
 dustry that furnished an every-day market 
 for cattle, but they did it by personally lend- 
 ing their aid to specific developments of the 
 stock-raising business. 
 
 The most casual review of the period 
 prior to the development of beef-refriger- 
 ation and beef-canning shows that weak, un- 
 certain market conditions were the rule. 
 The entire trade was on a hand-to-mouth 
 basis. The cattle-raiser had no stable mar- 
 ket, and speculators fleeced him at ever} 7 
 turn. 
 
 160
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 In the first twenty years after refriger- 
 ating and canning were commenced by the 
 Chicago packers, the population of the 
 country increased fifty per cent. ; the num- 
 ber of cattle shipped and marketed by the 
 cattlemen of western ranges and middle 
 western corn-farms increased 500 per cent. 
 The marketing of this immense production 
 at a profit was made possible only by the 
 packers' energy, the utilization of by-prod- 
 ucts, the establishment of new markets, 
 and by pushing the business to the utmost 
 bounds of the earth. 
 
 There is no attempt to deny that at cer- 
 tain times the prices for live cattle are un- 
 profitably low the natural result of a tem- 
 porary oversupply; but it should be re- 
 membered that the price which the packer 
 receives for his beef invariably reflects 
 this depression of the price of his raw ma- 
 terial. He has no control over the one 
 price or the other; both are governed by 
 supply and demand. 
 11 161
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PUBLIC PREJUDICE INEVITABLE 
 
 THE public prejudice against the 
 packer is more than popular it is 
 almost universal. In my opinion, 
 this prejudice is inevitable, and will always 
 continue without regard to the manner in 
 which the packing business is conducted. 
 
 This is because the packer deals in a food 
 product of universal and extensive use a 
 food which furnishes the basis of living in- 
 stead of being a small and only a compara- 
 tively incidental part thereof. In the very 
 nature of things the prices of meats are 
 bound to rise rather than lower; the con- 
 traction of the range, as I have already ex- 
 plained, is sure to continue and also sure to 
 increase the cost of producing beef; the 
 price of corn-lands is steadily and inevi- 
 162
 
 CAB LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 tably rising, and this, also, means the in- 
 creased cost of raising and feeding meat 
 animals of all kinds. 
 
 Of course, the consumer does not natu- 
 rally take all this into consideration when he 
 goes into the retail market to buy his meat ; 
 he only recalls that the price he is paying is 
 higher than he used to pay, and so he 
 damns the packer and lets it go at that. It 
 is a perfectly safe thing to do. 
 
 I do not remember a time when the retail 
 prices of meats were satisfactory to the con- 
 sumer, and I do not believe any one else 
 does. The cost always seemed too great 
 to the consumer even when it represented, 
 as it sometimes has a direct loss to the 
 packer. 
 
 Again, we shall miss something essential 
 to the understanding of the packers' se- 
 cure position in the disregard of the public 
 if we fail to take account of one point of 
 human nature: the fact that there is, in 
 every person vvho goes to market, a sense 
 163
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 of rebellion against the fact that certain 
 things must be bought and bought prac- 
 tically every day. Compulsion in any- 
 thing is not pleasant, and there is no joy 
 in buying something that has to be bought 
 to prevent the pangs of hunger. Conse- 
 quently there is, universally, a feeling of 
 resentment against the necessity of such ex- 
 penditures. 
 
 Those purchases which give pleasure are 
 not the basic necessities of life ; they are the 
 luxuries, or at least the finer comforts. 
 And it is human nature to think how many 
 of these coveted things could be bought 
 with the money which must be paid out for 
 meat and the other articles of food. Thus 
 the daily meat bill seems to stand con- 
 stantly between the consumer and some 
 coveted comfort, some article of beauty, 
 some greatly desired luxury or pleasure. 
 And because it does so stand so far as the 
 feelings of the purchaser are concerned it 
 provokes an unreasoning resentment of 
 164
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 which the packer is invariably the conven- 
 ient target. 
 
 All of this, to my mind, is something 
 inherent in the situation which exists in- 
 dependent of the manner in which the 
 packers conduct their business, and will ex- 
 ist without regard to how they may conduct 
 it in the future. And this feeling is always 
 there to be appealed to by the agitator. It 
 makes persons of the fairest intent and of 
 the best training and environment the 
 ready victims of violent shocking prej- 
 udice against the packers. 
 
 And one of the most pitiable features of 
 the matter is that the individuals who thus 
 yield themselves to this prejudice are 
 wholly sincere. Their attitude is imper- 
 sonal ; they have no personal relations with 
 or knowledge of any of the packers; they 
 are simply made receptive, by the general 
 trait of human nature of which I have 
 spoken, to the falsehoods and misrepre- 
 sentations put out by the yellow magazines 
 165
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 and the public speakers who live on this 
 kind of sensationalism. 
 
 The bitterness and the venom of their 
 feelings against the packers is not gener- 
 ally realized. One way in which it is 
 brought directly to the packer is by means 
 of denunciatory letters from persons who 
 are strangers to the packers receiving the 
 epistles. From the mass of these I select 
 one as representative of the extremes to 
 which the cunning and long-continued cam- 
 paign of prejudice-building against the 
 packers will move a man from whom one 
 might naturally expect fairness and consid- 
 eration. 
 
 This letter is from a minister of the Gos- 
 l^el, the pastor of the First Presbyterian 
 Church in a thriving and prosperous city 
 of Michigan. This minister of the Gospel 
 is wholly a stranger to me and I do not 
 believe that we have ever come in con- 
 tact with each other, no matter how re- 
 motely. There is, therefore, no personal 
 166
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 reason for his rancor. But here is the let- 
 ter: 
 
 "I am writing to inquire whether it pays, 
 in your judgment, to come into the pos- 
 session of millions by the methods of the 
 sneak and the ivreckerf To say nothing of 
 the faring awaiting such a robber in the 
 world to come, it seems to me the contempt 
 and bitter execrations of millions of one's 
 fellow men can scarcely be atoned for by the 
 possession of great wealth. 
 
 "When Marshall Field died the other day 
 the entire country mourned. No one de- 
 nied his right to the millions he had amassed 
 honorably. But were you to pass away to- 
 morrow, the news would be received with 
 general satisfaction from one end of the 
 country to the other. No business besides 
 your own would suspend operations for an 
 hour. It should be a bitter thing for you 
 to realize the loathing and detestation in 
 which you are held in every place where 
 1G7
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 your unfair, smalls ouled, cruel methods 
 are becoming known. 
 
 "It is the hope and prayer of a great 
 many that the courts will send you behind 
 the bars for some of the crimes with which 
 you are charged. Degenerates can feel the 
 stigma conferred by the penitentiary who 
 are insensible to the blights of moral con- 
 demnation. But consider Depew, Herrick, 
 Odell, Durham, and Cox, who are now suf- 
 fering from the recoil of the public con- 
 science. I give you a text See Matthew 
 23: 29-36." 
 
 Is not this a most unnatural letter from 
 a minister of the Christian religion to write 
 a stranger! Would you sit down and put 
 upon paper such an expression of hatred 
 against an avowed enemy? I think not! 
 A man to do this without any personal prov- 
 ocation whatever shows that his mind has 
 been powerfully wrought upon persist- 
 ently and systematically warped through 
 1G8
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 a cunning appeal to his prejudice and this 
 is generally cloaked under the disguise of 
 an appeal to conscience. 
 
 I assert my profound belief that a letter 
 of this kind from such a source would be 
 absolutely an impossibility without such a 
 campaign of persistent misrepresentation 
 and organized vilification as that to which 
 the packers have for years been subjected. 
 
 Think of the occupant of a Christian pul- 
 pit, in this enlightened day, going out of 
 his way to write a stranger a letter of such 
 studied venom, rankling with a hatred that 
 would have done justice to a barbaric High- 
 land clansman, in the old days, expressing 
 his contempt of a feudal enemy ! And yet 
 I have no doubt that, personally, this Chris- 
 tian pastor is a kindly man perhaps a 
 very gentle and amiable one who really 
 loves justice and delights in doing good. 
 
 To me he is simply an example of the ab- 
 surd extremes to which this propaganda of 
 slander against the packers has warped the 
 169
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 judgment and the sentiment of thousands of 
 the best people in the country. 
 
 Because, as I have said, a compulsory ex- 
 penditure for a hard-and-fast necessity nat- 
 urally creates a kind of latent sentiment, the 
 slanders of certain magazines and period- 
 icals have found an acceptance otherwise 
 impossible; they have persisted and in- 
 creased because it was found that the peo- 
 ple read these charges eagerly and that 
 they therefore made circulation. 
 
 These publications have shrewdly and 
 skillfully cultivated the impression so 
 easy to cultivate, for the reason I have ex- 
 plained that the packers are the natural 
 and inevitable enemies of the people, prey- 
 ing upon them as the wolf preys upon the 
 flock. Only, fully to delineate the charac- 
 ter of the packer as it is depicted by the sen- 
 sational magazine, the wolf should be a 
 double-headed monster with one set of jaws 
 busy hamstringing the cattleman, while the 
 170
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 other is closed upon the throat of the con- 
 sumer. 
 
 Letters of the kind I have cited are the 
 legitimate fruit of such a sowing as the sen- 
 sational publications have indulged in; 
 that actual violence does not follow is no 
 fault of the most radical of these publica- 
 tions, who are not looking for the facts 
 from which to lead their readers to a fair 
 conclusion. 
 
 Do you think that this conclusion is not 
 warranted ? Then let me assure you that I 
 have received, through the United States 
 mails, a typewritten letter without place or 
 date, addressed to myself and reading as 
 follows : 
 
 "We have been reading about you and 
 your kind of commercial tyrants in Mc- 
 Clure's. We would think that you tyrants 
 
 and ought to get tired from your 
 
 continuous gorging upon the sweat and 
 
 blood of the people of the nation. What 
 
 171
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 are you and aiming at, any- 
 way? What are your ultimate objects? 
 Have you not got enough of this world's 
 goods already? Are you pirates seeking to 
 enslave the people? Why not commence to 
 be men with human hearts and try to be 
 fair and just? 
 
 "We feel that the authorities at Wash- 
 ington are going to clip your cruel claws 
 very shontly, but we also feel that personal 
 punishment and a little terror on the Rus- 
 sian plan will in a large measure aid in ac- 
 complishing effectively the work in hand. 
 
 "We have, therefore, organized our- 
 selves into a VIGILANCE COMMITTEE 
 for the PUBLIC SAFETY, and propose to 
 use dynamite and assassination to help 
 suppressing you commercial vultures of the 
 nation. 
 
 "We propose to be fair and just in our 
 
 operations, and all accused tyrants will be 
 
 justly tried before our tribunal, and if found 
 
 guilty and sentenced to death, the con- 
 
 172
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 demned ivill be duly notified of the pen- 
 alty they are to pay, and which punish- 
 ment cannot be escaped; if not to-day then 
 to-morrow. This is the plan which has 
 been so successfully in operation in the exe- 
 cution of the Russian political tyrants by 
 the Committee of Public Safety there. 
 
 "We beg to notify you that you have 
 been tried by our tribunal, and your death 
 decreed. PREPARE FOR THE IN- 
 EVITABLE! You may temporarily avoid 
 the execution of this sentence, but your 
 time will shortly come. Our officer who has 
 been appointed to execute this sentence has 
 already been appointed, and you may be 
 assured that he is prepared to sacrifice his 
 life in such a worthy cause. The game is 
 worth it. 
 
 "The Vigilance Committee for the 
 Public Safety." 
 
 This letter indicates upon its face that it 
 has been brought out by the magazine at- 
 173
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 tacks upon the packers. It speaks for itself 
 in that particular. The only comment I 
 care to offer upon it is that it is the natural 
 and legitimate outcome of the wanton agi- 
 tation to which the packing industry and 
 the private-car-line industry have been sub- 
 jected. 
 
 Another popular method of inciting prej- 
 udice against the packers is to represent 
 them as throttling the railroads of the 
 country and forcing unfairly low freight 
 rates on dressed meats and packing-house 
 products. Some railroad officials have en- 
 couraged this misrepresentation. At ban- 
 quets and elsewhere they have tossed off 
 jauntily-worded expressions of rate-making 
 that sound well in the ears of the inexpert 
 and strengthen the belief that "the packers 
 make their own rates." 
 
 Mr. A. B. Stickney, president of the Chi- 
 cago Great Western Railway, has fre- 
 quently indulged in word-pictures of the 
 poor trembling railroads in the clutches of 
 174
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the voracious packers. One of his most 
 often-quoted statements runs as follows : 
 
 ' 'In fixing the rate on dressed meat we" 
 (the railroads I presume) "don't have very 
 much to say. The packer generally makes 
 the rate. He comes to you and always 
 makes you feel that he is your friend. Then 
 he asks how much you charge for a certain 
 shipment of dressed meats. The published 
 tariff may be twenty-three cents a hundred, 
 but he will not pay that. You say to him : 
 'I'll carry your meat for eighteen cents.' 
 He says: 'Oh, no, you won't; I won't pay 
 that !' Then you say: 'Well, what will you 
 pay for it V He then replies: 'I can get it 
 hauled for sixteen cents.' So you haul it 
 for sixteen cents." 
 
 That sounds convincing; to the average 
 reader or listener it appears to be a freshly 
 written, undried page out of the every-day 
 experience of a railroad manager, and 
 sounds as if it might be a verbatim re- 
 port of what took place only the day be- 
 175
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 fore in Mr. Stickney's office. Now, what 
 are the facts? 
 
 The rate on dressed meats from Missouri 
 River points Kansas City, Omaha, St. 
 Joseph, and Sioux City to Chicago is 
 twenty cents a hundred, and eighteen and a 
 half cents on through business. That was 
 the rate when Mr. Stickney made the state- 
 ment quoted above. It had been the rate 
 for more than three years. It will continue 
 to be the rate for more than three years 
 longer. 
 
 That rate was fixed by a formal legal con- 
 tract between Mr. Stickney's road, the Chi- 
 cago Great Western, and the Missouri 
 River packers a contract executed in the 
 summer of 1902 and made binding for seven 
 years. And Mr. Stickney was so well 
 pleased with that contract that he made exe- 
 cution of it the occasion of a circular letter 
 to the Great Western stockholders, in which 
 he explained (and almost boasted of) what 
 a good bargain the railroad had driven 
 176
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 with the packers a bargain that meant an 
 advance of fifteen per cent, over rates pre- 
 viously prevailing, and that meant a fifty 
 per cent, increase in the railroad's net earn- 
 ings. 
 
 Mr. Stickney also made it appear in his 
 circular that the new rate was as high a 
 rate, the Great Western believed, as could 
 be justly exacted from the packers in view 
 of the small margin of profit in the packers ' 
 business. But let Mr. Stickney speak for 
 himself on rates. Here are extracts from 
 that "private and confidential" circular 
 which, as I have said, Mr. Stickney sent to 
 Great Western stockholders under date of 
 August 4, 1902, the italics being mine : 
 
 1 1 It gives the management pleasure to be 
 able to announce that the company has exe- 
 cuted identical contracts with each of the 
 packing companies doing business at Kan- 
 sas City, St. Joseph, Omaha, and Sioux City, 
 by which the packers agree to route over the 
 Chicago Great Western lines at least a cer- 
 12 177
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 tain percentage of the entire output of their 
 plants, at definite rates, for the term of 
 seven years. The rates are a substantial 
 advance over the rates which have hereto- 
 fore prevailed. 
 
 "The aggregate revenue which these 
 contracts secure to the Chicago Great West- 
 ern Railway on the present volume of busi- 
 ness is estimated to be fourteen million dol- 
 lars, and if the business increases as rap- 
 idly in the next seven years as in the past, 
 approximately twenty million dollars. 
 
 "These contracts cannot be understood 
 without a knowledge of the magnitude of 
 the packing industry. The published re- 
 port of Swift & Co. gives the amount of its 
 sales last year at the enormous sum of two 
 hundred and twenty million dollars. Pre- 
 sumably its chief competitor, Armour & 
 Co., did substantially as much, and it is 
 probably safe to estimate that the aggre- 
 gate sales of the other packers amount to 
 enough to make the grand total fully seven 
 178
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 hundred million dollars. More than half 
 of the aggregate business is the output of 
 the plants at the Missouri River cities men- 
 tioned, and is effected by the con- 
 tracts. 
 
 "The narrowness of the margin of profits 
 is even more surprising than the magnitude 
 of the transactions. The report of Swift 
 & Co. (the only report available) gives the 
 information that on sales during last year, 
 practically in a retail way, aggregating 
 over two hundred and twenty million dol- 
 lars of perishable commodities requiring 
 the greatest care to guard against serious 
 loss, the entire profits were only about 
 three million dollars, or less than one and 
 one-half per cent. 
 
 "With such a narrow margin of profit it 
 is easy to see that freight rates are an im- 
 portant factor in the packing-house busi- 
 ness. It is estimated that the annual freight 
 bills amount to three times the annual prof- 
 its. Hence, any increase in the rates which 
 179
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 have been established for years, to which 
 the whole business has been adjusted, is a 
 serious matter. 
 
 "And the packers being willing to agree 
 to a permanent, substantial advance of 
 more than fifteen per cent., the manage- 
 ment felt that its duty to the stockholders 
 demanded that it should accept the oppor- 
 tunity to secure, for a term of years, this 
 substantial advance in rates. Accordingly 
 it has entered into identical and lawful con- 
 tracts with each and every packer doing- 
 business at Kansas City, St. Joseph, Omaha, 
 and Sioux City. 
 
 "In consideration of this contract on the 
 part of the railroad, the packers agree to 
 ship over the Chicago Great Western lines 
 in each and every month during the full 
 term of seven years at least a certain per- 
 centage of the entire output of their respec- 
 tive packing-houses, and of all such pack- 
 ing-houses as they, their successors and as- 
 signs, may hereafter own or control, and to 
 180
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 pay therefor the full published tariff 
 rates, regardless of any lower rates which 
 may be offered by other railway com- 
 panies. 
 
 "These contracts, unlike the 'maximum 
 rate contracts,' are legal, and therefore en- 
 forceable in the courts. 
 
 "There is no way by which the other 
 lines can reduce the rate or quantity. 
 
 "It is certainly satisfactory to know that 
 so large a volume of gross revenue, ap- 
 proximately one million dollars per annum, 
 is already secured by contract for the 
 Omaha and Sioux City lines, now under con- 
 struction, as soon as they are completed." 
 
 It is instructive to notice the difference 
 between Mr. Stickney talking to the general 
 public about freight rates and President 
 Stickney telling his stockholders in a con- 
 fidential circular what a good bargain he 
 has made with the packers. T have only to 
 add that loose-tongued talk and undigested 
 generalizing by men supposed to speak au- 
 181
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 thoritatively has had much to do with 
 prejudicing the public mind against the 
 packers. 
 
 One of the most flagrant of all the many 
 misrepresentations which have recently ap- 
 peared in certain magazines is this state- 
 ment : "Beef is hung up in the refrigerator- 
 cars. There is a space beneath on the 
 floor of the car. It has been charged that 
 this space is sometimes full of dressed poul- 
 try, eggs, and so on. Poultry and eggs 
 take a high freight rate; but, thus packed, 
 Armour gets them carried for nothing. . . . 
 How much of such business goes on no one 
 knows, but it has been shoivn to exist in 
 numerous cases." 
 
 Nothing could be falser than this state- 
 ment. It is untrue in every respect and 
 particular. The older men in the employ 
 of Armour & Co. are witnesses to the fact 
 that my father's instructions were most 
 strict on this point ; that he guarded against 
 anything of the sort by pointing out both 
 182
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the dishonesty and the foolishness of any 
 practice of that nature. 
 
 The same precautions against the pos- 
 sibility of that sort of thing on the part of 
 an over-zealous employee have been taken 
 by myself. There is not a man in the ship- 
 ping department of Armour & Co. who 
 does not thoroughly understand that an at- 
 tempt at such a practice would bring him 
 instant dismissal. 
 
 Any person believing that such a thing 
 would be done by any packer can quickly 
 rid his mind of such a notion by going to 
 the freight department of any railroad 
 handling packing-house business. The 
 roads' inspectors are not only on the plat- 
 forms from which the cars are loaded, but 
 they have access to the books of account and 
 to the very invoices from which the collec- 
 tions are made from the persons or houses 
 to whom the cars are shipped. 
 
 The statement is not only utterly false, 
 but it is absurd, and any freight man who 
 183
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 knows the actual processes of shipping from 
 a packing-house will say so. They know 
 that a thing of this kind could not be done 
 without detection, and that an attempt to 
 do it would be silly and suicidal. 
 
 184
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ANOTHER CONTRIBUTION TO PROGRESS 
 
 WHENEVER the people of this coun 
 try or any of them come to cast 
 up their score with the packers, 
 there are some things which cannot in jus- 
 tice be overlooked, although they are so 
 commonplace as to be accepted as a mere 
 matter of course. 
 
 The packers' contribution to economic 
 progress in the way of by-product utiliza- 
 tion has been enormous. It is impossible 
 to realize the extent to which this touches 
 almost every physical element in our every- 
 day life from -making worn-out and bar- 
 ren lands yield bounteous crops to supply- 
 ing the buttons on our coats. If all these 
 by-products were suddenly stricken from 
 commerce the void would astound the 
 185
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 world, and the result would be everywhere 
 considered a dire public calamity. 
 
 ''Waste Not" is the packer's creed, and 
 his scientific faithfulness to it inspired by 
 self-interest is actually one of the most 
 fruitful sources of economic advantage to 
 the people of the civilized world thus far 
 brought about by the aid of the laboratory 
 of the scientist. 
 
 Let us see just how much this by-product 
 utilization means to the grower and the 
 consumer of food-animals as well as the 
 people in general. 
 
 In the old times packing was done in the 
 winter. The first change in method was 
 the use of ice and the commencement of 
 summer packing. This started in hog- 
 packing, but with the introduction of the 
 refrigerator-car beef was killed largely in 
 the summer. About this time some of the 
 packers adopted the method of packing and 
 shipping meats in tin cans. The refriger- 
 ator-car permitted beef to be killed near 
 186
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 where it was grown, as it was cheaper to 
 pay freight on five hundred and fifty 
 pounds of carcass beef than on one thou- 
 sand pounds of live animal. 
 
 Immediately following this the railroads 
 endeavored to advance the freight on 
 dressed beef so that they could still con- 
 tinue to ship the animals alive on the hoof, 
 as they were afraid that their tonnage 
 would be materially reduced. It was soon 
 demonstrated that under the new system 
 their beef tonnage was greater and their 
 old live-animal tonnage smaller, and though 
 the dressed-beef rates east were much 
 greater per pound than for live animals, 
 yet the freight on five hundred and fifty 
 pounds of dressed beef is less than on oue 
 thousand pounds of live animal. 
 
 The four hundred and fifty pounds of 
 non-edible material was largely thrown 
 away, although the hide and tallow were 
 utilized. Later, some of the waste prod- 
 uct was used in the manufacture of glue. 
 187
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Nitrogen being the chief element in plant 
 food, and this being abundant in the great 
 mass of refuse matter originally thrown 
 away as hopeless waste from all the pack- 
 er's processes, a most important economic 
 advance was made in the step which turned 
 this large volume of scrappage into fertil- 
 izer. 
 
 It is good sense and for the best interest 
 of the world that all material not needed to 
 feed, clothe, and heal the world should be 
 returned to the ground as food for plants, 
 to grow more grain, to feed more cattle, 
 and to feed more people. Thus is the cir- 
 cle completed by the packer. 
 
 All the cunning of the chemist has been 
 called into service to save, to make the most 
 of every scrap of material in hand, and to 
 discover new ways in which some element 
 of waste may be diverted from uselessness 
 to use. 
 
 Hundreds of valuable products are now 
 made and shipped all over the world from 
 188
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 materials which, under the old methods, had 
 little or no value. Thousands of people 
 are employed in manufacturing these 
 products. The technical schools are con- 
 stantly being called upon for young men to 
 aid in solving new problems in by-product 
 utilization. New plants are being built re- 
 quiring material, machinery, and labor in 
 their construction. Success in by-product 
 utilization in the packing industry has di- 
 rected the attention of other industries to 
 this important element in industrial admin- 
 istration. 
 
 All this directly affects the people and 
 has been of great benefit to them. The in- 
 vestigator in medicinal and other lines is 
 constantly calling on the packer for mate- 
 rial to aid him in his work. In the pharma- 
 ceutical line much has been done of benefit, 
 and many ills are helped by pharmaceuti- 
 cal preparations of animal origin. 
 
 In the fertilizer line many sections are 
 given over to growing products which 
 189
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 could not be profitably grown without the 
 use of fertilizers. The upland cotton sec- 
 tion of the South has been made by the use 
 of fertilizer in the growing of cotton. 
 
 Sandy soils in sections climatically favor- 
 'able have been developed into large truck- 
 farming districts through the use of fertil- 
 izers, as the soil, without fertilizer, is prac- 
 tically sterile. In the manufacture of fer- 
 tilizer the packer has done his share in sav- 
 ing material formerly permitted to go to 
 waste. 
 
 The importance of fertilizer to the agri- 
 cultural and fruit-growing interests of the 
 country calls for a word of detailed expla- 
 nation regarding this interesting and val- 
 uable by-product. Fertilizer is food for 
 plants the same as corn for cattle and meat 
 for men. In the early '80s, Peruvian 
 guano being very high and a demand hav- 
 ing arisen for commercial fertilizers, it was 
 suggested to the Chicago slaughterers that 
 the meaty and bony materials deposited in 
 190
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the bottom of the large tanks used in ren- 
 dering lard and tallow be dried and used as 
 a source of nitrogen and phosphorus in 
 compounding fertilizers, mixing with them 
 acid phosphate made by dissolving rock 
 phosphate with acid. This demand came 
 first from the East, and was the beginning 
 of the fertilizer industry in Chicago. 
 
 A hot air dryer was designed for this 
 work. This led on to utilization of still 
 other materials that formerly were largely 
 wasted. The blood accumulating in the 
 killing of cattle was boiled to coagulate the 
 albumen, and was dried and also used as 
 fertilizer. The water in the rendering 
 tanks also is evaporated and the solid por- 
 tions dried and made into concentrated 
 tankage. 
 
 These materials, tankage and blood, and 
 ground waste hoof and horn scraps, are 
 valuable chiefly for their nitrogenous con- 
 tents. Blood and hoof meal, containing al- 
 most as much nitrogen as nitrate of soda or 
 191
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 sulphate of ammonia and being very avail- 
 able although not soluble in water, possessed 
 certain chemical advantages over nitrate of 
 soda and sulphate of ammonia when com- 
 pounded with other fertilizer ingredients. 
 These materials were for a number of years 
 sold to the manufacturers of complete fer- 
 tilizers, but in the early '90s my father 
 began the manufacture of complete fer- 
 tilizers himself, combining with his mate- 
 rial potash from Germany and phosphates 
 from Tennessee, Florida, and South Caro- 
 lina. 
 
 This end of the packing business has 
 grown very rapidly, and Armour & Com- 
 pany now have plants at many points in the 
 United States for the manufacture of fer- 
 tilizers, shipping their blood, bone, and 
 tankage to those manufacturing points, 
 making their sulphuric acid and acid phos- 
 phate at these various plants, and supply- 
 ing the trade of the immediate section. Fer- 
 tilizers are made of different analyses for 
 192
 
 u
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 different soils, climates and crops a quick 
 acting fertilizer being prepared for truck- 
 ers who must get their product into the 
 very early markets and a slower acting fer- 
 tilizer for winter wheat. Practically all of 
 the cotton in the United States, with the ex- 
 ception of a part of that grown in Texas, 
 is grown with fertilizers, and nearly all of 
 the winter wheat producing states are now 
 largely using fertilizers. 
 
 In connection with the fertilizer works 
 is prepared blood albumen which, up to six 
 years ago, had been imported entirely from 
 Europe. It was claimed it could not be 
 made in this country ; the climate would not 
 permit, etc. This product is used by the 
 calico printers in fixing certain pigment 
 colors, such as ultramarine, to the cloth on 
 which they are printed. Blood albumen is 
 similar to that in the white of an egg, and 
 when the temperature is raised to a certain 
 point it coagulates. A paste ink is made by 
 mixing liquid albumen with the pigment, 
 13 193
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 and this ink is used in printing the cloths. 
 After these are printed, they are run into 
 a room and steamed at a temperature 
 approximating two hundred degrees. This 
 action coagulates the albumen in the ink, 
 rendering it insoluble in water, and mechan- 
 ically fixes the color in the cloth. 
 
 In addition to this, albumen is used by 
 the tanner in finishing leathers; by the 
 makers of certain extracts, and by sugar 
 manufacturers for the clarifying of liquors. 
 
 Dried blood is used as a fertilizer, and is 
 also beginning to be used quite largely 
 as a stock food. It is the most con- 
 centrated food we have, containing some- 
 thing like eighty-seven per cent, of pro- 
 tein, and gives exceptionally good results 
 when fed to horses and other live stock in 
 connection with their regular feed. The 
 Kansas City experiment station has dis- 
 covered that a disease known as "scours," 
 which greatly troubles young calves, can be 
 cured by the addition of a little of this dried 
 194
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 blood in the skim milk on which they are 
 fed. This discovery is saving thousands of 
 calves every year. Certain portions of 
 tankage are ground up into meat meal and 
 largely sold for the growing of poultry and 
 for the fattening of hogs and live stock. 
 Bone is coarsely granulated and also used 
 for the same purpose. 
 
 The furniture of the country is glued 
 with the packers' glue. A great deal of the 
 wool used in clothing is made from sheep 
 slaughtered by the packers. One of the 
 largest sources of curled hair is the switch 
 from the tails of cattle. Bristles are cured 
 for the brushmaker. A large portion of 
 the soap manufactured comes from the tal- 
 lows and greases prepared by the packers. 
 
 The first steps in by-product utilization 
 cannot fail to interest those who like to 
 trace the lines of economic progress. 
 
 In the early days of the packing industry, 
 as I have already remarked, very little use 
 was made of the offal and refuse other than 
 195
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the hide, tallow and grease. The blood, 
 cattle feet, the head and other refuse was 
 buried or hauled out on the prairies and 
 buried. The horns finally became of some 
 value, and after the horn pith was removed 
 they were shipped to Europe, and there 
 manufactured into horn buttons, combs and 
 various ornaments; but no manufacturing 
 of this sort was attempted in the United 
 States until within recent years. 
 
 About the first use made of the offal at 
 Chicago was in the latter part of the '70s, 
 when a small glue manufacturing plant was 
 established. There was no attempt to buy 
 material from the packers,but, as the story 
 goes, the cattle heads and feet buried by the 
 packers during the day were dug up at 
 night, hauled to the glue factory and con- 
 verted into glue and bone fertilizer. Soon 
 after this the packers realized that the ma- 
 terial had some value, and began to charge 
 for it. In the meantime, quite an industry 
 had been built up in the manufacture 
 19G
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of glue, and in the year 1885 Armour & 
 Company purchased the Wahl Brothers' 
 glue factory. This was the first entrance 
 of the packers into the manufacture of 
 glues. 
 
 The industry has grown rapidly, Armour 
 & Company having the largest glue plant 
 in the world, which not only uses the raw 
 material furnished by its own packing 
 houses, but also buys largely from other 
 packers. They manufacture all grades of 
 glue bone glues, hide glues, etc. 
 
 The phosphate of lime in bone is held to- 
 gether by nitrogenous binding material 
 from which bone glue is made, and which 
 can be taken out of bone by cooking at a 
 low temperature, or the lime can be leached 
 out of the bone stock by acids. After the 
 glue is extracted, the liquor is concentrated 
 in vacuum, chilled by refrigeration, cut up 
 into thin layers and dried on wire screening 
 in large hot air dryers. Then it is sold as 
 sheet glue, broken glue or ground glue, as 
 197
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the trade may demand. During the process 
 of glue boiling, the tallow and grease is ex- 
 tracted and skimmed off and the bone and 
 meaty matter deposited is dried, ground up 
 and sold as fertilizer. 
 
 Gelatin is also made at the glue works 
 from selected "calves' stock." The process 
 is one requiring great care and skill. 
 
 Brewers' isinglass is made from animal 
 tissues and is used by the brewers in the 
 clarifying of their liquors. This product 
 is a transparent white article sold in sheets 
 and resembles the finest grades of gelatin 
 in appearance. 
 
 In the bone-cutting department, a branch 
 of the fertilizer works, are made white 
 knife handles and handles for knives, 
 razors, etc., shaped, carved and dyed to re- 
 semble stag horn. Here are also made col- 
 lar buttons, pipe mouth-pieces, bone screws 
 used to connect the pipe mouth-pieces and 
 the bowl of the pipe, dice, little square 
 blocks or "dummy teeth" used by dental 
 198
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 students in practice work; nursing-bottle 
 rings and shields, and bone buttons of all 
 kinds. 
 
 In the manufacture of fine steel parts 
 of guns, bicycles, automobiles, and other 
 pieces of fine mechanism, it is necessary to 
 case-harden the surface of certain working 
 parts; that is, steel is fashioned into its 
 final shape when soft and these parts are 
 then put in a large iron box and surrounded 
 by hard granulated bone. This box is then 
 fastened together, luted and put in a fur- 
 nace. There it is heated to a certain color 
 and the contents dumped into water. The 
 result is that the steel has been case-hard- 
 ened. In other words, a very high carbon 
 steel has been formed on the outside of the 
 parts thus treated, making them extremely 
 hard. Bone is also used to make the blue 
 color on rifle barrels, etc. 
 
 A word regarding the utilization of 
 hoofs: These are assorted into three 
 grades; the white hoofs being used in the 
 199
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 manufacture of a certain grade of buttons 
 which closely resemble the better quality 
 of pearl buttons. The striped hoofs are flat- 
 tened into plates by pressure under heat, 
 and are used in the manufacture of hair- 
 pins; they are also used in the manufac- 
 ture of buttons. The black hoofs and hoof 
 scraps are used in the manufacture of cya- 
 nide and chrome. They are also ground up 
 into a fine powder and used as a nitrog- 
 enous fertilizer for the growing of grapes 
 and other special crops. 
 
 Glycerin is another important by-prod- 
 uct. At a certain time in the boiling of 
 soap salt is introduced into the kettles, 
 which carries to the bottom the glycerin of 
 the fat together with the lye that has not 
 been used in the saponifying of the soap. 
 This spent lye is drawn off and from it is 
 manufactured glycerin. In the manufac- 
 ture of soaps all grades are made, from the 
 very finest toilet and shaving soaps to the 
 200
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 mottled German scrubbing soaps. Washing 
 powders are also prepared from soap stock. 
 
 Packing-house laboratory products, the 
 results of original research by scientists of 
 the first class, are employed every day by 
 physicians, surgeons, dentists, and chem- 
 ists throughout the world. More than 
 thirty recognized therapeutic agents of 
 animal origin are produced in Armour & 
 Co.'s laboratory. Among them are the 
 pepsin and pancreatin which physicians 
 use in treating digestive disorders. 
 
 There is a product of thyroid glands that 
 is employed in treating cretinism or idiocy. 
 Another is suprarenalin, used in the most 
 delicate surgical operations to stop the flow 
 of blood. To illustrate how closely the by- 
 product feature of the business is gleaned, 
 the suprarenal glands of more than one 
 hundred thousand sheep are required to 
 produce one pound of suprarenalin, and 
 when produced this suprarenalin is worth 
 more than five thousand dollars a pound. 
 201
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 The oil extracted from the wool of 
 slaughtered sheep is used in various emul- 
 sions and toilet preparations, being pecu- 
 liarly soft and soothing to the skin. An- 
 hydrous ammonia is another by-product 
 of the packing-house laboratory and a very 
 extensive business is done in this article. 
 
 Extract of beef is a product which serves 
 to illustrate the progress of the pack- 
 ing industry during comparatively recent 
 years, and the rapid evolution from the 
 slaughter-house to the wonderful packing 
 plants of to-day, where every department 
 is conducted under the most advanced scien- 
 tific methods. 
 
 The process of making beef extract is 
 simple. Realizing that South American 
 and Australian beef extracts, which are 
 made from wild cattle usually killed for 
 their hides and bones, could not possibly 
 possess the delicious flavor of beef extract 
 made from the carefully fattened domestic 
 cattle of the United States, the American 
 202
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 methods have been directed towards the 
 preservation of the true beef flavor in a con- 
 centrated form. Tons of fresh meats are 
 used daily for making beef extract. After 
 the extract has been taken from the meat, 
 the remaining fibre is dried, ground or pow- 
 dered and sold largely in foreign markets, 
 where it is used in various forms of animal 
 food. 
 
 The liquors cooked from the meat are 
 concentrated in vacuum pans to either solid 
 or fluid consistency, as may be desired. It 
 is then a pure, concentrated extract of beef. 
 Gouffe says that beef broth is the soul of 
 domestic cookery, but how to get that 
 ''soul" from the old-time recipe, "Take a 
 shin of beef," has proved a difficult prob- 
 lem to many housekeepers. Now, with a 
 jar of American beef extract at hand, the 
 cook has, without time or trouble, the best 
 beef broth for making soups, sauces, beef 
 teas, etc. 
 
 As the consumption of beef extract has 
 203
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 grown, so, too, have its forms of prepara- 
 tion. To-day one may obtain it in the solid 
 or fluid form, or in combination with aspar- 
 agus, tomatoes and other delicious vegeta- 
 bles. 
 
 A few years ago a physician friend of 
 Mr. Philip D. Armour asked him why he 
 did not make a nutritious preparation of 
 beef that would be a food upon which life 
 could be sustained independent of all other 
 foods. He said this was needed particu- 
 larly for the invalid and the convalescent, 
 and pointed out that his means and position 
 as a packer made such an expensive investi- 
 gation possible. Mr. Armour gave instruc- 
 tions to his chemist to start the work, and as 
 a result " Soluble Beef" was placed upon 
 the market. 
 
 ''Soluble Beef" differs from beef extract 
 in that it is the real substance of the meat 
 fibre and all predigested and concentrated. 
 An idea of its nutritive value may be had 
 by comparing it with raw beef juice, which 
 204
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 has enjoyed a high reputation as a food for 
 the sick. Analysis of soluble beef shows 
 that it contains fifty-four per cent, food 
 value ; raw beef juice contains from two to 
 five per cent. On this basis one teaspoon- 
 ful of soluble beef is equal to from ten to 
 twenty-seven teaspoonfuls of beef juice. 
 It may be used with hot water without 
 affecting the nutritive value. The advan- 
 tage of such food to the invalid or convales- 
 cent is evident to all. 
 
 It is impossible to pass the matter of the 
 packer's products without reference to 
 the really important subject of oleomarga- 
 rine. During the Franco-Prussian war, 
 Mege Mouries, forced by the conditions 
 existing in Paris, ascertained that the oil 
 expressed from beef suet was similar to the 
 oil in butter fat, and when churned in milk 
 made a very good substitute for butter, and 
 the resultant Droduct, oleomargarine, was 
 given to the world. This product does not 
 contain as large a percentage of butyric and 
 205
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 other volatile acids which give rancidity to 
 butter as does butter itself. Therefore, 
 oleomargarine keeps better than butter. To 
 the lumberman, the miner, the sailor, this 
 product gives a reliable supply of butter 
 food which he could not obtain if he were 
 dependent upon butter. The animal oils 
 are churned in milk, worked, salted and 
 handled precisely as butter and the product 
 is butter made by chemical methods rather 
 than by Nature. The attitude of the dairy 
 distributing interests of the country, as 
 voiced by Congressional action, has, for the 
 time being, greatly injured the oleomarga- 
 rine business, but it is, nevertheless, an 
 article of high merit and great economic im- 
 portance. 
 
 It seems impossible to believe that the 
 laboring portion of the community is to be 
 deprived of a healthful and cheap article 
 of food at the instigation of the manufac- 
 turers of a competing article, simply be- 
 cause of its competition. The internal rev- 
 206
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 enue laws controlling the sale of oleomar- 
 garine before the passage of the Grout bill 
 protected the consumer in that they re- 
 quired original packages of oleomargarine 
 to be branded, and a stamp tax of two cents 
 a pound to be attached to each package. All 
 of this was under the control of the Internal 
 Revenue Department, the same as is the 
 manufacture of cigars and other taxable 
 commodities. It was sold under govern- 
 ment control. There was no possibility 
 of the manufacturer selling ' ' oleo ' ' as but- 
 ter without incurring very great risks and 
 penalties, and it is safe to say that no man- 
 ufacturer attempted it. 
 
 Under the Grout bill, however, the re- 
 strictions are so severe that the packer is 
 practically compelled to look to foreign 
 countries almost exclusively for a market 
 for this clean, wholesome and eminently 
 serviceable product. One of the unjust 
 features of the present regulations is that 
 which prohibits the manufacturer of oleo- 
 207
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 margarine from using any coloring; in 
 other words, from giving it the attractive 
 appearance of butter. As it can be colored 
 just as wholesomely as butter, the restric- 
 tion is purely an arbitrary handicap im- 
 posed solely to limit its use for people ac- 
 customed to use butter will not readily and 
 extensively use a substitute which looks 
 unlike it. When this product of the packing 
 house is given the commercial chance to 
 which its merits entitle it, the results will be 
 of great advantage to the poorer people of 
 this country and to the cattle raisers. 
 
 Commissioner of Corporations Garfield's 
 report on the beef industry shows that the 
 legislation against oleomargarine in 1902 
 caused a very marked decrease in the value 
 of the fat derived from beef cattle. The 
 average net value of fat from cattle killed 
 in Chicago, his report shows, fell from $4.31 
 a head in the second half of 1902 to $2.65 a 
 head in the second half of 1903. For all 
 packing centres combined, the average fall 
 208
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 in value between these two periods was 
 $1.29 a head. Such decrease in the value of 
 products derived from cattle decreased, of 
 course, the price that could be paid for 
 cattle. 
 
 The packer who could make the most out 
 of these products could afford to pay and 
 did pay more for the live steer than his 
 competitor who was not so progressive, and 
 in consequence he got his pick of the cattle. 
 The stock-grower was benefited by the 
 higher price paid for the live animal, and 
 the people were benefited by the lower sell- 
 ing cost of the beef over the old method. 
 
 One cannot eat his cake and have it, too, 
 and the reward that the packer received 
 was that of increased business and the de- 
 creased cost per head of killing cattle, ow- 
 ing to his much heavier kill ; but, in order 
 to cash in that reward, he had to give both 
 the stock-grower and the public a part of 
 the benefit of by-product utilization. 
 
 14 209
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ONCE MORE THE PRIVATE-CAR LINE 
 
 THE interests of the private-car line 
 and the packing industries are so 
 intimately connected that the future 
 of either must necessarily involve, to a con- 
 siderable extent, the future of the other. . 
 
 Broadly speaking, they are equally the 
 objects of attack on the part of mistaken 
 or malicious agitators; but the sharpest 
 fight seems to be focused on the private-car 
 lines, and, therefore, I shall place emphasis 
 on that more acute line of campaign. 
 
 If the hostile legislation now aimed at 
 either or both of these industries becomes 
 law, there is no question that the men who 
 are pushing it will have the satisfaction of 
 having dealt a hard and perhaps fatal blow 
 to the packers and to two great industries 
 210
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 which have done more, I believe, than any 
 other two industries to give the whole 
 people the cardinal comforts of good liv- 
 ing: wholesome fresh meats and fresh 
 fruits and vegetables. 
 
 But their satisfaction will not end with 
 crippling these agencies of administration 
 to the common needs of humanity. They 
 will also awake to the fact that theirs will 
 be the credit of dealing a staggering blow 
 to scores of other industries to the cattle- 
 raising business, to the calling of the fruit 
 and the vegetable growers, to the entire 
 agriculture of the country, and, finally, to 
 the scores of other industries which are 
 sensitively and inseparably interrelated 
 with the animal, fruit, and vegetable indus- 
 tries. 
 
 Believing this, it seems to me that what- 
 ever threatens the future normal and 
 legitimate development of the business in 
 which the private-car lines and the packers 
 are engaged directly concerns not only 
 211
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 every business man of this country but 
 every individual in the United States. 
 
 Therefore, I offer no apology for meet- 
 ing the charges, attacks, and criticisms 
 which have been made public in certain 
 magazines, periodicals, and newspapers, 
 and in the public utterances of the enemies 
 of the private-car lines and of the packers. 
 
 Although the assaults have, in many 
 cases, been personal and bitterly so 
 and the provocation is strong to deal with 
 them in kind and to show their personal 
 animus (as I can in every instance), they 
 will be met in general terms, but, I believe, 
 with sufficient definiteness. 
 
 In some points it will be necessary to 
 refer briefly to matters already touched 
 upon, but only for the purpose of giving 
 a clear and adequate bird's-eye view of 
 the war that is being waged to disorganize 
 industries which are indispensable to the 
 American people, and to make their future 
 a record of struggle, and perhaps failure, 
 212
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 under the handicap and hardship of unfair 
 and unwarranted legislation. 
 
 The misrepresentation employed by the 
 anti-car-line champions cannot overcome 
 the force of this simple fact : The men who 
 pay " extortionate rates" to the private-car 
 lines that is, the actual growers and ship- 
 pers of fruit never have voiced a serious 
 complaint against the car lines, and do not 
 now favor the anti-car-line agitation. This 
 does not mean there are not some individ- 
 ual or association complaints. 
 
 I feel perfectly safe in saying that more 
 than ninety per cent, of the growers, where 
 private refrigerator-cars are operated, are 
 in favor of keeping the private-car lines' 
 with their refrigeration service and their 
 exclusive contracts in operation as they 
 are. The better business man the fruit- 
 grower is, and the more experience he has 
 had with commercial enterprises other 
 than fruit-growing, the more heartily does 
 213
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 he speaks out for the private-car line and 
 its exclusive contract. 
 
 Such men understand the risks in any 
 business; therefore they appreciate what 
 an advantage it is to have a responsible 
 concern bound to furnish, at the instant 
 needed, good cars, clean cars, and enough 
 cars, with prompt and certain icing ad- 
 vantages which they seldom had when rail- 
 roads attempted to furnish the refrigera- 
 tion, or when several refrigerator-car com- 
 panies competed for their business ad- 
 vantages which they cannot hope to get for 
 years to come, if they are deprived of pri- 
 vate cars and forced to depend on railroad 
 refrigeration. 
 
 Men of this class appreciate, too, that 
 good sendee must be paid for, and that 
 poor service is dear at any price; and serv- 
 ice in the handling of perishable berries 
 and fruits is the first consideration, as 
 every successful grower will testify. 
 
 If the most extravagant and misleading 
 214
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 comparisons that have been made between 
 private-car and railroad refrigeration 
 rates were true, the difference would 
 amount, on peaches, say, to ten to fifteen 
 dollars a car. The practical and successful 
 grower reasons thus : 
 
 "When I get good refrigeration and 
 reliable service for ten or fifteen or even 
 twenty-five dollars a car more than I would 
 pay for poor refrigeration service, the 
 extra money is well invested. That extra 
 ten or fifteen dollars a car will mean, in 
 almost every instance, from fifty to one 
 hundred dollars a car added to my net 
 returns by reason of my fruit getting to 
 market in good condition." 
 
 Is it not a distinct credit to furnish a 
 quality of refrigeration service for which 
 growers are willing to pay an advanced 
 price' I believe it is. Here and there, 
 of course, one finds a "kicker." Absolute 
 unanimity would be impossible as human 
 nature is now constituted, but the kicker's 
 215
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 grievance can always be traced to some 
 individual and usually accidental happen- 
 ing. 
 
 Illustrating this general point as to the 
 quality of service, let me quote from one 
 of several letters now on my desk from 
 Koshkonong, Missouri, the largest peach- 
 shipping point in Missouri letters from 
 growers who had heard that the private- 
 car-line service might be withdrawn from 
 the 'Frisco Railroad System this year. Mr. 
 T. M. Culver, who manages five hundred 
 acres of Elberta peach orchard, writes : 
 
 "I, as well as a lot of other peach- 
 growers at this place, have planted and are 
 still planting thousands of trees, and not 
 by any means the least incentive of our 
 large plantings is the excellent service we 
 get from the Armour Car Lines. If you 
 say that we will have no more Armour cars 
 in which to ship our peaches, it will be the 
 greatest disappointment to me I have ever 
 met with in my peach-growing experience. 
 216
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 I firmly believe it would be a good many 
 years before such a service as Armour's 
 could be had on the 'Frisco. 
 
 "I have shipped hundreds of cars of 
 peaches, and not one complaint have I ever 
 had as to condition on arrival, nor have my 
 commission men ever complained to me 
 about extortionate charges. Neither have 
 I any complaint to make along this line." 
 And Mr. Culver closes with the assertion 
 that the loss of the private-car service "will 
 be disastrous to peach-growers." 
 
 I could quote similar expressions by 
 scores from fruit-growers practical and 
 successful fruit-growers in all parts of 
 this country from Michigan to Georgia and 
 from Delaware to California. 
 
 Now just a final word on the real animus 
 of this fight on the private-car lines. Fruit- 
 handling commission men not all commis- 
 sion men, but some have been forced to 
 come out in the open and admit that they 
 are trying to kill the private-car lines if 
 217
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 they can, and cripple them if extermination 
 is not possible. Hostile legislation is their 
 machine gun. 
 
 One of the chief arguments they have 
 used in enlisting the aid of representatives, 
 senators, writers, and other men who make 
 sentiment and legislation is the cry that the 
 private-car lines are monopolistic in char- 
 acter, grasping in purpose, and that they 
 seek to control the handling and refrigera- 
 tion of fruits. 
 
 Portraits of the leaders of this band of 
 public-spirited commission men adorn the 
 pages of magazines and periodicals in 
 which appear the arguments inspired by 
 them. They are hailed as the champions 
 of anti-monopoly, the protectors of the peo- 
 ple in general and of the fruit-growers in 
 particular. Their mission is to get the 
 oppressed grower out from under the heel 
 of the private-car-line magnate; to liberate 
 him from the control of the monopolist. 
 
 Please keep all this in mind while you 
 218
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 read a few extracts taken from the address 
 of President Streight, delivered before the 
 Annual Convention of the Western Fruit 
 Jobbers' Association, held in Omaha on 
 December 28, 1904. My quotations are 
 made from the pamphlet sent out by the 
 Association as the official report of its pro- 
 ceedings. The italics are my own. Here 
 is the significant declaration made by the 
 official head of the Western Fruit Jobbers' 
 Association : 
 
 "The great percentage of the commod- 
 ities we handle are extremely perishable. 
 On this account our business is of a more 
 hazardous nature than any ordinary mer- 
 chandising. The perishable nature of our 
 commodities alone is sufficiently hazardous 
 without the aid of fluctuating prices, over- 
 stocks, unfriendly, illegitimate, and un- 
 profitable competition. 
 
 "We should have an organization which 
 would take in every legitimate and honor- 
 219
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 able jobber of fruit and produce in the 
 Middle and Western States, with the object 
 of reducing the hazardous nature of our 
 business to the greatest possible extent. 
 
 "We cannot change the commodities we 
 handle, but we can collect and disseminate 
 information for the benefit of each mem- 
 ber. We can form local and district organ- 
 izations and eliminate to some extent un- 
 friendly AND UNPROFITABLE COMPETITION, 
 
 lessen the overstocking and fluctuating of 
 local markets, and become business and 
 social friends instead of simply unfriendly 
 competitors throughout the territory." 
 
 Another member of the Association also 
 addressed the Omaha meeting in the fol- 
 lowing significant language : 
 
 "But conditions are changed. A large 
 part of the business is now done on the 
 f. o. b. plan, or else, if consigned, the ship- 
 ments are confined to a few reliable houses 
 who have the absolute confidence of the 
 220
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 shipper, and the shipper feels that by loy- 
 ally standing by the receiver through thick 
 and thin he will achieve greater results 
 than in the 'old rainbow-chasing days.' 
 
 "One of the greatest drawbacks of the 
 present method of buying f . o. b., especially 
 has it so proved the past season, is the dis- 
 position on the part of our representatives 
 to outbid one another. I have a case in 
 mind that occurred in Louisiana last 
 spring. Two representatives of Minneapo- 
 lis houses, actuated by their jealousy, 
 wanted all the strawberries from a well- 
 known point. The result was that prices 
 advanced from three dollars and twenty- 
 five cents one day to four dollars and 
 twenty-five cents the next day, this without 
 increasing the production one iota. 
 
 "Another case is the Van Buren deal. 
 Texas is practically through shipping when 
 Van Buren begins, and, as the latter is the 
 first in Arkansas to move, their berries are 
 eagerly sought after. 
 
 221
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ' 'Last season there were probably ten 
 men for every car the first week, and, of 
 course, the local shipper took the advan- 
 tage of our necessities, boosting prices out 
 of sight, cleaning up from three hundred 
 dollars to five hundred dollars a car, while 
 
 by a LITTLE CONCERTED ACTION ON OUR PART 
 
 just as many berries could have been 
 secured at probably a dollar a case less. 
 
 * i This is a point we should seriously con- 
 sider, not that I propose a combination on 
 prices so much as I do to avoid bunching 
 our men at one particular point and bulling 
 the market. Moreover, a close relationship 
 should be encouraged among our buyers 
 and solicitors. Let it be understood that 
 when we cannot land a shipment ourselves, 
 or else have all we can use, we see that a 
 member of the Western Fruit Jobbers' 
 Association is favored. 
 
 ' ' Now let me put the question right here : 
 
 Will every member of this Association 
 
 make it a point to instruct his field-man, as 
 090
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 well as do it himself, to use his influence to 
 advance the interests of our Association 
 among shippers, and, when it is impossible 
 to secure a shipment for his own house, 
 make an effort to see that some other house 
 in our Association is favored in preference 
 to an outside concern?" 
 
 Could any appeal for combination against 
 the grower and shipper be more clear than 
 this convention declaration? I think not. 
 The most ingenuous and unsophisticated 
 fruit-grower cannot fail to understand the 
 hostile intent of language like this. 
 
 And again I ask: Could there be a 
 clearer, a more definite and authoritative 
 verification of my statement that the work 
 of the private-car lines in bringing com- 
 petitive buyers into the fruit-growing dis- 
 tricts, there to hustle for business and bid 
 against each other, has been of inestimable 
 benefit to the grower and shipper! 
 
 It is an official confirmation of my state-
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ment made out of the mouth of an avowed 
 enemy of the private-car lines. 
 
 It is a confession, published in the camp 
 of the enemy, that competition on the part 
 of the buyers forced into the field by the 
 private refrigerator-car results in great 
 gain to the grower, brings him far higher 
 prices, and has liberated him from the 
 domination of the commission man. 
 
 There is not a grower in any district 
 served by the private refrigerator-car at 
 least none who was there in the fruit busi- 
 ness before the coming of the car who 
 will not admit that the buyers followed the 
 car into the field, and that the private car 
 revolutionized the commission business, 
 bringing the commission man to the grower, 
 whereas the grower had before been 
 obliged to seek the commission man and 
 accept his terms. 
 
 The real attitude of the commission men 
 toward the growers and toward the ques- 
 tion of "combination" for the purpose of 
 224
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 squelching "unfriendly competition" can 
 only be fully appreciated in these utter- 
 ances of the official heads of the Western 
 Fruit Jobbers' Association. The cry of 
 "monopoly" and "combination" cer- 
 tainly comes with rare grace from this or- 
 ganization ! 
 
 Some of these commission men lose all 
 sense of perspective and of humor, too 
 when they undertake to explain how they 
 love high-class refrigeration for its own 
 sake, but are nobly battling against the 
 monopoly. 
 
 One spokesman, in a recent deliverance, 
 grows eloquent with virtuous rage when he 
 contemplates the "horrible conditions" 
 imposed upon refrigerator-car service by 
 the "Armour monopoly." Further along 
 he avers that Armour cars "are to the 
 refrigerator-cars of the whole country but 
 as a drop in the bucket." 
 
 Tf "but a drop in the bucket," T ask, 
 How can it be a monopoly that is strang- 
 le 225
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ling the fruit industry ? Again, the spokes- 
 man of this particular commission-man 
 coterie makes the specious plea that he and 
 his associates are not trying to drive pri- 
 vate-car lines out of the business, but are 
 only seeking to "regulate" the rates; then 
 to prove his words he quotes a lawyer-like 
 statement to the effect that "legislation 
 cannot be framed," under the Constitution, 
 to "prevent formation of independent car 
 lines for hire of cars to railways." 
 
 Quite so, but these very men who are 
 so sure of what cannot be done under the 
 Constitution are working night and day at 
 Washington for a law that will restrict 
 refrigeration service charges to the actual 
 cost of ice, pound by pound. Such a law 
 would put the refrigerator-car lines out of 
 business as effectually as would a law flatly 
 prohibiting them. 
 
 Efficient refrigeration service, with ade- 
 quate car-supply, ice-supply, icing, re-icing, 
 and inspection, cannot be performed by 
 22G
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 any line, railroad or any other agency, for 
 actual cost of ice, unless it is done at an 
 actual loss. 
 
 But with all their evasions, these com- 
 mission men cannot get away from this 
 fact: They desire to drive out of business 
 the private-car lines that furnish efficient 
 refrigeration service. For assistance in 
 this they rely much upon that trait in human 
 nature which always enables a falsehood 
 to travel faster than the truth, and they 
 have chosen an apt time for such a cam- 
 paign a time when the public mind has 
 been poisoned by "yellow" agitation 
 against everything bearing the name of 
 corporation, and by demagogic appeal for 
 political effect. 
 
 All this was admitted inadvertently, 
 no doubt when the president of the Na- 
 tional League of Commission Merchants, in 
 convention at Milwaukee last December, 
 summed up the results of the League's 
 anti-private-car-line fight in these words: 
 227
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 "But we feel that it is at this session of 
 Congress that our labors must be rewarded 
 and the necessary legislation enacted, and 
 we feel encouraged to believe that, if not 
 from the merits of our cause, then from 
 
 THE POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY of Oil)' Situation, 
 
 this will be brought about." 
 
 Could a confession be plainer? 
 
 But I hope that I shall not be misunder- 
 stood as classing all commission men with 
 the ones I have been discussing. Nothing 
 could be more remote from my thought. 
 Many of the strongest houses in the trade 
 have no sympathy with the fight being made 
 in the name of the Western Fruit Jobbers' 
 Association and the National League of 
 Commission Merchants. Members of these 
 organizations have not hesitated to take 
 a stand against them. 
 
 A case in point is J. D. Hendrickson, of 
 Philadelphia, a former president of the 
 National League, who went to AVashington 
 228
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 last year and testified that private-car-line 
 service was a necessity in the perishable 
 fruit business. Mr. Hendrickson is both 
 commission merchant and peach-grower; 
 and I believe practically every commission 
 merchant like him, who also knows the fruit 
 business as a grower, stands with him on 
 the side of the private-car lines. 
 
 No longer ago than January 20, 1906, 
 F. Newhall & Sons, of Chicago, members 
 of the National League, wrote to the Fruit 
 Trade Journal and Produce Record, the 
 official organ of the commission trade, pro- 
 testing against the anti-car-line movement. 
 I quote a few characteristic sentences: 
 
 "We believe our firm is only one among 
 a great many that have been benefited, 
 instead of injured, by the private-car lines. 
 
 "Our experience with refrigerator-cars 
 before the private-car line came into exist- 
 ence was a sad one. You could seldom get 
 a refrigerator-car from the railroad com- 
 229
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 pany when you ordered one, and often 
 when you did it was a very poor one, not 
 suitable for the purpose that you wanted it 
 for. . . . We have made fifty claims for 
 loss and damage on fruit shipped in refrig- 
 erator-ears furnished by railroads to one 
 for fruit shipped in private-car lines, such 
 as the Armour Gar Lines. 
 
 1 'While they (the refrigerator rates of 
 the private-car lines) are higher than 
 charged by some railroads, it has always 
 seemed cheaper in the end, because our 
 goods arrived in better condition and were 
 worth more to us than the difference in 
 refrigeration charges. 
 
 "The private-car line refrigerators have 
 been a very great benefit to us in furnish- 
 ing good refrigerators to move our ship- 
 ments in throughout the winter season, 
 when no charge is made for icing. . . . 
 
 "If we find icing charges too high, let 
 us go to the heads of companies controlling 
 the lines making the unreasonable charges 
 230
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 and try to induce them to readjust their 
 rates. We can accomplish more in this 
 nay than by trying to put them out of 
 business. . . . 
 
 "We believe in a square deal for all, and 
 we know there is a very large element in the 
 fruit and produce business in the United 
 States which believes as we do." 
 
 The business genius and commercial 
 pioneering, the enterprising, organizing and 
 executive abilities of the original packers 
 have been among the most potent influences 
 in building up the country. Why shouldn't 
 they be entitled to some credit for it ? 
 
 They were looking out for themselves 
 when they were building those businesses. 
 Of course they were. But that is no answer. 
 If we examine the intimate personal annals 
 of the heroes of history, we shall find but 
 few who started upon their respective roads 
 lighted only by the pure white flame of holy 
 resolve to uplift humanity. Blink at it as 
 231
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 we may, there is a touch of self-interest in 
 the best of men. 
 
 The Revolutionary fathers, as we rever- 
 ently call them, sought, in the beginning, 
 only to relieve themselves from distasteful 
 governmental restrictions and odious taxes. 
 They grew into opportunity and resolve to 
 build a new nation on a new foundation. 
 And to the end of their labors but it de- 
 tracts not at all from the honor due them 
 they were upborne by the desire to better 
 the material, worldly condition of them- 
 selves and fellows. Lincoln, running for 
 the legislature while he was still a primitive 
 country storekeeper and an unsuccessful 
 one ; Grant, volunteering for the war of the 
 rebellion, were hardly moved entirely by 
 visions of liberating a race or saving a 
 nation. They were simply breaking into 
 those fields where they knew their talents 
 would have freest play and ichere they be- 
 lieved they could do the best for themselves. 
 So true an idealist as the late John Hay 
 232
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 said in his article on "Franklin in France," 
 in a recent magazine: "It is the infallible 
 sign of decadence in a man or a government 
 when he undertakes work which cannot pay 
 expenses. ' ' 
 
 The original packers were born into a 
 commercial age. They were filled with the 
 spirit of the times. They saw opportunities 
 lying at their feet opportunities to widen 
 their own commercial field and that of all 
 around them opportunities to create new 
 enterprises opportunities, if you please, 
 to make two blades of grass grow where but 
 one grew before. Made as they were, they 
 could no more smother their energies than 
 the born artist can keep his fingers out of 
 the paint box. They jumped in, and the 
 pioneering, the creating, and the organizing 
 achieved by them and men of their stamp, 
 has played a large part in making this coun- 
 try the marvel of history in rapid develop- 
 ment and commercial expansion. 
 
 Look again at the much-belabored car 
 233
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 lines that are but one branch of the business 
 my father developed a by-product, as it 
 were, of his packing-house ventures and 
 note their influence in just one state 
 Georgia. That state is enjoying a season 
 of prosperity unknown since the war. 
 Higher cotton prices have brought a meas- 
 ure of that prosperity, but the fruitful 
 peach tree must be credited with a share. 
 And the peach tree brings profit to the 
 planter only by means of the refrigerator- 
 car. 
 
 That statement is not too strong by a 
 hair's weight when you consider Georgia. 
 The peach cannot go far to market in quan- 
 tities unless it goes under ice. Georgia has 
 no nearby markets of consequence. Its peo- 
 ple could not profitably grow peaches for 
 market on a large scale if they could not get 
 facilities for shipping under ice. They will 
 all tell you so. And they were encouraged 
 to grow peaches for the larger markets, in 
 the first instance, because they were offered 
 234
 
 CAJB LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 such facilities by the refrigerator-car serv- 
 ice of the private-car lines. 
 
 As a typical instance of what has been 
 done by the private-car lines for peach 
 growers and for the community at large in 
 half a dozen counties of northwestern 
 Georgia, I have in mind a little settlement 
 in Chattooga County. It is tucked away 
 " miles from nowhere" under the shadow of 
 the mountains. For transportation, it de- 
 pends upon a little railroad that is less than 
 one hundred miles long and that has no road 
 but itself to depend upon no alliance with 
 any large system. It is, or was, a country 
 of discouraging clay hills and rock out- 
 crops, scrubby timber and uninviting as- 
 pect. 
 
 The first shipment of peaches out of that 
 community was nine years ago last summer. 
 Summer before last the crop last summer 
 was light that one locality shipped about 
 four hundred car-loads, and those car-loads 
 brought back hundreds of thousands of dol- 
 235
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 lars, net. The little town that forms the 
 chief shipping-point is putting on airs with 
 brick buildings. It has a prosperous bank, 
 whose stockholders boast that it paid thir- 
 teen per cent, the first year of its exist- 
 ence. The entire community is prosperous. 
 Men who were living in cabin-like ' ' shacks ' ' 
 a few years ago are building handsome 
 residences and sending their children away 
 to school. Men who were poor a few 
 years back poor even for north Georgia 
 "crackers" are now well-to-do wealthy 
 as wealth counts among farmers and talk 
 glibly of $10,000 and $12,000 cleared in a 
 season on fifty or sixty acres of peach 
 orchards. Land that was worth no more 
 than $1.00 an acre ten years ago is now 
 held at $8.00 and $10.00 an acre, even with- 
 out peach trees on it; when bearing an 
 orchard it brings three times that amount. 
 
 Fruit and vegetable growing in Georgia 
 was truly an infant industry, a dwarf, in 
 fact, until the private refrigerator-car 
 236
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 lines gave it a chance to grow. Small quan- 
 tities of peaches reached an outside market 
 by express in boxes to Savannah and then 
 to New York and Philadelphia by boat. 
 But there was no life in the business. It 
 was cramped by restricted and expensive 
 shipping facilities. It was not worth the 
 name of an industry. The product was 
 scarcely taken into account by the railroads 
 as an element in the freight producing re- 
 sources of the state. 
 
 In the early '90s the private-car lines 
 went into Georgia and began to show its 
 people how they could reach the fruit mar- 
 kets of the entire country by means of the 
 refrigerator-car service, and land fruits at 
 destination in condition to command a good 
 price. Three or four seasons of experiment 
 with private-car service were so conclusive 
 to the growers and so stimulated the grow- 
 ing of peaches that the railroads were sim- 
 ply overwhelmed by the demand upon them 
 for moving the peach crop. They had to 
 237
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 call on the private-car lines for refrigerator- 
 cars, and then revise schedules, rearrange 
 plans, and make special arrangements for 
 moving the fruit cars. Since that time fruit 
 and vegetable growing has climbed by leaps 
 and bounds to the rank of a great industry, 
 and is still advancing to a higher position. 
 
 Unfortunately there are no accurate data 
 showing how the industry has grown from 
 year to year or showing exactly the point 
 it has reached. Some of the railroads tra- 
 versing the fruit belt have undertaken to 
 tabulate the peach business, but their fig- 
 ures are incomplete. They are sufficient, 
 however, to warrant the statement that 
 fruit and vegetable growing ranks second 
 only to cotton in bringing prosperity to 
 Georgia people, and in earning for Georgia 
 her favorite title of "Empire State of the 
 South." 
 
 These incomplete railroad statistics show 
 that peach growing alone is a considerable 
 industry in more than sixty different coun- 
 238
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ties in Georgia. The state peach-growers' 
 association estimates seventeen million 
 peach trees in their state. Not all are in 
 bearing, but are very near it. In north 
 Georgia, peach trees are planted one hun- 
 dred and sixty to the acre ; in south Georgia 
 as high as one hundred and ninety-six to 
 the acre. The total acreage in the state, 
 therefore, must be in the neighborhood of 
 one hundred thousand acres ; and it is grow- 
 ing all the time. 
 
 This immense peach acreage is divided 
 up among individual growers farmers 
 whose orchards range all the way from 
 five acres to twelve hundred acres. A peach 
 tree in bearing will yield anywhere from 
 one crate to five crates of peaches, accord- 
 ing to its location, its condition and the care 
 given to it. This being so, it is apparent 
 that the peach growing industry, fostered 
 by the private refrigerator-car, is worth 
 literally millions of dollars annually to the 
 state of Georgia. 
 
 239
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 This money is not for a few ; does not go 
 into the treasury of a " trust." It is dis- 
 tributed direct among thousands of indi- 
 vidual growers. To the great majority of 
 peach growers it is the largest part of their 
 annual income; and to a considerable de- 
 gree it is new income, additional income. If 
 it were not received from peaches it would 
 not be received from any product. For the 
 point cannot be over-emphasized that much 
 of the Georgia peach crop is grown on land 
 that was all but worthless and unproductive 
 until planted with peach trees. 
 
 But the benefit to the people from the 
 development of this industry does not stop 
 at the peach grower. Think of the addi- 
 tional millions of money put into circula- 
 tion in each district by the expenditure for 
 labor in the orchard, for the harvesting and 
 handling by laborers and railroad crews, 
 for baskets and crates, for fertilizer, and so 
 on. The fertilizer industry, already a large 
 one in the South, has been stimulated by the 
 240
 
 CAB LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 new fruit and vegetable growing until the 
 railroads are hardly able to handle its prod- 
 uct during the three months in which it 
 must be handled. The effect of all this can 
 hardly be appreciated unless studied at 
 close range. The state is enjoying unpar- 
 alleled prosperity and it is prosperity of the 
 people throughout the country districts like 
 the prosperity we heard of from the West a 
 few years back the farmer building a new 
 house, presenting a piano to his daughter 
 and setting up his son with a young horse 
 and a top buggy. 
 
 Higher priced cotton has been a big ele- 
 ment, but the peach is entitled to a share of 
 the credit. Proof of it! In almost every 
 little town of north Georgia you can see the 
 proof brick and stone buildings built out 
 of peach orchard profits handsome new 
 residences built by men who have made a 
 fortune in peaches and have moved into 
 town from the hills to take life easy and 
 give their children advantages. 
 16 241
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Cantaloupe culture is coming to be an 
 important part of this Georgia develop- 
 ment, thanks to the private car. Statistics 
 on cantaloupes are even less complete than 
 on peaches, but our agents report a rapid 
 growth in the industry. Many farmers in 
 south Georgia are devoting some of their 
 very best land to growing cantaloupes. It 
 requires no stretch of imagination to see 
 cantaloupe growing lead to ventures into 
 other fruit and early vegetable crops for 
 which there is always a demand in northern 
 markets when they can be landed there in 
 good condition and at reasonable expense 
 as they can be by the means of the private 
 refrigerator-car. 
 
 There is a reflex benefit from this 
 diversification of the southern farmers' 
 crop. For years cotton was king, and 
 king-like, lorded so absolutely as to be- 
 come at times disagreeable. Over-pro- 
 duction of cotton sent prices down to the 
 no-profit point. Recent effort has been 
 242
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 to restrict cotton production even to the 
 extent of letting cotton land lie idle and so 
 better the price. This has had some effect. 
 Every acre of cotton land put into fruit and 
 vegetable growing reduces by so much the 
 possible cotton acreage, and helps, by so 
 much restricted production, to boost cotton 
 prices without the wastefulness of land 
 lying idle. 
 
 The packing industry has helped teach 
 the western and northwestern farmer to 
 diversify his product by feeding cattle for 
 beef instead of blindly depending upon 
 wheat only, or corn only, and suffering in 
 years of one-crop failure or over-produc- 
 tion. The private-car-line refrigerator serv- 
 ice is helping teach the southern farmer 
 to diversify by raising the fruits and veg- 
 etables that northern markets want and 
 cannot get elsewhere in sufficient quantities. 
 
 24.,
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 JUGGLING THE FACTS 
 
 NOT long ago the press of the whole 
 country united in tribute to the 
 worthiness of a great merchant who 
 lay dead. 
 
 The immense commercial fabric which 
 Marshall Field left behind him was a monu- 
 ment to the practice of one fixed business 
 rule: "To sell always a good article at a 
 fair price." The private-car-line interests 
 which I represent ask to be judged by no 
 more lenient standard. 
 
 We have been in the refrigeration-serv- 
 ice business for twenty years. We have 
 been successful so successful the demand 
 has required that every dollar earned by 
 the car lines, and more, has had to go back 
 into new and improved equipment and or- 
 ganization to take care of the new business 
 that was made possible by the service. I 
 244
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 do not believe this could have happened if 
 the car lines had not sold a good article at 
 a fair price. 
 
 An article in a recent magazine contains 
 this paragraph: "By giving his business 
 to one railroad, and taking it from another, 
 he (Armour) could almost make or ruin the 
 profits of the companies concerned. Here 
 was the Pere Marquette Railroad, for ex- 
 ample, over which was shipped the bulk of 
 the fruit grown in the rich districts of 
 western Michigan. The Pere Marquette 
 was a weak railroad, hungry for more traf- 
 fic. Armour went to the eager officers of 
 the Pere Marquette and guaranteed to give 
 them forty cars of meat a week, in return 
 for which the Pere Marquette agreed to 
 use none but Armour's fruit-cars for its 
 fruit-shipments. The Pere Marquette had 
 a few refrigerator-cars of its own, with 
 which it served it customers ; but under the 
 new contract it could not supply its own cars 
 to the people along its own lines." 
 245
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 That statement is misleading as a whole 
 and specifically false in detail. The writer 
 of it never would have ventured to make it 
 if he had sought the facts. He could have 
 easily learned them from the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission's records, which are 
 open and accessible to all. Now what are 
 the facts I They are simply as follows : 
 
 The Pere Marquette Railroad undertook, 
 in 1901, to furnish refrigeration for the 
 fruit business along its line, using a few old 
 refrigerator-cars of its own and borrowing 
 from other lines. That season, with its bad 
 service and consequent heavy fruit-losses, 
 is still remembered with a shudder by Mich- 
 igan peach-growers. 
 
 For the following season, 1902, the Pere 
 Marquette Railroad made an experimental 
 contract an exclusive contract with the 
 Armour Car Lines. When that shipping 
 season was over, the Pere Marquette Rail- 
 road officials made inquiry among the 
 growers and shippers as to how they had 
 246
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 been served and how they liked the exclu- 
 sive arrangement. The response was so 
 heartily in favor of the Armour service and 
 the guarantees of the exclusive contract 
 that the Pere Marquette immediately made 
 another exclusive contract with the Armour 
 Car Lines for three seasons. 
 
 The first, or experimental, contract was 
 executed July 18, 1902; the second was exe- 
 cuted on December 23, 1902. 
 
 The meat-carrying contract between the 
 Pere Marquette Railroad and Armour & 
 Co. was executed on August 1, 1904. There- 
 fore, this meat contract, by means of 
 which the writer in question says the fruit 
 contract was extorted from the Pere Mar- 
 quette, teas not made until more than two 
 years after the execution of the first fruit- 
 car contract and nineteen months after the 
 second fruit-ear contract, and there was 
 nothing unusual or "special" in the moat- 
 carrying contract. Other packers made 
 247
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 similar agreements with the Pere Mar- 
 quette at that time in the summer of 1904. 
 
 And right here it should be said that this 
 gross misstatement comes as near the truth 
 as any of the charges brought to show how 
 Armour, as a packer, sandbags the rail- 
 roads into giving his car lines exclusive 
 contracts for the refrigeration of fresh 
 fruits and vegetables. 
 
 Now there is a sequel to the Pere Mar- 
 quette case ; and the sequel should be inter- 
 esting to those whose sympathies have been 
 wrought upon by sensational writers until 
 they mourn the fate of Michigan peach- 
 growers in the clutches of "Armour and his 
 monopoly." It is the more interesting 
 because all orators against the private-car 
 lines in magazines and in Interstate Com- 
 merce hearings must have made the Pere 
 Marquette situation their pet "horrible 
 example.' ' 
 
 The private-car lines' exclusive contract 
 for fruit-refrigeration service on the Pere 
 248
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Marquette Railroad expired in 1905, about 
 the time the road went into the hands of a 
 receiver. That contract was renewed within 
 thirty days by the receiver representing 
 the United States Court. It is an exclusive 
 contract, too. 
 
 The receiver of the Pere Marquette is 
 Hon. Judson Harmon, of Cincinnati, a 
 lawyer of national reputation, who was 
 Attorney-General of the United States in 
 President Cleveland's Cabinet. The court 
 behind him is a United States Court, supe- 
 rior in its powers even to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 It will hardly be alleged, I think, that 
 Judson Harmon, acting as an agent of 
 the United States Court, has made this con- 
 tract as a part of a trade for a haul of 
 "forty cars of meat a week." Nor is this 
 emphatic endorsement by the growers and 
 shippers of that line due, as our enemies 
 may contend, to the fact that the Pere Mar- 
 quette road is in the hands of a receiver. 
 249
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 The fact is, these growers and shippers 
 have stood by us loyally from the first year 
 of our operations in Michigan, and will 
 doubtless do so as long as we continue, as 
 we have in the past, to give them value re- 
 ceived. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to say that 
 Judge Harmon, as receiver, made this con- 
 tract only after he was thoroughly satisfied 
 that it would be the best for the railroad 
 and best for the growers and shippers along 
 its line. His method of satisfying himself 
 is especially interesting in view of the 
 widely circulated statements to the effect 
 that the fruit-grower has been robbed by 
 the private-car lines and is struggling to 
 escape from its clutches. 
 
 The question of getting ready to move 
 next summer's fruit crop came up to Re- 
 ceiver Harmon in the natural course of rail- 
 road administration. 
 
 To determine exactly what ought to be 
 done about it and perhaps moved some- 
 250
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 what by current criticism of private-car 
 lines and their exclusive contract system, 
 especially as to the Pere Marquette Rail- 
 road Judge Harmon ordered a house-to- 
 house canvass, as it were, of the territory 
 concerned. The officials of the road went 
 out along the line, met the growers and 
 shippers at the respective shipping-points, 
 invited frank and outspoken expressions 
 of their experience with the refrigeration 
 service furnished by railroads as well as 
 by private-car lines, and asked what they 
 wished for the coming season. 
 
 The stenographic report of those confer- 
 ences shows that a preference for the con- 
 tinuation of the previous arrangement for 
 private refrigerator-cars operated under 
 the exclusive contract that is alleged to be 
 "throttling the fruit industry" has been 
 and is practically unanimous from one end 
 of the railway to the other. The report 
 abounds in expressions like these: 
 251
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 "The rate is a secondary consideration; 
 quality of service comes first." 
 
 "I prefer the Armour car, at double the 
 price, to any other car we ever had." 
 
 "Deliver us from refrigerator-cars bor- 
 rowed from other railroads! We want 
 cars that we know will come to us clean and 
 in good condition." 
 
 "If the Pere Marquette were sending in 
 their cars free and furnishing ice and all, 
 I would prefer the Armour cars and pay 
 the present rate. ' ' 
 
 The difference between private-car line 
 refrigeration rates in Michigan in 1900, 
 or before, and those subsequent to that 
 year has been the subject of persistent and 
 willful misrepresentation. This juggling 
 of the truth has been the more dishonest 
 because it has sought to justify itself by em- 
 phasizing a technicality. 
 
 The private-car lines' Michigan tariff for 
 1902 was higher than for previous years.
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 The reason for it was this : Prior to 1902 
 the Michigan railroads paid for all the ice 
 used for the initial icing of all fruit-cars 
 before being loaded, for re-icing after being 
 loaded, and for re-icing en route to the East, 
 the heaviest part of the business; the ship- 
 per paid for no ice except that used for re- 
 icing cars en route to the South and West. 
 
 The car lines' tariff, therefore, entirely 
 excluded the cost of the initial icing and re- 
 icing eastward; it covered only the service 
 eastward and only service and re-icing to 
 the South and West. After the first con- 
 tract was made the railroads stopped fur- 
 nishing ice, and the ar lines' tariff then 
 had to be made high enough to cover the 
 new expense (namely, the cost of all ice 
 both for initial icing and re-icing) as well 
 as the service before. This change in rates 
 brought no additional profit to the car lines. 
 
 Free icing at the railroad's expense was 
 never practiced, so far as I know, in con- 
 nection with the fruit business anywhere 
 253
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 but in Michigan. It was discontinued there 
 after the 1900 contract for the simple 
 reason that the railroads could not afford 
 it. The traffic-manager of the Pere Mar- 
 quette, Mr. A. Patriarche, in sworn testi- 
 mony before the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, in June, 1904, made clear the fact 
 that free ice ate up fifty per cent, of the 
 revenue from fruit-shipments. The car 
 lines' part in the change was explicitly 
 stated to the United States Senate's Com- 
 mittee on Interstate Commerce, May 15, 
 1905, by Mr. George B. Robbins, president 
 of the Armour Car Lines, as follows : 
 
 "In 1900 we furnished refrigeration to 
 shippers of Michigan peaches, and under 
 the railroad rule or classification then in 
 effect, the railroad paid us for, or absorbed, 
 the cost of ice both at loading-stations and 
 en route, and our rates were based on these 
 conditions. I cannot recall a similar rule 
 having ever been in effect elsewhere. 
 254
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 "In 1901 or 1902 the Michigan roads 
 changed this rule and discontinued furnish- 
 ing the ice free, and we advanced our 
 charges to cover the additional cost of ice 
 to us. 
 
 "We had nothing whatever to do with 
 this change in rule, and our profit was not 
 increased by the increased charge for the 
 refrigeration over the previous abnormally 
 low one. The matter is one entirely be- 
 tween the road and the shippers and is not 
 chargeable to the car lines in any way." 
 
 By cunningly exploiting the rate-advance, 
 which was due entirely to the railroads' dis- 
 continuance of free ice, as has been shown, 
 the car lines' critics seek to smother this 
 further fact. 
 
 Michigan peach-growers have prospered 
 under the good service furnished by the 
 exclusive contract and full refrigeration- 
 tariff as they never prospered before; they 
 have said so ; and, as we have seen from 
 255
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Receiver Harmon's inquiry, the peach- 
 growers along the Pere Marquette heartily 
 favor a continuance of the service. 
 
 It is pertinent to the rate question to 
 reiterate this statement: In practically 
 every section where the Armour cars oper- 
 ate under exclusive contracts, refrigera- 
 tion-rates are lower than they were before 
 such contracts were made, and as fast as 
 economies can be effected in organization 
 and management, and as business increases, 
 rates are further reduced. This policy 
 has been consistently pursued and will con- 
 tinue to be. 
 
 This shows the way in which, from start 
 to finish, the magazine agitators have made 
 their case by unsupported personal state- 
 ments cunningly selected half-truths and 
 imaginings dressed up to look like facts, 
 and all trimmed to fit preconceived theory. 
 It is clearly impossible, for reasons of 
 space, to consider all their charges. 
 
 It is worth while, however, to touch 
 256
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 briefly upon a few other facts that have 
 been persistently and adroitly garbled 
 by these writers. 
 
 Throughout the studied efforts to "make 
 a case" against the private-car lines, facts 
 have been juggled or wantonly suppressed 
 to give these impressions: 
 
 That the only expense attached to refrig- 
 eration service is the cost of ice; that the 
 car lines secure exclusive contracts with 
 railroads by some secret, underhand 
 method, or by coercing weak railroads, and 
 then arbitrarily "charge what they like." 
 
 That the largest, best-equipped, and best- 
 operated railways furnish refrigeration 
 service "of the highest character" at lower 
 rates than the car lines do. 
 
 That the refrigeration-service charge is 
 "extortion," as applied to the fruit and 
 vegetable grower, and a "burden" upon 
 the "perishable food-supply of the nation." 
 
 Let us deal specifically with these mis- 
 representations. 
 
 IT 257
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Private-car-line refrigeration service, I 
 repeat, is not an ice business ; it is a highly 
 specialized service a typical product of 
 this specializing age. In the professions 
 law, medicine, engineering the specialist 
 commands the highest price for his work. 
 That business house in manufacturing 
 or in merchandising is most successful 
 whose department-heads have best learned 
 how to specialize. 
 
 Why apply a different standard to re- 
 frigeration service? There was a time in 
 the railroad business when passengers and 
 freight were carried in the same train. The 
 freight-train of to-day is better, faster, and 
 safer than the mixed passenger and freight 
 train of former days; the "regular" train 
 is still better; the "limited" is better yet, 
 and a ride on it costs more. 
 
 Specializing nothing but specializing, 
 in car-building, engine-building, track- 
 building and operation has produced the 
 Chicago-to-New York eighteen-hour train. 
 258
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 There is as much difference between good 
 refrigerator-cars and bad refrigerator-cars, 
 between good refrigeration service and 
 poor refrigeration service, as there is be- 
 tween the good and poor in any kind of 
 business. As in other lines of business, too, 
 a good refrigeration service costs more 
 than poor service much more and is 
 worth more worth much more than the 
 extra cost. 
 
 It is, therefore, misleading, not to say 
 dishonest, to assume that all refrigerator- 
 cars and all kinds of refrigeration service 
 are alike, to compare rates on that basis 
 and to call the higher rate "extortionate" 
 without taking into account the service 
 value given for that rate. As well say that 
 every suit of clothes is equally good and all 
 suits ought to be sold at the same price. 
 
 Let me recapitulate, briefly, the main 
 points of the service : 
 
 Refrigeration service of the first class 
 the kind private-car lines furnish must be 
 259
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 thoroughly organized and manned by spe- 
 cialists, and must be comprehensive in its 
 field of operation, equipped to give the 
 shipper service in and to any part of the 
 country. 
 
 Its cars must be specially designed for 
 carrying highly perishable berries and 
 fruit; it must keep those cars in the best 
 possible condition, and permit them to be 
 used but rarely and discreetly for carrying 
 anything but fruit, berries, or vegetables. 
 
 It must maintain, the year round, an ex- 
 pert and expensive force of men to prepare 
 in detail, and long in advance, for the car- 
 supply, ice-supply, in most districts brac- 
 ing and stripping lumber, labor, etc., to 
 meet the varying demands of each season 
 in each district where it operates. 
 
 It must carry a still larger force to man- 
 age and supervise loading and icing sta- 
 tions during the shipping-season, men who 
 receive traveling-expenses as well as sal- 
 ary, and who are idle at the expense of the 
 260
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 car lines practically three months in the 
 year. 
 
 It must maintain throughout the country 
 icing-stations, icing-inspectors, and men to 
 handle the ice for prompt re-icing of cars 
 and whole trains in transit. 
 
 It must maintain car-building and car- 
 repair shops near all the large fruit dis- 
 tricts, and often gangs of repairers in the 
 field, for hardly a car makes a trip without 
 needing some repairs. The employees in 
 the field are, in most cases, practical fruit 
 men as well as refrigeration men, who can 
 show the inexperienced grower how to han- 
 dle his crop. 
 
 And, finally but by no means least the 
 car line must assume the risk. It must buy 
 and store great quantities of ice and organ- 
 ize its force of employees before the first 
 fruit-tree blossoms. It may make all the 
 extensive preparations for a record crop 
 that turns out a total failure and converts 
 preparations into a dead loss. 
 261
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 On the other hand, it may prepare, on the 
 best estimates obtainable, for an average 
 crop and be called upon to handle a phe- 
 nomenal one ; and if it falls short of enough 
 cars, ice, or men to handle an unexpectedly 
 heavy or fast-ripening crop, it must stand 
 the consequences. 
 
 At this writing we are put to extreme 
 measures, because of the open winter, to 
 secure an ice-supply for next season. At 
 one northern point alone, we are spending 
 one hundred thousand dollars for an ice- 
 machine to meet this emergency. Again, 
 we are buying machine-ice where we should 
 have natural ice, and shipping it from re- 
 mote points. All this heavy expense 
 involves no advance of refrigeration-rates. 
 The burden falls on the car lines, not on the 
 growers. 
 
 Without the guaranty of an exclusive 
 
 contract, as I have tried to make clear, the 
 
 private refrigerator-car line could not 
 
 afford to assume the risks of this business; 
 
 262
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 neither could it afford to furnish the serv- 
 ice at the price it charges. Experience 
 has demonstrated that to the satisfaction 
 of growers, shippers, and railroads. Ex- 
 perience has demonstrated, too, that the 
 exclusive contract is as much a benefit to 
 the car lines' customers as it is to the car 
 lines. It is a guaranty to the grower, the 
 shipper, and the railroad that when the 
 fruit crop ripens in a given territory there 
 will be an ample supply of first-class refrig- 
 erator-cars to carry the fruit in, and an or- 
 ganized refrigeration service to protect the 
 fruit on its way to any and every market. 
 The refrigerator-car line and the exclu- 
 sive contract exist solely because they have 
 been proven to be an economic necessity in 
 the handling of perishable fruits and vege- 
 tables. They owe nothing to favoritism 
 and none is practiced by means of them, 
 directly or indirectly, for or against any 
 railroad, car line, grower, shipper, or re- 
 ceiver of shipments. 
 
 263
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Some of the most important contracts 
 held by the Armour Car Lines are in that 
 great fruit belt extending through Florida, 
 Georgia, South Carolina, and North Caro- 
 lina, where the railroads could not possibly 
 be coerced by Armour & Co.'s " great 
 power over the railroads" as "a great ship- 
 per." The railroads there with which ex- 
 clusive contracts have been made for years 
 are compel big lines: the Southern, the Sea- 
 board Air Line and the Atlantic Coast Line, 
 the Central of Georgia, the Western and 
 Atlantic, and the Georgia Southern and 
 Florida, and so on. How would you force 
 the same kind of an exclusive contract from 
 each of three competing lines by threat- 
 ening to divert freight from one to 
 another 1 
 
 Another point: Armour is not a " great 
 shipper" over any of the railroads in that 
 territory. The meat and provision ship- 
 ments that go over these roads are not 
 heavy through shipments on a wholesale 
 264
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 basis for export, for redistribution, etc. 
 but are the only comparatively small ship- 
 ments to supply local consumption in a 
 territory whose largest city has a popula- 
 tion of only one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand. Shipments of that character hardly 
 give Armour "great power over the rail- 
 roads." 
 
 Now let us see what there is to the com- 
 plaint that the exclusive contract gives the 
 private-car line a "monopoly" and enables 
 it to "charge what it likes." 
 
 A refrigerator-car line does acquire, by 
 an exclusive contract, all the refrigeration 
 business arising during the life of the con- 
 tract on the particular railroad contracted 
 with, and acquires it for the reasons 
 already explained; but this contract no 
 more creates a monopoly, in the accepted 
 meaning of the word, than does the con- 
 tract under which one paper-mill, for exam- 
 ple, supplies all the paper of certain grades 
 used by the United States government. 
 263
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 The refrigerator-car line's contract, like 
 the paper-mill's contract, is simply an 
 agreement that certain well-defined serv- 
 ice shall be performed during a certain 
 period at a certain price, and in accordance 
 with specifically described conditions. The 
 contract is open to competition before it 
 is executed. The specifications or condi- 
 tions as to car-supply, ice-supply, re-icing, 
 etc., are carefully drawn to meet the re- 
 quirements of the shippers and the rail- 
 roads. Maximum rates are named, it is 
 specified that the rates shall be reasonable, 
 and the car line is not left a chance to 
 "charge what it likes." Contract condi- 
 tions having been thus prescribed, the rail- 
 road naturally lets the refrigeration con- 
 tract to the car line that is best able to carry 
 out the contract conditions. Right here I 
 may explain that in many cases, and when- 
 ever conditions warrant it, the rates 
 charged are less than the maximum rates 
 named in the contract. If rates should be 
 266
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 made too high so high as to be burden- 
 some the railroad, which ought to be self- 
 ishly interested in encouraging its ship- 
 pers, has the remedy in its own hands. It 
 can annul the contract for cause. 
 
 The greater the quantity of fruit grown, 
 the greater the volume of business for re- 
 frigerator-cars. No car line could afford to 
 make oppressive rates that would discour- 
 age and diminish fruit-growing. And if the 
 car line were so foolish as to do that, could 
 the railroad afford to let it be done and so 
 rob itself of freight-revenue from fruit- 
 shipments '! 
 
 In view of the facts I have stated as to 
 hew car lines' exclusive contracts are 
 made, the logic of your own business expe- 
 rience ought to make it plain that a car line 
 cannot "charge what it likes," and, if it 
 could, would not desire to charge unreason- 
 able rates. 
 
 Now for a few facts on the broad state- 
 ments and broader insinuations to the effect 
 '267
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 that certain strong railroads too strong 
 to be influenced by the power of "a great 
 shipper" furnish better refrigeration at 
 lower rates than private-car lines do. 
 
 Certain railroads do operate their own 
 refrigerator-cars, but chiefly in the dairy 
 products and produce business. The pri- 
 vate-car lines which are under fire do berry 
 and fruit refrigeration chiefly, which is en- 
 tirely different from the refrigeration re- 
 quired for dairy products and produce. 
 Consequently, comparison of the two, as to 
 rates or otherwise, is unfair. 
 
 Only a very few railroads furnish refrig- 
 eration on a large scale, or pretend to fur- 
 nish inspection and re-icing after shipments 
 leave their own lines. Most of the few 
 roads which do this, as the Santa Fe and 
 the Gould Lines, maintain a separate re- 
 frigeration service organization like that of 
 the private-car lines and charge relatively 
 the same rates that private-car lines do. 
 The railroads which make a lower refrig- 
 268
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 eration-rate do this business at a loss. I 
 believe they would so state if asked. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad and the 
 Gould Lines have been mentioned as having 
 refused to make exclusive contracts with 
 private-car lines, the insinuation being that 
 they were strong enough to defy "the octo- 
 pus. ' ' 
 
 The private-car lines have no formal con- 
 tract with the Pennsylvania Railroad, but 
 one of them for years has handled most of 
 the berries and fruit refrigeration on that 
 road, especially in Delaware, where the 
 most of the Pennsylvania Railroad's fruit 
 and berry traffic originates. 
 
 And that same private-car line has been 
 asked by the railroad to take care of the 
 berry and fruit refrigeration on the Penn- 
 sylvania for the season of 1906. Nearly all 
 of the Pennsylvania's own refrigerator 
 cars are used for dairy products and pro- 
 duce. 
 
 The Gould Lines, as railroads, do not own 
 269
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 any refrigerator cars; they do own the 
 American Refrigerator Transit Company, 
 which is a separate corporation and is oper- 
 ated just as the Armour and other private- 
 car lines are. Most of these American 
 Refrigerator Transit cars are also used for 
 dairy products and produce. 
 
 One Gould Line, the Denver and Rio 
 Grande, had an exclusive contract with a 
 private-car line which expired in 1904 or 
 in 1905; the American Refrigerator Tran- 
 sit cars then replaced Armour cars on the 
 Denver and Rio Grande for handling Colo- 
 rado's large and groving fruit business. 
 A short time ago the old exclusive con- 
 tract between the Armour Car Lines and 
 the Denver and Rio Grande, a Gould line, 
 was renewed at the request of that railroad 
 and of the growers and shippers along its 
 lines. So in 1906 private-car-line refrig- 
 erator-cars will replace Gould cars on a 
 Gould railroad. 
 
 These facts ought to satisfy the most cap- 
 270
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 tious that there is no honesty in the state- 
 ment or insinuation that railroads furnish 
 hetter refrigeration than private-car lines 
 do, or furnish as good service at lower 
 rates, or that they are forced to take our 
 service. The testimony of railroad officials 
 who have had to give special attention to 
 refrigeration is practically all to the con- 
 trary. 
 
 The railroads on which the great bulk of 
 highly perishable fruit business originates 
 the Southern Pacific, Pere Marquette, the 
 Atlantic Coast Line, the Central of Georgia, 
 and other southeastern lines long since 
 adopted the private-car line service and 
 facilities under exclusive contracts, to the 
 better satisfaction of the growers. 
 
 The consumer, too, has a vital interest in 
 this private-car line question. Every city 
 housewife of moderate means knows that 
 the season during which she can have fresh 
 fruits and vegetables on her table is months 
 271
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 longer now than it used to be six to ten 
 years ago. 
 
 Then only the very rich could disregard 
 the season by disregarding expense in sup- 
 plying the table; but families of small or 
 moderate incomes had to get their "fresh" 
 fruit, berries, and vegetables out of cans 
 for a large part of the year. 
 
 That condition was not changed until 
 the refrigerator-car service, developed and 
 made efficient by the specializing of the pri- 
 vate-car lines, opened the way for growers 
 in all parts of the country to grow and 
 market early fruits and vegetables at a 
 profit. 
 
 The truth of this will appeal to any city 
 resident, whether a member of a family or 
 a patron of a boarding-house, hotel, or res- 
 taurant. The moderately-circumstanced in 
 all cities had no fresh fruits and vegeta- 
 bles until crops ripened at near-by points. 
 
 In Chicago, they waited for strawberries 
 until they came from Indiana and southern 
 272
 
 CAR LINES AND TTTE PEOPLE 
 
 Illinois, and did not revel in them until the 
 Michigan crop ripened; New York's eco- 
 nomical housewives waited for Delaware's 
 crop. 
 
 The "popular price" restaurant or hotel 
 did not pretend to carry lettuce, fresh 
 tomatoes, and such tender vegetables in the 
 midwinter menu ; if they appeared at all in 
 the winter, they appeared only as occa- 
 sional novelties a stroke of enterprise by 
 the proprietor at a fancy price. 
 
 Patrons of all such restaurants and 
 hotels in the large cities now have lettuce, 
 fresh tomatoes, etc., on the daily bill of fare 
 practically the year round and at reason- 
 able prices. 
 
 Take the cantaloupe, for example; until 
 within a decade it could be had for only 
 a very short period and only at a high price. 
 To find one on the market as early as the 
 Fourth of July was a novelty. Now Florida 
 cantaloupes come into the market in the lat- 
 ter part of May and the development of 
 18 273
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 cantaloupe-growing in favorable sections, 
 from Delaware to Colorado and California, 
 keeps them coming to market all summer 
 at prices that make them an every-day deli- 
 cacy in families which used to deem them a 
 luxury produced only for the very rich. 
 
 In 1897 it was estimated that not more 
 than four hundred cars of cantaloupes were 
 grown in the whole country. The crop of 
 1905, after only eight years of development, 
 was figured at nearly seven thousand car- 
 loads. A section of the Salton Desert, Cali- 
 fornia, where the private-car lines have 
 ice-houses below the sea-level, and where 
 the temperature often rises to one hundred 
 and twenty-five degrees, had sixty-four 
 acres of cantaloupes four years ago; this 
 season it will have two thousand, five hun- 
 dred acres of cantaloupes. 
 
 The practical, frugal housewife of to-day 
 
 does only a fraction of the "putting-up" 
 
 and preserving that she did ten years ago. 
 
 Why go to that trouble! She can supply 
 
 274
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 her table better and for the same, or less, 
 sum of money because she gets fresh fruits 
 and vegetables practically all the year. I 
 am not saying that cost of living has been 
 reduced by this fruit and vegetable devel- 
 opment due to refrigeration service; but 
 I do say that thousands and millions of per- 
 sons are able, by reason of that develop- 
 ment, to live better for the same money. 
 
 L'To
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THEORY VS. CONDITION. 
 
 NOW for a word of explanation and 
 emphasis as to private ownership of 
 meat refrigerator-cars. There is, it 
 seems to me, every reason why the packers 
 should own the refrigerator-cars in which 
 their meats are shipped and no reason why 
 they should not. This may appear to the 
 layman to be a very broad statement, but I 
 believe that a knowledge of the facts in- 
 volved will bring any fair-minded business 
 man to this view of the ease. 
 
 The general public supposes that, because 
 railroads are in the business of carrying 
 freight, all an intending shipper has to do 
 is to ask for a freight-car and it will be 
 eagerly and promptly brought to the ship- 
 ping-point ready to receive its cargo. But 
 men who have had experience as shippers 
 276
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 know that this is merely a theory, not an 
 actual condition. The facts are that the 
 railroad is constantly trying to get along 
 with as few freight-cars as possible and still 
 handle its traffic: its effort is to handle a 
 maximum volume of freight with a mini- 
 mum equipment of cars. 
 
 Now what is the inevitable resr.lt of this 
 kind of thing ! A constant shortage of cars 
 which becomes especially acute at seasons 
 of general freight movement. Any regular 
 shipper in any line of business using freight- 
 cars furnished by the railroad will tell you 
 that one of the most serious avenues 
 through which his business is made to suf- 
 fer is that of failure of the railroad to fur- 
 nish him cars when they are needed. He 
 will tell you that this is not an exceptional 
 emergency but a chronic and discouraging 
 problem. 
 
 Tf the writers who devote their talent to 
 attacking the packers are to be believed, the 
 railroads are so eager to please these "fav- 
 277
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 ored shippers ' ' that they would go to almost 
 any length rather than incur the displeasure 
 of these ''freight barons." But how does 
 the car supply problem work out in actual 
 practice as between the railroads and the 
 packers ! 
 
 Eight weeks ago from this writing the 
 Armour Fertilizer Works made a requisi- 
 tion for forty freight-cars to haul one thou- 
 sand tons of fertilizer material from a cer- 
 tain point in Tennessee. Of those forty 
 cars just three were actually furnished in 
 a period of eight weeks, and a large plant 
 dependent on the material was shut down! 
 
 This is not an exceptional occurrence. On 
 the contrary, it is a routine circumstance. 
 Right at the same time three ocean 
 schooners chartered by Armour & Co. 
 for phosphate rock loading were tied 
 up at the Tampa docks waiting for rock 
 which could not be shipped from the mines 
 owing to the railway's inability to furnish 
 cars. This delay in getting freight-cars 
 278
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 caused a demurrage charge of $340.00 a 
 day. 
 
 How does all this apply to the problem of 
 the private ownership of meat refrigerator- 
 cars! Most directly and pertinently! There 
 are some kinds of shipping where a delay is 
 not a serious matter, although it is always 
 annoying and expensive to the shipper. 
 
 On the other hand, there are businesses 
 where delay in shipping is simply fatal, 
 where any element that interferes with reg- 
 ular and practically instantaneous shipping 
 must be eliminated from the situation at 
 almost any cost, for the business cannot con- 
 tinue under that kind of handicap. Com- 
 mon sense will at once indicate to any 
 reader that the packing business belongs to 
 this class. Not only this, but it is probably 
 the most sensitive to this element of all 
 industries. 
 
 Fresh meats must be shipped regularly 
 and promptly. The world demands its 
 meats every day and to place its supply at 
 279
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 the mercy of an unreliable supply of cars in 
 which to ship it would at once subject the 
 consumers as well as the packers of meats 
 to a peril not to be countenanced. To delay 
 the shipment of meats, when ready to ship, 
 means deterioration and loss. Not only 
 must there be a reliable source of supply, 
 but the cars must be clean and in the best of 
 repair. Fruit or dairy-cars will not do. 
 They are not safe. Meat must be shipped 
 with every safeguard the public health de- 
 mands it. Railroad administration is not 
 efficient enough to guarantee this. 
 
 The only way in which the packers can 
 possibly protect the public and themselves 
 from the hardships incident upon delayed 
 shipments is to have their own refrigerator- 
 cars which are absolutely subject to their 
 own control and which cannot be diverted to 
 other uses. They must know that they are 
 to have at their beck and call, every day in 
 the year, enough cars to handle their busi- 
 280
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ness and to handle it without delay or with- 
 out danger of delay. 
 
 If I have not already given sufficient sup- 
 port to my statement that the railroads are 
 not to be depended upon for a prompt sup- 
 ply of freight-cars, it is for no lack of defi- 
 nite cases in point. 
 
 In the year 1904 a large southern fer- 
 tilizer maker manufactured, sold, and held 
 in hand shipping instructions for the move- 
 ment of 5,000 car-loads of fertilizer which 
 could not be shipped because the railroads 
 failed to furnish the necessary cars in time 
 to get the fertilizer on the ground when the 
 land was being prepared for the cotton 
 crop. There were 100,000 tons of this fer- 
 tilizer which, in the natural course of 
 events, would have produced about 134,000 
 bales of cotton, worth more than $8,000,000, 
 not to speak of $1,600,000 worth of cotton- 
 seed oil and meal. Rather a heavy forfeit 
 for the failure of the railroads to furnish 
 sufficient freight-cars! 
 281
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 However, I am certain that my conten- 
 tion will not be questioned by any shipper 
 who has occasion, at all seasons, to make 
 requisition upon any railroad for any con- 
 siderable number of freight-cars. No mat- 
 ter to how high a figure his annual freight 
 shijmients may climb, he will be found 
 among those who surfer from the undepend- 
 able supply of freight-cars and because 
 this difficulty is inherent in the system of 
 railroad operation as it is now practiced 
 and as it must be practiced for many years 
 to come. Some of the highest salaries in the 
 railroad world are paid to men who best 
 approximate the solution of this difficulty 
 at a minimum of expense. They are able 
 executive men and accomplish wonders un- 
 der the adverse conditions imposed upon 
 them, but these conditions are such that no 
 amount of executive genius can make the 
 supply of freight-cars from a railroad any- 
 thing but erratic and undependable. So 
 impossible is it for railroad traffic men to 
 282
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 cope with these conditions that we invari- 
 ably make it a rule to anticipate our ship- 
 ments of fertilizer and other common 
 freight by notifying the railroads thirty to 
 sixty days in advance of our requirements ; 
 but notwithstanding our precautions, we 
 are invariably confronted with car short- 
 ages, ranging from ten to thirty-five cars 
 per day at different plants. 
 
 2S3
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AS TO EXPORT BUSINESS 
 
 AVERY important side of the packing 
 industry, and one that is often over- 
 looked by the layman, is the export 
 business. Without a comprehensive view 
 of the origin, extent, and consequences of 
 our foreign trade in meats, meat products, 
 and meat animals, it is impossible to arrive 
 at a clear understanding of the mutual rela- 
 tions between packers, live stock raisers, 
 and the general public. 
 
 The export business in meats and meat 
 animals has been a great factor in opening 
 the way for that development of the live 
 stock industry which has completely revolu- 
 tionized the character of stock raising and 
 farming throughout the West; it has re- 
 acted beneficially upon the agricultural in- 
 terests of the entire country; it has played 
 284
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 a part, too, in giving the American people, 
 as a whole, better meats at lower prices 
 than are enjoyed by any other people on 
 earth. 
 
 It is the export business that absorbs the 
 surplus live stock grown by American cat- 
 tlemen and farmers, and absorbs those 
 grades of both cattle and meats for which 
 there is but a limited demand at home. The 
 effect of this is twofold. It steadies and sup- 
 ports the home market for live stock, and it 
 moderates the prices of those meats which 
 the American consumer demands; because, 
 without a foreign market for those parts of 
 the beef carcass which the American does 
 not take, the slaughterer would be com- 
 pelled to ask a higher price for the choice 
 cuts in order to make up for loss on the 
 other parts. If this export business were 
 taken away, or even reduced, the effect of 
 it would be directly felt, not only by 
 the large ranchers and stock raisers, 
 but by every farmer who raises a steer, 
 285
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 sheep, or hog for market, and by every one 
 of the hundreds of thousands who partici- 
 pate by their labor in the immense live stock 
 and meat industry. 
 
 To appreciate the national importance of 
 this export business in meats, meat products 
 and meat animals in dollars, we must com- 
 pare it with other branches of our export 
 trade. The total exports of the United 
 States last year (1905) embracing every 
 kind of domestic product sold abroad, the 
 products of agriculture, manufactures, min- 
 ing, forests, fisheries and the many smaller 
 miscellaneous products reached the splen- 
 did total of $1,599,420,539. Of this enor- 
 mous total, the meat and live stock industry 
 alone furnished about fifteen per cent., or 
 more than one-seventh. 
 
 We are accustomed to boast that " Amer- 
 ica feeds the world." The phrase suggests, 
 to most people, T believe, our corn fields and 
 wheat fields and milling centres. They are 
 all great tremendous and we export an 
 286
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 enormous quantity of breadstuffs; but 
 measured in dollars and cents, breadstuff 
 exports rank away below meat exports. 
 Where we sell abroad $43,000,000 worth of 
 meat animals and over $190,000,000 of 
 meats and meat products, we sell only $154,- 
 000,000 worth of breadstuffs. We are great 
 copper producers, yet we export of copper 
 and manufactures of copper only $85,000,- 
 000 a year. We have the richest iron mines 
 of the world and the greatest iron and steel 
 mills, but our exports of iron and steel and 
 the manufactures thereof fall more than 
 $90,000,000 short of our meat exports 
 $143,000,000 of iron and steel as against 
 nearly $234,000,000 of live stock and meats. 
 The export of meat animals, aggregating 
 $42,974,945, was divided as follows : 
 
 Kind. Head. Value. 
 
 Cattle 571,153 $41,007,375 
 
 Hogs 82,849 811,918 
 
 Sheej 191,030 1,155,642 
 
 $42,974,935 
 
 287
 
 THE PACKERS. THE PRIVATE 
 
 The exports of meats and meat products 
 used as food including, of course, butter, 
 cheese and milk, for which a market has 
 been made in connection with meats ag- 
 gregate $190,660,703, divided as follows: 
 
 Pounds. Dollars. 
 
 Fresh beef 254,360,198 $23,246,792 
 
 Canned beef 75,208,036 7,423,071 
 
 Beef, salted, pickled, etc. . . . 73,984,544 4,268,773 
 
 Tallow 81,702,816 3,893,986 
 
 Bacon 297,815,453 28,236,990 
 
 Hams 207,244,526 21,358,567 
 
 Pork, fresh, salt, pickled, 
 
 canned, etc 161,716,505 13,287,057 
 
 Lard 701,679,162 54,881,748 
 
 Lard compounds and substi- 
 tutes 66,955,736 3,951,712 
 
 Mutton 577,636 52,238 
 
 Oleo oil and oleomargarine .. 192,262,668 15,503,967 
 
 Sausage and sausage meats .. 6,964,139 756,857 
 
 Sausage casings 2,631,193 
 
 Poultry and game 791,930 
 
 All other canned meats 1,817,786 
 
 All other meats 2,791,962 
 
 Butter 16,194,483 2,876,628 
 
 Cheese 8,229,756 935,934 
 
 Milk 1,953,512 
 
 288
 
 CAR LTNES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Total meats and provisions . . $190,660,703 
 
 Total meat animals 42,974,935 
 
 Grand total of meat animals 
 
 and animal food products $233,635,638 
 
 American packers have done practically 
 all of the work that has gone into making 
 the foreign market for this immense total. 
 They have had to do the pioneering, the 
 promoting, the fostering and the hard in- 
 dustrial fighting. It has been uphill fight- 
 ing, too, in the fact of prejudice, jealousy, 
 self interest, and hostile legislation both at 
 home and abroad. Business interests and 
 the political interests that cater to them 
 have been banded together in more than 
 one foreign country to put up the bars 
 against American meats. Similar opposi- 
 tion, with less reason for its existence, has 
 been encountered at home. But the Amer- 
 ican packers have gone on steadily winning 
 the way for American products in the face 
 of prejudice and unreasonable trade restric- 
 tions. They were actuated by self interest, 
 19 289
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 of course ; but that does not detract from the 
 value of the thing accomplished. Intelli- 
 gent self interest directed along industrial 
 and commercial channels the impulse to 
 get on in the world have made this coun- 
 try what it is. 
 
 The period of unwarranted and unintel- 
 ligent criticism of the packers through 
 which we are now passing directly affects 
 this very large export element in our 
 national prosperity. Every time an Amer- 
 ican sensation-monger, political agitator or 
 writer for the "yellow" periodicals seeks 
 to attract an audience by attacking the 
 packers, he aims a blow at the entire live 
 stock and meat producing industry of the 
 United States at every cattleman, hog 
 raiser and sheep grower, and every person 
 engaged in the meat producing and meat 
 distributing business. Every such utter- 
 ance gives the foreigner just that much 
 more ammunition with which to fight off 
 American exports. Senseless and utterly 
 290
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 false statements as to the cleanliness and 
 wholesomeness of American meats has 
 had a direct influence, as I shall show in 
 more detail later, upon increasing the re- 
 strictions imposed upon importation of 
 American meats into foreign countries. But 
 first let us examine the relation of the ex- 
 port business to home industry. 
 
 To get a clear idea of how this immense 
 export business has come into existence 
 and of what it means to the entire agricul- 
 tural and live stock raising population, it is 
 necessary to go back some distance in the 
 history of our country and note the various 
 changes in the growth of the cattle and live 
 stock industry. 
 
 Previous to the development of the pack- 
 ing business in Chicago there was nothing 
 but a local market for beef cattle in any part 
 of this country. The influence of the pack- 
 ing business in broadening the market until 
 now it embraces the whole world has been 
 clearly set forth in a recent work under- 
 291
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 taken by authority, and under the auspices, 
 of the National Live Stock Association. 
 This history of the live stock industry treats 
 particularly of the development of cattle 
 raising in the West, taking Texas as the 
 starting point, because Texas was the place 
 where cattle raising on a large scale, as we 
 know it to-day, had its birth. 
 
 Texas became known as the great cattle 
 state in the '50s. In their efforts to find 
 more than a local market, Texans under- 
 took the experiment of driving cattle all the 
 way to the new California gold fields, where 
 the food supply was short. They also 
 shipped beef steers by steamship to New 
 Orleans and to Mobile, which were then de- 
 veloping something of a live stock market. 
 In the later '50s they began reaching out for 
 northern markets, driving their herds into 
 Missouri, sometimes as far as St. Louis, and 
 once as far as Quincy, Illinois. Ten and fif- 
 teen dollars the head was considered an ex- 
 292
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 cellent price in those days for choice se- 
 lected beef steers. 
 
 The panic of 1857 gave a severe setback 
 to the cattle business of that time, and the 
 war, which came on before the country had 
 recovered from the panic, continued to keep 
 down this industry in the south and south- 
 west. It commenced to revive immediately 
 after the war; apparently stimulated, as 
 nearly as the records of those days indicate, 
 by the period of railroad building which set 
 in soon after the war was over. 
 
 It is interesting, in view of what has been 
 said in recent days about cattle prices, to 
 compare the prices of now with the prices 
 realized then, when returning prosperity 
 was giving cattle raising one of its first 
 booms. A writer of the period tells how a 
 friend went to a herd of 3,500 beeves and 
 bought 600, taking his pick of the lot at 
 $6.00 the head. Then he took his choice of 
 600 out of what remained at $3.00 the head. 
 The average price paid for 1,200 picked 
 293
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 beeves, selected from 3,500, was $4.50 the 
 head. But Texas was still raising too many 
 cattle for the limited market of that time. 
 The ease with which cattle could be pas- 
 tured all the year round on the open ranges 
 in a section that had little or no snow en- 
 couraged such a multiplication of herds 
 that there was practically no profit in the 
 business. Some of the Texas ranchers, even 
 that early, adopted the method of driving 
 their herds north until they reached a rail- 
 road and then shipping to Chicago. But 
 Chicago was only a local market at its best 
 and could not take care of much more than 
 the natural inflow of cattle from the sur- 
 rounding territory in Illinois and other 
 nearby states. 
 
 The cattleman of the southwest, on 
 reaching Chicago in the early '60s, had to 
 sell at prices that were little if any better 
 than he could have got hundreds of miles 
 nearer home; or he conld make arrange- 
 ment with the Chicago slaughter houses to 
 294
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 kill and pack his stock on his own account. 
 Packing at that time meant converting cat- 
 tle into salt or barreled beef. The by-prod- 
 ucts all went to the slaughter house. This 
 method of disposing of his cattle was 
 usually the least satisfactory of all to the 
 southwestern cattleman. 
 
 The next step was the opening of the cat- 
 tle shipping market at Abilene, Kansas. 
 The old Kansas Pacific Railroad, now a 
 part of the Union Pacific, extended its line 
 late in 1867 to Abilene and that place im- 
 mediately became an important shipping 
 point. Tn the fall of 1867, immediately after 
 the Abilene market was opened, 35,000 head 
 of cattle were disposed of there, which was 
 a large number for that time. 
 
 But the cattleman was not yet out of the 
 woods. There was a prejudice against beef 
 from the ranges, which was all classified as 
 Texas beef. Early adventurers into the 
 business of shipping cattle East from Abi- 
 lene found this out to their sorrow. It is 
 295
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 related that the second shipment that ever 
 left Abilene consisted of some 1,900 head of 
 beef cattle which had been bought at about 
 $20.00 per head and shipped to Chicago. 
 There was no market at Chicago, so the 
 owner took his cattle on to Albany, which 
 was then an important eastern market. 
 There he sold his herd for $300.00 less than 
 he had paid in freight. The venture stood 
 him a dead loss of the $17,500.00 he had 
 paid for the lot and $300.00 more paid for 
 freight than he received, a total of $17,- 
 800.00 on the loss side of his ledger, to say 
 nothing of his time and his own expenses. 
 
 By 1870 the demand had picked up a 
 little and that year it is related there was a 
 good market at Abilene, good beeves sell- 
 ing for around $20.00 a head. The market 
 was helped somewhat, probably, by a rate 
 war between the railroads, during which 
 freight on live cattle went down to $1.00 a 
 head from western points to Chicago and 
 nothing from Chicago to New York. But 
 296
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 there was a reaction in 1871 and higher 
 freight to pay, with cattle still coming in 
 from the southwest in response to the stim- 
 ulation of the year before. Out of the ex- 
 periences of that year came the practice of 
 sending cattle from the south and south- 
 west to the northern ranges to be finished 
 and rounded out for the market. 
 
 When the Jay Cooke failure and the 
 panic of 1873 came along, the bottom 
 dropped out of the cattle market. The 
 two following years, 1874 and 1875, 
 were also very dull. Conditions were re- 
 flected in the records that have come down 
 to us of the greatly reduced number driven 
 north from Texas for further feeding. 
 From more than 400,000 head sent north in 
 1873 the number dropped to 155,000 in 1874 
 and to 150,000 in 1875. These were entirely 
 beef cattle practically ready for the market 
 and good stock for further feeding. 
 
 From this point we are able to trace 
 definitely the influence of the packers and 
 297
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 their methods of doing business upon the 
 live stock industry and the broadening of 
 the market for the product of American 
 farms and ranges until these markets now 
 embrace the entire world. The early 70s 
 were the period of experimentation by the 
 packers with refrigeration in the handling 
 and packing of meats all the year round, 
 and with the refrigerator-car as a means 
 of transporting fresh beef to far distant 
 markets. 
 
 The packers had developed the refrigera- 
 tor-car experiment to the point where they 
 knew they had something that must be used 
 if they were to extend their business beyond 
 a merely local field. They appealed to the 
 railroads, as I have indicated elsewhere, 
 and the railroads refused to undertake the 
 expense, fearing that their cars would lie 
 idle at times if they were required to fur- 
 nish cars specially adapted to the transpor- 
 tation of fresh meats under refrigeration. 
 
 The packers then undertook to build their 
 298
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 own cars, because they could not afford to 
 have this form of transportation furnished 
 in any haphazard or half-hearted way. 
 They foresaw not only that they must have 
 a certain car supply for their own protec- 
 tion, but that the public would be best 
 served and would give them assurance of 
 continued business only by having such a 
 constant and reliable car supply. So the 
 packers built their own refrigerator-cars. 
 That step on their part marked not only the 
 beginning of the private-car lines, but the 
 beginning of the live stock industry as a 
 safe business. It was the step as recognized 
 now by historians of the live stock industry 
 that changed stock raising from an adven- 
 ture to a business. 
 
 This departure also changed the entire 
 character of the development of the West. 
 The "wild and woolly" characteristics 
 of the plains country gave place to 
 law and order and settled ways of doing 
 things and the Great American Desert be- 
 299
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 gan then and there to disappear. Men who 
 are not yet old can remember the days when 
 their school geographies showed the im- 
 mense expanse of territory extending from 
 southern Texas to Canada between the 
 longitude of the Missouri River and the 
 Rocky Mountains as a desert. 
 
 There used to be acrimonious debate as 
 to whether the Sahara of Africa or the 
 Great American Desert was the more bar- 
 ren. Many Americans, determined to yield 
 first place in nothing for their country, 
 proudly insisted that, for barrenness and 
 general worthlessness and for territorial ex- 
 tent, the Great American Desert had the 
 Sahara absolutely crowded out of competi- 
 tion. It was known that buffalo grazed to 
 some extent in the plains country, but the 
 adaptability of that section for any other 
 purpose than buffalo grazing was not real- 
 ized or even suspected by any except a few 
 Texans who had pastured on its edges. 
 
 The enterprise of the packers following 
 300
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the inauguration of modern refrigeration 
 methods so extended the market for cattle 
 that the cattlemen little by little commenced 
 to invade the Great American Desert. As 
 a direct consequence, practically all of what 
 was then considered a desert now has con- 
 siderable value and most of it is worth from 
 $30.00 to $60.00 an acre and is still rising 
 in value as good farm lands. 
 
 The development of the export business 
 naturally followed the introduction of the 
 refrigerator-car into the packing industry 
 and its effects upon live stock raising 
 and the marketing of meats. The packers 
 had previously met with considerable suc- 
 cess in marketing barreled beef, salt 
 meats and smoked meats abroad, but the 
 growing beef business and its possibilities 
 were an additional call upon their ingenuity 
 and enterprise as merchants. They could 
 easily foresee, as clear-headed business men, 
 that extra stimulation of cattle raising and 
 the natural exigencies of the business might 
 301
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 easily result at rimes in a surplus of cattle 
 or beef products that would have a depress- 
 ing influence upon prices and the business 
 generally if some outlet for the surplus 
 were not found. 
 
 The keen competition of the business also 
 prompted them to look for markets wher- 
 ever they could be had. This competition 
 was probably sharper than it has ever been 
 in any other industry developed in this 
 country. The men who had been attracted 
 to the business were giants of their kind 
 the stamp of men who have done all of the 
 pioneering and developing in this country 
 at which we now marvel. They could see 
 the immense possibilities opening before 
 them and naturally each of them was am- 
 bitious to be first in the race. It followed 
 that they brought to bear all of their tre- 
 mendous energies and great ability to 
 broadening the field of their operations. 
 
 This condition also led them to devise 
 new ways and means of so handling the 
 302
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 products of their packing houses that they 
 would find a readier market and of utilizing 
 to the last degree the merchantable possi- 
 bilities of the by-product. These necessi- 
 ties of their situation inevitably drove 
 them into the foreign markets. 
 
 The effect of all this pioneering by the 
 packers upon the cattle raising industry of 
 the country is frankly acknowledged in the 
 history to which I have already referred, 
 compiled by authority of the National Live 
 Stock Association. That work, in detail- 
 ing the influences that operated in the early 
 '70s to bring about new and improved 
 conditions in cattle raising, says: 
 
 "But the principal influence that was at 
 work indirectly in behalf of western cat- 
 tlemen at that time was the development 
 of new features and new methods in the 
 packing house industry. Heretofore the 
 markets for fresh beef from these sources 
 had been, in the main, local in extent and 
 303
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 much of their beef output was in the form 
 of salt cured products. 
 
 " Exportation of beef on the hoof slowly 
 but steadily was attaining greater magni- 
 tude at that time, but it was so hampered 
 by foreign fears real or pretended of 
 various infections being introduced into 
 Europe by American cattle, and also by 
 agitations there in favor of home produc- 
 tion, that it became necessary for our peo- 
 ple to devise other ways and means of get- 
 ting American beef into European mar- 
 kets. 
 
 "As invariably happens in our country, 
 when an imperative demand arises for new 
 ways of doing things, somebody steps for- 
 ward promptly and points out the neces- 
 sary effective means by which to do them. 
 In this case the packing house interests 
 quickly solved the problem by sending the 
 foreigners prime dressed beef carcasses 
 that were above criticism or objection ; and 
 with these went corned beef, and as the 
 304
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 new methods further were developed, a 
 variety of other canned and potted beef 
 products. 
 
 ' 'New vehicles of transportation having 
 been required for the dressed beef trade, 
 they came forth without delay in the form 
 of refrigerator-cars on the railroads, and 
 refrigerator apartments in the ships. With 
 these, the packers at Chicago, Kansas City 
 and other great market centres were en- 
 abled to deliver beef carcasses on the far- 
 ther side of the Atlantic in as perfect con- 
 dition as that in which they were placed 
 upon the blocks of retailers within sight of 
 the packing houses; and with these cars 
 to extend their home trade in dressed beef 
 to every part of the country accessible by 
 railroad. 
 
 "This new branch of the packing house 
 industry, which, within a few years later, 
 became by far the largest part of it, made 
 its influence felt strongly, and in 1876 and 
 in 1877 had risen to greater proportions. 
 20 305
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 Its magnitude in 1878 was reflected in the 
 fact that nearly forty per cent, of all the 
 live stock marketed in Chicago during the 
 year, or about 500,000 head, went to con- 
 sumers in the form of dressed beef from 
 the packing houses of Chicago. At Kan- 
 sas City and other packing house centres 
 the dressed beef industry held about the 
 same ratio to the total number of cattle 
 put upon their markets." 
 
 But the opening of foreign markets and 
 development of the packing industry, of 
 Chicago did not all at once put the cattle 
 raising and meat producing industry on 
 the basis that we know now. The grade of 
 cattle and the grade of beef produced in the 
 70s was still not of the very first class 
 and beef was not so universally eaten as it 
 is now. This condition was reflected in the 
 prices that prevailed at that time. In 1876 
 and 1877, $2.75 to $3.00 per cwt. was con- 
 sidered a good price for beef cattle. 
 
 Some Texas men thought they had a 
 306
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 "nice market" when fat beeves from their 
 ranch corrals could be sold around $2.25 
 per cwt. Other records of the period give 
 $2.50 and $3.00 per cwt. as considered an 
 excellent price. A record of top prices by 
 months for northwestern "rangers" in the 
 summer of 1878, except during August, 
 shows that the very highest prices ranged 
 from $3.75 to $4.40 per cwt. "Texas" cat- 
 tle during the same period sold for $3.00 to 
 $3.90 per cwt. The average price for 
 "rangers" during a six months' period 
 was only $3.95 and for "Texans" $3.55 per 
 cwt. 
 
 At Albany, in that year, extra cattle 
 weighing from 1,250 to 1,300 lbs. brought 
 only $5.00 to $5.37y L > per cwt. and this had 
 to cover freight from the far western 
 ranges. Dressed beef of the same extra 
 quality sold at $10.50 to $10.75 per cwt. 
 
 By comparing these price quotations 
 with prices to-day, we have a striking illus- 
 tration of how development of the packing 
 307
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 industry, with its utilization of by-products, 
 and its foreign market finding lias reduced 
 at both ends the margin between live cat- 
 tle prices and dressed beef prices, making 
 live cattle prices higher and making 
 dressed beef prices lower. 
 
 In 1878 we find the wholesale price of 
 extra beef, dressed, brought down from 
 $13.00 and $13.25 in 1874 to $10.50 to 
 $10.75 a cwt. The cattle that produced this 
 $10.50 to $10.75 beef sold at $5.00 to $5.37y 2 
 a cwt., so there was still a difference of 
 about $5.50 a cwt. between beef cattle on 
 the hoof and the same cattle dressed. To- 
 day, as the daily market quotations show, 
 the price difference between live beef cat- 
 tle and the same cattle dressed is only about 
 $2.00 a cwt., and frequently it is less. This 
 elimination of the wide margin between 
 live and dressed beef prices is due entirely 
 to the saving effected by the packer in 
 utilizing the by-products, and finding a for- 
 eign market for meats that otherwise would 
 308
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 be handled at a loss, and so would make it 
 necessary to ask higher prices for the meats 
 consumed in this country. 
 
 It is easy to study this phase of the sub- 
 ject in the market quotations published 
 from day to day in the newspapers. The 
 packer sells at wholesale the dressed beef 
 from every steer slaughtered for much less 
 than he paid for that steer on the hoof. He 
 must pay all expenses, get all of his profit, 
 and make up the difference between live 
 cost and dressed selling price out of the by- 
 product materials, most of which were 
 wasted before the early packers applied 
 their genius to the business. 
 
 It is obvious that the slaughtering and 
 distributing of beef if undertaken by any 
 agency less perfectly equipped than the 
 packers are, would necessitate very much 
 higher prices to the consumer than are now 
 paid. Commissioner of Corporations Gar- 
 field's report shows that the packers get less 
 than a dollar a head out of the cattle 
 309
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 handled. To do this they must utilize every 
 scrap of by-product to the last degree, and 
 then find a market for it in every part of the 
 world. 
 
 The influence of the packers, and their 
 development of the export trade, along with 
 the domestic business, became pronounced 
 about 1884 and 1885. The year 1884 was 
 the first in which one million cattle were 
 slaughtered in Chicago. Since 1890, at 
 times, nearly two and one-half million head 
 of cattle have been slaughtered in Chicago 
 in a year, and in many years since 1890 
 from one million to a million and a half of 
 cattle have been received at Chicago and re- 
 shipped on the hoof, more cattle being 
 shipped out on the hoof than the entire re- 
 ceipts amounted to before the packers be- 
 came a factor in the market. 
 
 The great changes in the industry have 
 come since 1885. The tremendous develop- 
 ment, not only in the packing industry 
 itself, but in the raising of stock and the 
 310
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 new and improved methods in both 
 branches of the industry, have nearly all 
 come within that time. Speaking of this 
 period of revolution, the same official his- 
 tory of the live stock business which I have 
 previously quoted has this to say : 
 
 "What had been an adventure was con- 
 verted into a business. The rearing of live 
 stock on the western plains and in the moun- 
 tain valleys ceased to be a reckless 
 'chancing' of things, ceased to be a spec- 
 ulation, and became a careful, systematic, 
 commercial enterprise, seeking regular and 
 reasonable returns for its output of beef 
 and mutton, which were made to be of the 
 highest grade. The typical owner of 
 great herds of cattle no longer was distin- 
 guished by a broad-brimmed hat, no longer 
 stuffed his trousers into the tops of high 
 boots, no longer wore accoutrements sug- 
 gestive of wildness and wooliness, but pre- 
 sented the appearance of a conservative, 
 unostentatious man of business. He was 
 311
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 not out of place, but was at home and at his 
 ease wherever he might be, whether in the 
 great market cities or at his ranch very 
 much a man of the business world. ' ' 
 
 The factors in working this change, 
 according to the authority I have men- 
 tioned, were improved stock, prudent man- 
 agement and individual control of more or 
 less land upon which each stockman oper- 
 ated, accompanied by the use of fences. 
 These factors were given a chance to oper- 
 ate by the work of the packers. It was the 
 packers who created a great central mar- 
 ket, who devised ways and means of dispos- 
 ing of the dressed beef and the beef prod- 
 uct, and who opened up foreign markets 
 to take care of surplus ranch products. 
 
 It was their work, I repeat, which gave 
 the live stock industry an opportunity to be 
 converted from an adventure to a business. 
 They encouraged the growing of quality. 
 They showed the western and southwestern 
 ranchers that the long-horned Texas steer 
 312
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 was neither the best nor the most profitable 
 animal to be grown for market. They gave 
 the impetus to improving the grade of 
 range cattle. The ranchmen commenced 
 spending a part of their profits for blooded 
 bulls and crossing them with the native cat- 
 tle. They commenced to raise stock for 
 meat and not for tallow. This phase of the 
 change has been commented upon in the 
 official history I have quoted as follows : 
 
 1 ' The best, and therefore the high priced 
 beef, lies along the animal's back, and any- 
 one can understand that a broad-backed 
 steer that has utilized its food to increase 
 its aggregate of sirloin and porterhouse 
 parts is far more valuable than the narrow- 
 backed, slab-sided animal, perhaps of nearly 
 the same gross weight, but which has util- 
 ized most of its food in the production of 
 tallow. The western cattleman saw this 
 and began to produce, with the same 
 amount of food, beeves that yielded the 
 high priced steaks worth from 15 cents to
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 25 cents a pound in a normal retail market, 
 instead of tallow and medium or low grade 
 meats, worth whatever a buyer could be 
 persuaded to pay for them. ' ' 
 
 From these changes in the methods of 
 raising cattle and marketing them and their 
 products have come the changes in the 
 character of the range country. The west- 
 ern cattleman's home place, while it is still 
 called a ranch, now partakes more of the 
 nature of what we are accustomed to think 
 of when we say farm. He does not depend 
 upon letting his cattle run out of doors 
 all the year round, finding their food 
 where they can. He provides shelter for 
 stormy weather. He plants and harvests 
 crops that will serve as fodder in the short 
 grass season; he cuts hay, and stores it 
 against the time of grass shortage. 
 
 The mowing machine is now as promi- 
 nent a part of the furniture of the average 
 cattle ranch as the "chuck-wagon" used to 
 be. Small holdings are taking the place 
 314
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of the large ranges. While there may not 
 be so many l ' cattle kings ' ' as there used to 
 be in the business, there are innumerably 
 more men who are making money at it. 
 
 Along with the revolution in the produc- 
 tion of beef cattle which I have sketched, 
 there has come great improvement in facil- 
 ities for getting the cattle to market, for 
 feeding and watering in transit, and so on. 
 These changes have had a marked influence 
 upon the allied business of feeding or fin- 
 ishing cattle for market. 
 
 Stock cattle are taken from the big graz- 
 ing ranches and are turned over to smaller 
 farmers further north and east, who feed 
 and finish them for the market, and so 
 enable us to get the prime beef which we 
 are accustomed to have upon our tables. 
 This is a change that has brought real pros- 
 perity to a great part of the western farm- 
 ing community, particularly in corn rais- 
 ing states like Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Ne- 
 braska and Missouri. Instead of selling 
 315
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 his corn for 25 cents or 30 cents a bushel, 
 % the farmer now puts this corn into beef cat- 
 tle and gets 40 and 50 cents a bushel for it ; 
 and the farmer who does not want to feed 
 cattle, but has corn, also gets a higher price 
 because there is not the same relative 
 quantity of corn going into the market. 
 
 These same changes in cattle growing 
 have helped to give a little additional 
 profit to industries as far removed from 
 meat producing as the cotton industry. 
 Cotton-seed that used to be waste is now 
 utilized, in part at least, in cattle feeding 
 enterprises. 
 
 That the pioneering and foreign market 
 hunting efforts of the early American 
 packers were great factors in bringing 
 about these changes in American indus- 
 trial life changes that were and have con- 
 tinued to be beneficial to hundreds of thou- 
 sands of American people is evidenced by 
 what we read when we look back concern- 
 316
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ing the introduction of American meats 
 into foreign markets. 
 
 An English paper of twenty years ago 
 had a paragraph to the effect that "prime 
 Scotch cattle and Highland mutton are as 
 drops in the bucket compared with the enor- 
 mous imports from America." It said in 
 the same article that a Mr. Henry S. Fitter 
 had disposed of, to retail butchers, $12,000 
 worth of American meats in one day ; a con- 
 signment from the Chicago packers. 
 
 This meant that the meat so sold came 
 from cattle which had been grown on west- 
 ern farms or ranges, brought to Chicago, 
 and there converted into beef and then mar- 
 keted four thousand five hundred miles 
 toward the other side of the world. The 
 American farmer received the benefit of 
 this enterprise. 
 
 But the packer of that day, who was 
 
 doing his utmost to extend the demand for 
 
 American farm products, did not have easy 
 
 sailing and complimentary words any more 
 
 317
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 than he has to-day. Both at home and 
 abroad he had to fight his way every step 
 he took. At the great London beef mar- 
 kets, as elsewhere, the salesman tried to 
 shut out American meats, but, of course, 
 American enterprise was equal to obstacles 
 of that kind. 
 
 The Americans had meat to sell and were 
 there to sell it. If they could not sell it in 
 one place or one market they would make 
 a market of their own. They did so and 
 they did it without resorting to any subter- 
 fuges, or attempting to palm off American 
 meats as "home grown" to avoid discrim- 
 ination. They were out to make a market 
 for American meats, and they sold them 
 for just what they were, knowing that the 
 quality would create a demand. 
 
 Here at home, when the successful inno- 
 vations of the packers commenced to attract 
 attention, they had to run the gauntlet of 
 hostile legislation that was even more trou- 
 blesome, in some respects, than what they 
 318
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 are threatened with now. The rapid de- 
 velopment of cattle raising had brought on 
 the cattle boom of the early '80s, which I 
 have mentioned elsewhere, and, of course, 
 that boom had its inevitable disastrous re- 
 action. The packers were given the blame, 
 of course, for the low prices which prevailed 
 in the late '80s and which were due to 
 nothing on earth except an increase in the 
 supply of cattle that far outstripped the de- 
 mand and all the energy and resouroef ill- 
 ness of the packers in building new markets. 
 
 The year of 1889, as we look back, was re- 
 markable for the efforts made in widely 
 separated parts of the country to hamper 
 the development of the dressed beef and 
 packing business by hostile legislation. 
 
 Virginia made a law that no fresh meat 
 should be offered for sale at any place one 
 hundred miles from where it had been 
 slaughtered, unless inspected alive by the 
 local inspectors. The inspection fee ranged 
 319
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 from $6.00 to $10.00; a prohibitive price, 
 of course. 
 
 Topeka tried by ordinance to shut out the 
 dressed beef of Kansas City. 
 
 Minnesota enacted a law providing that 
 no beef should be sold within any munici- 
 pality of the state unless inspected by the 
 local officers within twenty-four hours be- 
 fore slaughter. 
 
 Colorado undertook to prohibit the sale 
 of beef, mutton or pork unless inspected on 
 the hoof before slaughter. 
 
 Indiana's law required that beef, mutton, 
 veal, lamb or pork had to be inspected alive 
 in the county where it was offered for sale. 
 
 Of course none of that legislation stood 
 the test of review in the courts. I mention 
 these cases merely to illustrate the obstacles 
 which the packing industry has had to fight, 
 and fight alone, while it has been opening 
 and expanding markets for the products of 
 the ranch and farm. 
 
 What the Chicago packers accomplished 
 320
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 in the face of such opposition is best illus- 
 trated by a little comparative figuring. 
 
 In the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, 
 the increase in population of the United 
 States was in round numbers fifty per cent. 
 During that same period the number of beef 
 cattle marketed at the four principal mar- 
 kets increased five hundred per cent. I 
 know of no other lines of business dealing 
 with natural products cotton, wool, grain 
 in which such a marvelous increase in 
 the quantity of material to be handled has 
 been so successfully coped with. 
 
 But the packers seemed to be equal to any 
 emergency, and in spite of one or two com- 
 paratively low-priced periods, which were 
 due to perfectly natural causes, they kept 
 the market in a healthy condition; and 
 some stock raisers, the careful business men 
 among them, made money practically all 
 the time. 
 
 When we talk about low-priced cattle and 
 of farmers losing money in their cattle ven- 
 21 321
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 tures, is it not fair, instead of blaming it 
 all on a "beef trust," to remember that 
 raising cattle is a business like selling shoes 
 or dry goods or making chairs ? 
 
 Not nearly all of the people who venture 
 into these various other undertakings make 
 money; statistics show, I believe, that the 
 great majority that go into business meet 
 with failure. I think you will find that 
 the percentage of those who lose money in 
 raising or feeding cattle for market is 
 smaller than in almost any other line of 
 producing effort. I believe, too, that wher- 
 ever you find a man in the cattle business 
 who will class as a good business man you 
 will find one who makes money almost 
 every year, and one who, taking into ac- 
 count a reasonable period of years, makes 
 a profit that is entirely satisfactory to him, 
 figured on the basis of his investment. 
 
 In this connection I am moved to quote 
 a few words from an article by Mr. Samuel 
 W. Allerton, written a short time ago. Mr.
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Allerton was one of the early pork packers 
 and cattle dealers in the Chicago market. 
 He was in the business quite a long time, 
 but now, for several years, he has been ex- 
 tensively a farmer, owning, I believe, the 
 largest farm in Illinois; and a large part 
 of his farming business revolves around 
 the feeding and finishing of cattle for mar- 
 ket. In an article for a live stock paper Mr. 
 Allerton said: 
 
 "I remember when I first went into the 
 business, in 1853, New York consumed about 
 three thousand two hundred cattle per 
 week, Boston about five hundred, Philadel- 
 phia five hundred and Baltimore about two 
 hundred. There were not many more than 
 five thousand cattle transported per week. 
 Now we transport at least one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand over our railroads, so 
 you see the cattle industry has increased 
 very largely over our population, and we 
 must give the dressed beef men credit for 
 finding a market for this great surplus, as 
 323
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 they have hunted a market for it in every 
 spot on the globe. ' ' 
 
 As to the farmer's point of view on this 
 subject, Mr. Allerton said: " Being a 
 farmer, I know how they feel. They, of 
 course, always want a little more, and every 
 little newspaper in the country thinks it is 
 smart to howl about the dressed beef 
 'trust,' when the truth is there is no body 
 of men which has done so much to promote 
 the live stock interests of this country as the 
 dressed beef men. They have put fresh 
 beef into every state in the Union where 
 they were not accustomed to eating fresh 
 beef, and they have hunted the world over 
 to find a market for the coarse cuts of beef. 
 Every market which they are in has steadily 
 grown and increased, which is evidence that 
 they have been beneficial to the live stock 
 interests of this country." 
 
 324
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GROWTH OF PORK PACKING 
 
 WHAT I have said as to dressed beef 
 and live stock raising, and the in- 
 fluence upon the industry exerted 
 by the packers in their discovery of new 
 methods of marketing and of new markets, 
 applies with equal force, in practically 
 every detail, to all the other branches of 
 raising meat animals and converting them 
 into food for the table. The growth of pork 
 packing in the West illustrates what I 
 mean. 
 
 Pork packing was a considerable indus- 
 try before the dressed beef business came 
 into existence on any large scale. The very 
 earliest packers purchased live hogs at 
 many different points in the West, slaugh- 
 tered and cured them and shipped the prod- 
 uct to all parts of this country and to for- 
 325
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 cign countries. In the period between 1880 
 and 1885, before the dressed beef business 
 had attained proportions at all remarkable, 
 pork packing was already an important 
 business. During that period the western 
 packers slaughtered fifty-two million, three 
 hundred and twenty-two thousand hogs, an 
 average of ten million, four hundred and 
 sixty-four thousand, four hundred hogs a 
 year. 
 
 Now the average swine raiser probably 
 has not noticed any particular increase in 
 the raising and marketing of hogs during 
 recent years. Yet, during the last five pack- 
 ing seasons ending with March, 1906, pork 
 packing at western points absorbed very 
 nearly one hundred and eighteen million 
 hogs, an average of twenty-three million 
 six hundred thousand hogs a year. This 
 immense increase in the production of hogs 
 has been handled purchased, slaughtered 
 and marketed without a break or a ma- 
 terial change in the market; in fact, my 
 326
 
 CAB LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 recollection is that the price has been going 
 up practically all of the time. 
 
 The handling of this immense increase 
 in hog production is due entirely to the busi- 
 ness improvements brought about by the 
 large packers in their dressed beef and 
 kindred businesses. This would seem to be 
 so from the fact that there has been no 
 material increase in hog marketing or pork 
 packing at any of the markets where the 
 beef packers are not doing business. 
 
 The methods of the packers, due to refrig- 
 eration and transportation facilities re- 
 sulting from their private-car enterprises, 
 have made hog marketing and pork pack- 
 ing an all-year-round industry instead of 
 a winter industry as it used to be. This, of 
 course, is an advantage to the hog raisers, 
 not only because it gives them a market 
 all the year round, but because it has 
 brought about the absorption of practically 
 double the number of hogs. 
 
 To show this more clearly, let us glance 
 327
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 at the figures showing the number of hogs 
 packed at Chicago and classified as winter 
 packing and summer packing. The follow- 
 ing table shows that while winter packing 
 at Chicago has remained almost stationary 
 in the last twenty years, summer packing 
 has caused the total pack to be almost 
 double : 
 
 HOGS PACKED AT CHICAGO 
 
 Summer Winter 
 
 Year. Packing. Packing. 
 
 1882-83 1,664,957 2,557,823 
 
 1883-84 1,900,408 2,011,384 
 
 1884-85 1,859,988 2,368,217 
 
 1885-86 2,535,678 2,393,052 
 
 1886-87 2,581,752 3,844,189 
 
 1887-88 2,000,741 1,731,503 
 
 1888-89 1,774,228 1,429,723 
 
 1889-90 2,294,027 2,179,440 
 
 1890-91 3,211,144 2,908,418 
 
 1891-92 2,498,754 2,706,284 
 
 1892-93 2,873,883 1,478,212 
 
 328
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 1893-94 2,523,587 1,695,980 
 
 1894-95 2,817,734 2,475,468 
 
 1895-96 3,114,940 2,375,470 
 
 1896-97 3,684,220 2,283,375 
 
 1897-98 4,074,535 2,672,730 
 
 1898-99 4,767,290 3,249,385 
 
 1899-1900 4,249,860 2,869,580 
 
 1900 01 4,298,420 2,970,095 
 
 1901-02 4,202,095 3,433,905 
 
 1902-03 3,908,260 2,952,193 
 
 1903-04 3,787,126 2,925,960 
 
 1904-05 3,177,842 2,812,588 
 
 1905-06 3.545,197 2,592,866 
 
 Chicago, of course, has no monopoly in 
 pork packing. This is an industry that is 
 widely distributed throughout the West. 
 The following table shows the number 
 of hogs packed in the West for the twelve 
 months ending March 1st, 1906, at the fif- 
 teen leading points (the others being 
 lumped) with comparisons for previous 
 years : 
 
 329
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
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 330
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 For these twenty-five million, five hun- 
 dred and seventy-four thousand, seven hun- 
 dred and sixty hogs slaughtered at west- 
 ern points in 1905-06, the western packers 
 paid the western farmers the enormous 
 sum of $302,487,000, or nearly $12 a head. 
 Eastern slaughterers, during the same 
 period, paid eastern farmers about $65,- 
 000,000 for five million, seven hundred and 
 ten thousand hogs, or nearly $11.50 a head. 
 
 The tendency of prices has been up- 
 ward, with, of course, fluctuations due to 
 natural causes, as in 1902, when the short 
 corn crop sent up the price of beef cattle, 
 and sent up the price of hogs to an abnor- 
 mal figure for the same reason, as well as 
 through sympathy with the higher price of 
 cattle and beef. I am presenting here a 
 table showing the monthly range of cash 
 prices for live hogs, the highest and lowest 
 price of the month, covering a period of 
 eleven years in the Chicago market. The 
 table is as follows:
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
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 g t oo o a) w * ^ h 01 h n i> oo ^ in (D w in n oo w s 
 oo ci tj5 co *' co' iri *' in * * *' in * in co' in co *' eo * co eo eo' co 
 
 icLOoi-OLcmic^o^ooooooicomknoooo 
 ~ * in w o ^ oq '-, n <o in i> w t; * in in to a i> a <o 
 oo co^J , cn*M , * , co , *N c, 'NfONC3Nf3Neocip;fiwci 
 
 I -66- 
 
 m in m cm in> 
 
 l~" r~*. eft . i^. **\ r-l i/-> ^i r-i e 
 
 C O H l> P! 51 IO 51 0-1 
 
 isininoinininino 
 
 OrlO O O tJ( in (O (O CM ^f t I CO , . to 
 
 V+i ^^ r^ |"S^ ^+1 **^ *-W **C J A** _ld A*C lI*> A-C 
 
 O0 KC3{(5eflM' , ) l tCTiIeC , *(i5M^ei3^ , M^ , 'ri^'MM 
 
 in o i- m t- o in o o w o t- m o o in in o o w ko 
 as c """l . o w 'I <o h ^ in in sc_ r-j * c<j rt< th <m i-h oo ,-h t~ 
 oo co'^co^'eo^coT^co^eo^co^co^co^eo^'co'co'eo'co 
 
 m lo m m m in m m o m in m m m 
 
 ^- o ^ q k o lo h * o Tf c l 1 : t~; oc o a a co a e li i 1 
 
 ^ eo^co^eo^ecT^co'^eo^co^coineo'^co'^co' , teo''j" 
 
 05 
 OO 
 iH 
 
 k t-i o c c c c lo o i^ io ci c w in ^ k o c w e ci o 
 g T-; as in r-j q m_ r-_ oo os in oc ** oo in t- in oq i> en in en h ^ h 
 cs "* * * in **" in in in **" in* ^ in ri" w >* in rsi in tj" in * in *t in 
 
 nj m o o m c m o fc- m ni 
 J os irj f-j to in t oo os_ in oc * 
 cs "* * tjJ in tjJ in in in ^j" in Tt in ri" m" it in r&u 
 
 oi^omooinmc-Oi^ocoooook-5ccoco 
 
 g OO * n (B oi cun ei IS O IS CO ^ * l> M ^ Tf H O M H a 
 
 cs 't m m" m in so in so m '-o in so in so in so in i- - in t~ in so in so 
 
 r-l 
 
 -^ in m m m m o is o o m m o in o o c c o ci m w o 
 
 g in oq * in so o co in ** in so os cj homcioci t-_ os so cs 
 
 cs in so in so' in t> so' t-i so' t> so t-' t-" co' so i-" so cc so' i--" m' so m' so 
 
 t-i * 
 
 in so tj- so t*- to tj- 
 
 * c co m "t * 
 
 . mo m m m 
 
 -I <=>. *. -I L ~ 
 
 o; -+ m ->t m ~r 
 
 r-l - 
 
 o cm o in c is o t^ l~ in m c in in in in m 
 
 i- t-- so so m so ch ci tjh co ci en cc co ci km 
 ~f in "+' in -t '-':' in so' in so' *? so' -t' in * in * uo' 
 
 
 s 
 
 "5 > 
 
 332 
 
 ^ o
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 This tremendous growth in hog raising, 
 in consequence of the improved business 
 methods and foreign market-finding by the 
 packers, has been as widespread in point 
 of benefits conferred as the growth of the 
 stock raising industry. It has had its effect 
 upon every farmer who raises a few hogs, 
 not only throughout the great West, but in 
 the more thickly populated eastern states 
 where hogs are raised exclusively for the 
 local market. 
 
 The prices obtained in Chicago and other 
 packing centres have naturally made better 
 prices in the small towns. The hog crop, too, 
 has been another outlet for the corn crop 
 of the farmer of the middle West. As in 
 the case of feeding and finishing cattle for 
 market, the cattle raiser can feed corn to 
 his hogs and get more for it than by mar- 
 keting it as corn; and a considerable and 
 valuable part of his corn goes back upon his 
 own land, as I have elsewhere observed. 
 
 This is an important point in connection 
 333
 
 THE PACKEKS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 both with cattle raising and hog raising, by 
 no means to be overlooked in estimating 
 broadly the benefits brought to the agricul- 
 tural sections of the country by the meat in- 
 dustry. The farm of one crop, or many 
 crops, when devoted exclusively to growing 
 cereals or cotton, steadily deteriorates. The 
 live stock farm, whether its specialty be 
 cattle, hogs or sheep, improves from year to 
 year. 
 
 Hog raising, too, in many parts of the 
 country, particularly in the Mississippi 
 Valley and further west, has been devel- 
 oped as an absolutely new crop, a new 
 source of wealth to the farmer. This has 
 been the case in Illinois, Wisconsin, Min- 
 nesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, 
 in fact all through the Mississippi Valley. 
 In all those states hog raising has been 
 stimulated and made more profitable, and 
 in fact has been given an excuse for exist- 
 ence, by the establishment of packing plants 
 334
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 at Kansas City, St. Joseph, Omaha, Sioux 
 City, South St. Paul, and Fort Worth. 
 
 This phase of the subject can be best 
 studied right now in connection with the 
 packing business at Fort Worth, because 
 there it is in its beginnings. Two large 
 packing establishments have been in oper- 
 ation in Fort Worth about three years. 
 Already their influence upon the live stock 
 interests and especially hog raising in that 
 part of the country is very noticeable. 
 
 The Texas hog of a few years ago was a 
 cousin, as it were, of the old-time Texas 
 long-horned steer. He was what is com- 
 monly known as a razor back, long of leg, 
 fleet of foot, sharp of nose, and nothing to 
 brag about as a producer of meat. Within 
 three years there has been a noticeable 
 change in the character and quality of the 
 Texas hog. The farmers there have begun 
 to improve their breeds, and to grow for 
 more weight and better quality. They are 
 335
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 doing it because the packers have given 
 them a market at their very doors. 
 
 The Fort Worth market also shows, in 
 plain figures, how the packing industry, 
 with its worldwide effort to find new mar- 
 kets, directly promotes the live stock in- 
 dustry. Every extension of the packing 
 industry makes the raising of meat animals 
 a profitable business for an increased num- 
 ber of American farmers. This has hap- 
 pened in the territory tributary to Fort 
 Worth. We see it the more clearly there 
 because that market is so new and is estab- 
 lished in territory that has been the cradle 
 of stock raising on a large scale. 
 
 Last year, with other markets holding 
 their own, the Fort Worth market showed 
 a larger increase in the actual number of 
 cattle handled than any other market in the 
 country. Its percentage of increase in cat- 
 tle receipts was more than three times that 
 of any other market. And the number of 
 336
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 hogs received there was even higher propor- 
 tionately. Note these figures: 
 
 Receipts of cattle and calves at Chicago 
 in 1905 were 176,000 more than in 1904, an 
 increase of about five per cent.; Kansas 
 City receipts increased 186,000, a little over 
 nine per cent. ; St. Louis increased 48,000, a 
 little over four per cent.; Omaha increased 
 86,000, or a little over nine per cent.; St. 
 Joseph decreased slightly. 
 
 Fort Worth receipts of cattle and calves 
 increased 226,182 over 1904 receipts a 
 gain of more than thirty per cent. 
 
 The hog showing is even more remark- 
 able. At Chicago hog receipts for 1905 in- 
 creased 533,189 over 1904, a gain of nearly 
 seven per cent. ; Kansas City receipts in- 
 creased 976,615, or a shade under 44 per 
 cent.; Omaha fell off a trifle; St. Louis in- 
 creased 71,413, about four per cent.; St. 
 Joseph increased 245,037, or almost 15 per 
 cent. 
 
 Fort Worth receipts of hogs in 1905 were 
 1-1 337
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 186,592 more than in 1904, a gain of more 
 than 60 per cent. 
 
 The striking feature of these figures is 
 that other markets were practically holding 
 their own while Fort Worth was making 
 its phenomenal gain. All of them, except 
 St. Joe in cattle and Omaha in hogs, made 
 a gain in spite of Fort Worth. The only 
 rational explanation of this is that a great 
 part of the cattle and hogs marketed at 
 Fort Worth represented increased pro- 
 duction by old live stock raisers and abso- 
 lutely neiv ventures into the business by 
 farmers who did nothing with cattle and 
 hogs until the Fort Worth market was 
 created. In this respect Fort Worth has 
 but repeated the history of other markets 
 Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha and the rest. 
 
 What has been said of cattle and hog rais- 
 ing generally applies with equal force to 
 sheep raising. The foreign market for 
 mutton and mutton products is not large as 
 yet, but the foreign market provided for 
 338
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 beef and pork gives mutton a chance in the 
 home market. Receipts of sheep at the 
 Chicago Union Stock Yards have been 
 quadrupled in twenty years have risen 
 from 1,008,790 in 1886 to 4,736,558 
 in 1905. Receipts of sheep at Omaha 
 have been multiplied by ten within fifteen 
 years increasing from 170,000 in 1891 to 
 more than 1,700,000 in 1905; at Kansas 
 City and St. Louis, during the same period, 
 receipts of sheep have been more than 
 trebled. All this means that the in- 
 come producing power of the West has 
 been increased just that much 
 
 This immense increase in cattle raising 
 and hog raising, as I have outlined it, due 
 to the opening up and settlement of the 
 great West during the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury, would have been, in some aspects, a 
 calamity if it had not been accompanied by 
 corresponding increase in outlets for the 
 product. Consumption of meats has been 
 339
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 greatly increased throughout the country 
 by the distributing facilities and the econo- 
 mies which the packers have furnished, but 
 production has been far beyond the con- 
 suming power of the United States. Yet, 
 as we have seen, the tremendously increased 
 production has been, on the whole, absorbed 
 without a material break in prices of the 
 live meat animals from the farm and range. 
 
 What has made this increased absorp- 
 tion possible? The export business; 
 nothing but the export business; the ex- 
 port business which the packers have de- 
 veloped in the face of violent and unreason- 
 able attacks both at home and abroad. We 
 see this clearly when we look at the export 
 business in comparison with the gross 
 domestic business in live stock. 
 
 The live cattle exported, together with 
 the exports of fresh beef and beef products, 
 as shown in the tables I have given, 
 represent in the aggregate at least one mil- 
 lion head of cattle or the value of one mil- 
 340
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 lion head annually sent to foreign markets. 
 This number is equal to one-fifth of the 
 total annual slaughter of cattle at the four 
 greatest western markets Chicago, Kan- 
 sas City, South Omaha and St. Joseph. 
 
 The exports of hogs, pork, bacon, hams, 
 lard, and other hog products last year 
 represented, in the aggregate, the market 
 value of nearly ten million live hogs de- 
 livered at American markets. This number 
 of hogs would be equal to two-thirds of the 
 hogs slaughtered at the four greatest west- 
 ern markets Chicago, Kansas City, South 
 Omaha and St. Joseph. 
 
 Think of the effect upon prices to the 
 producer and upon market conditions gen- 
 erally, if this immense outlet for American 
 farm products did not exist! The foreign 
 markets, opened and developed by the un- 
 aided efforts of the packers, have taken 
 care of this enormous surplus, have kept the 
 home market steady, and have enabled the 
 American farmer, cattleman and hog raiser 
 341
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 to make a profit on his live stock, and on the 
 grain and farm products he feeds them. 
 
 The export business in cattle and meats 
 and meat products is the safety-valve of the 
 stock raising and meat producing industry. 
 It takes care of the surplus from the farms. 
 It provides a market for grades of cattle 
 and beef that would find but a limited mar- 
 ket, or none at all, in this country. It thus 
 preserves the balance between production 
 and consumption, giving the American 
 stock grower a fair price for his product, 
 and giving the American consumer the kind 
 of meat he wants at a fair price. 
 
 But large as this export business is, it 
 could be made much larger, with corre- 
 sponding increase in profit to live stock 
 raisers and meat producers, by a little con- 
 sistent and co-operative effort in this coun- 
 try. 
 
 Great Britain is now our best customer. 
 Her markets absorb about $150,000,000 a 
 year of American feed lot products. But 
 342
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 Great Britain is an outlet for the better 
 grades of live stock, leaving us to look else- 
 where for a market for the commoner qual- 
 ities. 
 
 Continental Europe ought to and would, 
 under proper cultivation furnish a vast 
 outlet for the classes of meats for which 
 there is least demand in America and Great 
 Britain. The masses of the people in Con- 
 tinental Europe are practically without 
 beef at all times. Horse meat is a recog- 
 nized article of commerce over there. They 
 would be delighted with cuts that our peo- 
 ple pass by. Instead of the steaks and 
 roasts which we demand, they would be 
 pleased with boiling cuts and corned beef. 
 As for other meat products hams, bacon, 
 sausage, etc. a market for literally mil- 
 lions of American corn-fed hogs would be 
 provided in Germany, France and other 
 Continental European countries if it were 
 not for the restrictions upon imports from 
 America, which restrictions arc encour- 
 343
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 aged by the unwarranted attacks by Amer- 
 icans upon an American industry. 
 
 The possibilities of this foreign market 
 are emphasized by a statement prepared a 
 little over a year ago and conditions have 
 not materially changed since by one of the 
 most careful statisticians in the country. 
 Here it is: 
 
 "Great Britain's flocks and herds have, 
 if anything, gone back, while the population 
 has gone ahead. The flocks and herds of 
 Ireland have virtually been stationary for 
 a quarter of a century. Twenty-five years 
 ago France had one hundred and eighty- 
 eight head of live stock per one thousand 
 acres of her area. She now has one hun- 
 dred and sixty-four head, or a dead loss of 
 twenty-four head per thousand acres. 
 
 "Germany, a quarter of a century ago, 
 had three times as many sheep per head of 
 population as now. The Fatherland now 
 has fewer cattle per capita than then. 
 
 "Holland and Switzerland have only 
 344
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 one-half as many sheep per head of popu- 
 lation now as they had two and a half 
 decades ago, and Belgium only a fourth as 
 many. 
 
 "In these countries, during that time, the 
 flocks of sheep alone have actually de- 
 creased from one hundred and four million 
 to seventy-five million, showing an actual 
 loss of twenty-eight per cent. At the same 
 time the increase in the population was 
 twenty-five per cent., thus making the com- 
 parative loss much greater. 
 
 "The combined population of Germany, 
 France, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, 
 Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Holland 
 twenty-five years ago was one hundred and 
 forty million. This human family has now 
 increased to one hundred and seventy-five 
 million people or twenty-four per cent. 
 Meantime, the combined herds of cattle of 
 these countries have only increased from 
 forty-eight million to fifty-eight million 
 head or about twenty per cent. 
 345
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 "The relative scarcity of meat upon the 
 continent is readily seen by the excessively 
 high prices paid there for all carcass meats. 
 These prices average one hundred per cent, 
 higher wholesale than similar meats sell for 
 in the United States, and thirty to fifty per 
 cent, higher than they do in England, even 
 in the face of the facts that labor and 
 other continental items of production are 
 cheaper than in either Great Britain or the 
 United States. 
 
 "The growing scarcity of the world's 
 edible meats is produced by the two causes 
 previously given : the faster increase of the 
 human race in proportion to the increase of 
 abattoir animals, and the improved condi- 
 tion of the working classes, which causes a 
 greater per capita consumption of meats 
 than existed two decades ago. 
 
 "The per capita consumption of meats in 
 
 the United States has increased fully 
 
 twenty-five per cent, during the last fifteen 
 
 years. In Great Britain it has nearly 
 
 346
 
 CAE LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 doubled in the same time. On the continent, 
 the demand, as measured by the very high 
 local price of meats, has largely increased, 
 but the increased consumption has been lim- 
 ited by the virtual exclusion of foreign 
 meats and the insufficiency of domestic 
 herds to supply the local demands. With 
 improved industrial conditions and continu- 
 ing high tariffs or other means for ex- 
 cluding the surplus of other countries, the 
 masses of the continental nations must de- 
 sist from meat eating or pay exorbitant 
 prices for this essential staff of life. ' ' 
 
 The restrictions which hold back Amer- 
 icans from supplying this tremendous po- 
 tential market in Continental Europe are 
 of various kinds tariffs, restrictive regu- 
 lations as to the form in which meats shall 
 be shipped, unreasonable regulations as to 
 inspection, and absolute prohibition. The 
 tariffs, in addition to their revenue pur- 
 pose, are frankly intended to restrict meat 
 importations so as to give the home grower 
 347
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 a higher priced market. Regulations as to 
 form in which meats may be imported, and 
 as to inspection, in many instances, would 
 seem to be devised, when we come to ana- 
 lyze them, for a similar purpose of exclu- 
 sion, although their ostensible purpose is 
 to protect public health. The foreign poli- 
 ticians find in the unwarranted attacks by 
 Americans upon the packing industry an 
 excuse for maintaining these restrictions. 
 
 We find in Germany a concrete example 
 of the way hostile foreign legislation, en- 
 couraged by the anti-packer "bushwhack- 
 ing" in America, operates against increase 
 in our exports of meat animals, meats and 
 packing house products. In 1904 (the last 
 year for which I have official figures) Ger- 
 many imported three hundred and twenty- 
 one thousand, eight hundred and seventy- 
 nine cattle worth $26,796,700, mostly from 
 Austria-Hungary, Denmark and Switzer- 
 land, less than one-half of one per cent, 
 coming from other countries. During the 
 348
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 same year we sold Great Britain four hun- 
 dred and one thousand, two hundred and 
 forty-five cattle worth $34,844,378. 
 
 Given a fair opportunity, there is no rea- 
 son why we should not be able to sell Ger- 
 many a large proportion of the more than 
 three hundred thousand head she imports 
 annually on the hoof, to say nothing of the 
 immense quantity of pickled and canned 
 meats her people would consume would 
 be glad to get if given a chance. Persons 
 conversant with German conditions and re- 
 quirements at first hand estimate that we 
 ought to be able to sell Germany two thou- 
 sand five hundred to three thousand five 
 hundred live cattle every week if given 
 entrance to her markets. When Ger- 
 many practically stopped taking American 
 canned meats at the close of 1900, her an- 
 nual imports of those goods represented 
 one hundred thousand cattle a year, about 
 two thousand head a week. 
 
 An important point to be considered in 
 349
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 this connection is that the German mar- 
 ket would absorb the grade denominated 
 "range cattle," for which there is but a 
 limited demand at home and in England. 
 
 Now for a closer examination of the re- 
 strictive regulations upon imports of Amer- 
 ican meats into European countries (taking- 
 Germany as an example) and the influence 
 of our American critics upon those regula- 
 tions. Practically all of the German states 
 prohibit importation of live cattle from 
 America. Those ostensibly permitting it 
 surround importations with quarantine 
 and inspection regulations (each one with a 
 fee attached) that are as effective in bar- 
 ring cattle as flat prohibition would be. 
 
 The ostensible reason for these regula- 
 tions is to protect German cattle against 
 infection from diseased American cattle. 
 As a matter of fact, American cattle are 
 far freer from disease than are German 
 cattle or the cattle of any country from 
 which Germany draws its supply. Amer- 
 350
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ican cattle are better cared for than are 
 European cattle; they have more room; 
 they run out of doors on ranges and pas- 
 tures of considerable size, instead of being 
 confined to restricted quarters as so many 
 European cattle are. 
 
 Most of what little cattle disease we have 
 comes to us from Europe. Take the much 
 talked of tuberculosis for example. Offi- 
 cial reports of United States inspection at 
 the big packing centres show that only 
 about one per cent, of American beef cattle 
 are infected, and these are condemned. 
 Figures from across the ocean indicate that 
 about thirty per cent, have tuberculosis. So 
 it cannot be that fear of disease is all the 
 reason for keeping American cattle out of 
 Germany. But that is a good excuse; and 
 every time one of our "yellow" American 
 writers runs amuck in a spasm of "seeing 
 tilings" the German politician gets another 
 bit of assistance toward keeping up the 
 bars against American cattle. 
 351
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 American fresh meats are nominally ad- 
 mitted to German ports; actually they are 
 as effectually barred out as if prohibited. 
 German laws provide that fresh beef or 
 pork cannot be imported in " quarters" or 
 "cuts" but must come in entire carcasses 
 with all or part of the head and practically 
 all of the internal organs naturally at- 
 tached to the carcass. It is impracticable 
 to ship meats in this form. 
 
 Since 1900 American canned meats and 
 sausages have been barred absolutely from 
 Germany. There is no exception. ' ' Yellow ' ' 
 imaginings of the dark secrets of packing 
 houses help to retain the prohibition. Yet 
 Germany takes our barreled beef a quan- 
 tity of it that represents more than fifty 
 thousand cattle a year. There is no reason 
 why she should take this and reject other 
 meats, except that she must have it, and 
 has not as yet been able to get elsewhere a 
 sufficient quantity of the right quality. And 
 it is a fact that the German government has 
 352
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 bought largely of American canned meats 
 for the Imperial navy and the commercial 
 marine service at a time when importation 
 of these goods for general sale was pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 What I have said of Germany applies 
 more or less to France and other countries 
 of Continental Europe where we ought to 
 have a better market for the products 
 of American farms. The discrimination 
 against American meats, encouraged by the 
 unjustifiable utterances of irresponsible 
 Americans, has already been felt. For not 
 feeling it more seriously as yet we have to 
 thank a series of unusual conditions 
 throughout the world during the last half 
 dozen years. 
 
 The Boer war, the Boxer troubles in 
 China, the Russo-Japanese war, the mili- 
 tary and naval precautions arising from 
 "wars and rumors of wars" elsewhere, 
 have served to keep up a market for the 
 "range" cattle that we should be selling 
 23 353
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 in Continental Europe. But we cannot de- 
 pend upon these extraordinary conditions 
 all the time. When the market drop comes, 
 it will fall heaviest on the American farmer 
 and live stock raiser. 
 
 American encouragement of this Euro- 
 pean discrimination is the more dangerous 
 to American industry because of the rising 
 importance of the Argentine Republic as a 
 cattle and meat producing country. On this 
 point let me quote one of the most prom- 
 inent live stock men in the West, W, A. 
 Harris, former United States Senator from 
 Kansas. In a public address last December 
 (1905) on ways and means of extending our 
 markets in Europe, he had this to say of 
 Argentine 's competition : 
 
 "Now one idea that has been in the minds 
 of a great many of our public men for a 
 great many years is that they Continental 
 Europeans have got to buy their bread 
 and meat of us, and you cannot starve a 
 nation they will buy anyhow. This is no 
 354
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 longer true. The world has moved on. To- 
 day the Argentine Republic is the strongest 
 and most dangerous competitor that we 
 have found for the trade with Great 
 Britain, and they are crowding us closely. 
 It is the greatest natural cattle country that 
 the world ever knew. It is the state of Illi- 
 nois multiplied by one hundred, when you 
 come to consider it. In the northern part 
 of the country you can grow figs and 
 oranges easily in the open air, and it ex- 
 tends in an unbroken plain to the south for 
 two thousand five hundred miles, and it is 
 all rich prairie land practically. 
 
 ' 'They are spending more money, and 
 have been in the last ten years, than any 
 other people on earth in order to improve 
 their stock of cattle. They are lavishing 
 fortunes upon the best bulls and cattle that 
 Great Britain can produce, and they are 
 able to raise cattle that would astonish the 
 American citizen. They also have enormous 
 sheep interests. 
 
 355
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 1 ' They have learned how to ship dressed 
 beef. For a while we rested secure in the 
 idea that they had to pass through the trop- 
 ics to reach the continental market, and 
 that they could not ship dressed beef in the 
 chilled condition that was required; and 
 that was a great difficulty for a while. But 
 they came to Chicago and took down the 
 best experts they could get in that line of 
 business, and they have built up packing 
 houses there that now send dressed beef 
 and mutton to Liverpool, and they are cut- 
 ting our throats in the English market, to 
 say nothing of the continental markets." 
 
 Now I do not desire to be misunderstood 
 as contending that all restrictions and dis- 
 criminations laid upon American meats in 
 Germany and other European countries 
 are due entirely to American attacks upon 
 the packing industry. The primary influ- 
 ence at work in Germany against American 
 imports is the agrarian influence seeking 
 to make higher prices for German farm 
 356
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 products. But I do contend that every 
 time a "yellow" writer for "yellow" 
 American magazines and publishing houses 
 makes assertions such as have recently been 
 made assertions which cannot be justified 
 either as fact or as clean fiction he does 
 his utmost to bring about conditions that 
 will be disastrous to the American stock 
 raiser and farmer, and to every person who 
 participates in the great live stock and 
 meat producing industries of the United 
 States. 
 
 357
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 AS TO CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION 
 
 THERE has been so much said lately 
 about the lack of care for cleanli- 
 ness in packing house processes, and 
 about the wholesomeness of the meats and 
 food products that come through the pack- 
 ing houses, that I feel constrained to add 
 something to what I have already said 
 about the way the public health is safe- 
 guarded from the time a meat animal comes 
 to the stock yards until it leaves the packing 
 house as a finished product. At every step 
 in the conversion of animals into meat the 
 public is protected, not only by rigid gov- 
 ernment inspection of every animal before 
 slaughter and of every carcass after slaugh- 
 ter, but also by the common-sense business 
 methods of the packers themselves. 
 
 Writers and publishers who have only 
 358
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the dollars-and-cents purpose to serve as- 
 sume the tragic pose and unfold hair-rais- 
 ing tales about dark secrets of the packing 
 industry. They make statements that 
 should, if they were true, cause every pack- 
 ing house in America to be closed by law, 
 and should convert the whole world to veg- 
 etarianism. 
 
 We are told of hidden chambers and 
 mysterious cellars where nameless mate- 
 rials are worked up by secret processes into 
 food. We are told, with a gravity that is 
 intended to pass for sincerity, that "out- 
 siders" are never permitted to see the inner 
 workings of a packing house. These liter- 
 ary concoctions are served up with a gar- 
 nishment of all the circumstantial detail 
 that can be conceived by a dishonest mind 
 and a feverish imagination working to- 
 gether. The very excess of detail, to the 
 thinking mind, ought to be evidence of un- 
 truth. 
 
 Are these dispensers of "literature" 
 359
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 supernaturally gifted that they can dis- 
 cover in a flash the dark secrets so care- 
 fully hidden from all " outsiders ' ' and 
 never suspected by the thousands of pack- 
 ing house employees and hundreds of thou- 
 sands of packing house visitors? People 
 who would be highly indignant if one were 
 to question their intelligence, accept these 
 false reports because it is so much easier to 
 believe what we are told than it is to investi- 
 gate, to analyze and to think for ourselves. 
 
 If one were possessed of a mind entirely 
 philosophical and removed utterly from 
 personal interest in the question, he might 
 find amusement in observing this whole 
 performance of baiting the imaginary 
 "beef trust" as another manifestation of 
 the mud throwing instinct that has been 
 characteristic of some human natures 
 throughout the ages since time began. Un- 
 fortunately there is a serious side, a very 
 serious side, to this performance. It does 
 360
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 real harm, not only to the packer, but prac- 
 tically to the entire public. 
 
 It is a foul blow at the entire industry 
 of raising meat animals and distributing 
 meats and meat products, an industry 
 that permeates every section of this coun- 
 try and engages, in one fonn or another, 
 from farm to retail meat shop, the income 
 producing work of a very large percentage 
 of the population a larger percentage 
 probably than does any other industry in 
 the land. It is an injustice to every man, 
 woman or child who eats meat, because, 
 utterly without justification, it plants in 
 their minds a suspicion of the wholesome- 
 ness of their daily food. 
 
 The packers have nothing to hide. They 
 hide nothing. The public knows this if it 
 would but let itself remember facts. You 
 who read these lines know it, if you will but 
 forget for a moment the clamor of sensa- 
 tion-mongers-for-profit only. Have you 
 ever heard of anybody being denied admis- 
 361
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 sion to one of the large packing houses in 
 Chicago ? Have you ever heard of anybody 
 being restricted in packing house sight- 
 seeing to any particular hour of the day or 
 day of the week? 
 
 The doors of the large packing houses 
 stand wide open to the world. There is not 
 another industry in this country that goes 
 farther in admitting the public to its work- 
 rooms. Certainly no other industry, en- 
 gaged in the production of food, more 
 frankly invites visit and inspection by 
 everybody that is minded ' ' to see how it is 
 done." 
 
 For more than a quarter of a century 
 the Union Stock Yards and the packing 
 houses have constituted the greatest show 
 places in Chicago. It is safe to say that 
 practically everybody coming to Chicago in 
 that time from other cities, from villages, 
 from farms, from all over the world has 
 had it in mind to visit the stock yards and 
 the packing houses. Most of them have 
 362
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 done so. Not a day passes that we do not 
 have them by scores ; at times they come by 
 thousands. Literally hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people I could, I believe, say mil- 
 lions, in truth all meat eaters, have gone 
 through these plants and have seen every 
 process of converting animals into food. 
 
 Outside of the offices there is not a locked 
 door in Chicago's Packing Town. Could 
 the packers afford to throw their plants 
 open to the world in this way if they had 
 anything to conceal? Could they risk giv- 
 ing a bad impression of packing house pro- 
 cesses and methods to hundreds of thou- 
 sands of actual customers for their prod- 
 uct? On the contrary, they have pursued 
 the open house policy as good business pol- 
 icy. They have believed and have proved 
 that the more the public knows about the 
 inside of a modern packing house the less 
 prejudice there will be against packing 
 house food products. 
 
 But these facts, which the whole world 
 363
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 knows when it stops to think about them, 
 have no restraining influence on the makers 
 of "yellow" literature. In fact, some of 
 them, I believe, attempt to justify their dis- 
 regard for facts by holding to an academic 
 theory to the effect that there is nothing in 
 common between facts and truth; that 
 truth, in other words, consists not in the 
 literal fact of a statement, but in what the 
 people are ready to believe and will believe. 
 
 Unfortunately a good many people will 
 always believe anything that is persistently 
 told them, particularly if it be about a cor- 
 poration. 
 
 The business of slaughtering meat ani- 
 mals and converting them into food and 
 food products is not a parlor business at 
 its best. Yet we hear every day, from the 
 thousands of people who visit the packing 
 houses as sightseers, expressions of sur- 
 prise that the various processes of the busi- 
 ness are carried on in such a cleanly raan- 
 364
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ner and with so little admixture of the un- 
 appetizing. 
 
 Men who are familiar with the old-fash- 
 ioned ways of slaughtering and handling 
 animals, or men who remember the stock 
 yards and packing houses of ten or fifteen 
 years ago, would be amazed to see what has 
 been done since then in the way of install- 
 ing improved methods. The difference be- 
 tween the old and the new, and the rapidity 
 with which changes from the old to the new 
 have had to be made, is often forgotten by 
 supersensitive persons to whom the sight 
 of raw meat is not pleasing. 
 
 This packing industry, as we know it to- 
 day, is only about thirty years old. The 
 packing house of thirty years ago was not 
 much more than an old-fashioned country 
 slaughter house multiplied in size; the 
 appliances and methods of handling were 
 crude. The business has grown since then 
 with marvelous rapidity. It has been a tre- 
 mendous task for the packers to keep up 
 . 365
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 with the demands upon them for providing 
 sufficient buildings and equipment of the 
 right character. But they have kept up. 
 The packing houses of this country will 
 compare favorably with any of the places 
 where foodstuffs are handled. Even the 
 out-of-door work that begins the moment 
 the cattle are landed at the yards in rail- 
 road trains has received its share of atten- 
 tion from the side of sanitation. 
 
 The old stock yards, opened in 1865, were 
 not much more than a series of cattle, pens 
 that could have been constructed almost 
 any place on the prairie with posts and 
 fence boards. For many years they con- 
 tinued to be inadequately drained and 
 poorly paved. The alleys and pens were 
 floored over with planks. There was a pre- 
 tense at draining by means of box sewers, 
 but that was all. 
 
 During the last half dozen years the 
 facilities for handling cattle have under- 
 gone what amounts to a revolution. The 
 366
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 yards have been almost entirely recon- 
 structed. Alleys and pens that were floored 
 with planks have been torn up, and the 
 area devoted to the yarding of cattle 
 almost 500 acres has been paved through- 
 out with vitrified brick laid on a substantial 
 foundation. The old sewerage system has 
 given place to a new, complete, up-to-date 
 system. The sanitary condition of the 
 yards, consequently, is now pronounced to 
 be practically perfect. 
 
 The reconstruction of packing houses has 
 been going on in the same way. New build- 
 ings are taking the place of the old just as 
 rapidly as they can be constructed. In 
 putting up the new buildings the very best 
 modern methods of construction and finish 
 are adopted throughout. The use of wood 
 or other previous material is dispensed 
 with as far as possible. Electrical motive 
 power has practically supplanted other 
 forms of power, which make it possible to 
 run the machinery of a plant from a cen- 
 367
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 tral station, where all the labor and dust- 
 making and smoke-making processes can 
 be concentrated and controlled, instead of 
 being distributed throughout many build- 
 ings. 
 
 Criticism of the large packing houses, on 
 the score of cleanliness and sanitation, 
 springs largely from persons who are en- 
 tirely irresponsible, and who like the ' 'yel- 
 low" periodicals, have something to gain 
 by attracting attention to their sensation- 
 alism. To give the slightest semblance of 
 plausibility to their utterances, they are 
 forced to ignore the rigid government in- 
 spection that is enforced in every large 
 packing house, and to picture the packers 
 as men who utterly lack ordinary business 
 sense. 
 
 I feel safe in asserting that meats and 
 food products, generally speaking, are 
 handled as carefully and circumspectly in 
 the large packing houses as they are in the 
 average home kitchen. Put it on the basis 
 368
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of selfishness, if you please, and deny the 
 packers a worthy motive, and the statement 
 I have made is still sound. 
 
 It is good business for the packer to be 
 careful. There is a positive dollar-and- 
 cents benefit to him in being able to assert 
 that his output is above reproach. He could 
 not afford to assert this if it were not 
 true. He would be soon found out, and the 
 damage he would surfer from exposure 
 would overwhelm any little momentary 
 profit he might have reaped as the fruit of 
 his misrepresentations. 
 
 Armour & Co., and I think most large 
 packers, maintain a force of scientific men 
 who are engaged in original research and 
 experiment. An important part of the 
 duty of these experts is to determine by 
 frequent test that every process employed 
 in producing articles of food shall, first of 
 all, safeguard the wholesomeness of the 
 article so produced. 
 
 Every detail in the handling of meats 
 24 369
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 that go into packing house food products 
 is closely watched by trained superintend- 
 ents and foremen, who are under strict 
 instructions to prevent the slightest care- 
 lessness or the doing of anything to which 
 exception might be taken. Scrupulous 
 cleanliness is ordered and enforced. If 
 this were not so, we would hardly throw 
 open the doors of our plants, as we are 
 doing, to visitors who have a curiosity to 
 know what goes on inside a packing house. 
 The tendency of packing house manage- 
 ment is all in the direction of securing as 
 rapidly as possible the best possible condi- 
 tions surrounding the workers and the ma- 
 terials they handle. 
 
 It is rather late in the day, if you but 
 think for a moment, to commence believing 
 that canned meats and other packing house 
 products are unwholesome. The West, the 
 Northwest, Alaska, even the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, have been explored and 
 opened to civilization on Chicago canned 
 370
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 meats. The western ranch and mining 
 camp could not exist without Chicago 
 canned meats. The basis of every expe- 
 dition to find the north pole is Chicago 
 canned meats. For a quarter of a century 
 naval and military expeditions have been 
 organized on Chicago canned meats. The 
 wars of the world in the Soudan, in South 
 Africa, in China and in Manchuria have 
 been fought on Chicago canned meats. 
 
 The self-appointed saviors of the uni- 
 verse (at so much a line) sometimes point 
 to German restrictions on meat imports 
 from America as evidence in support of 
 their assertions against packing house 
 methods. This is another of their half 
 truths. German restrictions on American 
 meats are purely protective in deference to 
 the agrarian influence in that nation. It has 
 happened, too, that when German laws 
 were barring American meats from Ger- 
 man ports, the commissary department of 
 the German Navy was buying American 
 371
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 canned meats to provision his Imperial 
 Majesty 's battleships. 
 
 The question of wholesomeness and 
 healthfulness is only part of the broader 
 question "quality." The large packers 
 have grown and prospered beyond their 
 smaller competitors not only because they 
 have handled the business better and more 
 economically, but because their methods of 
 handling, and the stimulation given to the 
 cattle industry by their facilities, has en- 
 abled the public to get a better quality of 
 meat at the same, or a less, price than was 
 previously paid. This has been one of the 
 results, as stated elsewhere, of the coming 
 of the packers, which changed raising and 
 marketing of cattle from an adventure to a 
 business and made cattle raising for qual- 
 ity profitable. 
 
 Packers are not claiming any particular 
 
 virtue in this. They have done what they 
 
 have done to serve their own purposes. But 
 
 certainly the doing of it has not been a vice. 
 
 372
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 It lias been part of the evolution of the busi- 
 ness of the country. Just as in the trans- 
 portation business the big railroads furnish 
 better transportation facilities than the lit- 
 tle jerk-water local line, so the large pack- 
 ers are able to furnish the public better 
 meat, and furnish it regularly. 
 
 This whole question as to better prices to 
 the cattleman, and better quality to the 
 public, has been ably discussed in an article 
 on "Butchers Then and Now," published 
 in the January 1st, 1906, business review 
 number of the Daily Live Stock Reporter, 
 of Fort Worth, Texas, from which the fol- 
 lowing extracts are taken. I quote this, be- 
 cause live stock papers are published for, 
 and in the interest of, cattle sellers instead 
 of cattle buyers like the packers : 
 
 "Up to fifteen years ago the only grad- 
 ing of cattle was by three a cow, a steer, 
 and a calf; and they were in two classes 
 poor and fat. They were almost without 
 exception the 'scrub or long-horns.' It is 
 373
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 an exception to-day to find a long-horn. 
 They sold then at from $3.00 to $8.00 per 
 head, depending on who wanted a few head, 
 and for what purpose. They were bought 
 in job lots and by herds. Now they sell for 
 from $9.00 to $60.00, single and by car-loads, 
 at an established market whose prices are 
 as stable as any other market, giving the 
 producer or trader a fixed basis on which 
 to operate. 
 
 "The NOW steer (in Texas) is fattened 
 mainly on cottonseed hulls and meal, com- 
 modities unknown and thrown away until 
 the packing house industry created a de- 
 mand for bigger, fatter and finer meat. The 
 NOW steer, under these conditions, weighs 
 one thousand to one thousand two hundred 
 pounds, while a little grasser THEN steer 
 weighed six hundred and fifty to nine hun- 
 dred pounds ; and there is a large difference 
 in the price per pound of the NOW steer, 
 though no more time is required to produce 
 him, but some more expense for seed and 
 374
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 meal. The condition of better and finer 
 cattle is seen in every ranch and nearly 
 every farm in Texas as a direct effort of 
 the packing houses 
 
 "Let's look at the butchering fifteen to 
 twenty years ago in Texas ; not the person, 
 but the killing and the serving to the trade 
 of our beef meat. It used to be that our 
 town butcher, like other village butchers, 
 scouted around among his neighbors and 
 the nearby farms for a beef or beeves, just 
 as he would need. A fat one was selected 
 if it was on his beat, and, if not, the next 
 thing to a fat one was taken. 
 
 "Having received his 'beef the next 
 thing was to drive it to a convenient tree 
 that afforded a branch large enough to 
 'hoist' the carcass by means of a rude 
 pulley carried along in his wagon, to haul 
 it up high enough to receive a few buckets 
 of water as a washing for the meat before 
 starting to the shop. If the tree was not 
 there it was handled on the ground, after 
 375
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 which it was bundled into a wagon and 
 off for the block. If it was winter and very- 
 cold weather, the meat might cool a little 
 en route. One to three hours after being 
 killed it was at its dissecting quarters on 
 the block and being served out as tender- 
 loins, short rib roasts, 'chuck' and round 
 steak nice and warm and beautifully red 
 with gore partially congealed. 
 
 "The old-time butcher was unmolested 
 or bothered by such pesky things as inspec- 
 tors, either local, state or national. His in- 
 tentions were good and honest, but fre- 
 quently he did not know whether the beef 
 was healthy or diseased, whether tubercu- 
 losis or some other 'losis' was permeat- 
 ing the meat in fact, he was not posted and 
 there was no one to post him. 
 
 "The quality or condition of the meat 
 when it reaches the consumer depends 
 largely upon its treatment after being 
 dressed, and it is here that one of the great- 
 est advantages of the present over the old 
 376
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 way of butchering is found. In the old way 
 of butchering and slaughtering meats, the 
 butcher had no, or at best a primitive, way 
 of chilling or refrigerating meats. In the 
 early days of the beef packing industry the 
 entire product was salted. How different 
 do we find things now. The present refrig- 
 erating system of a large packing plant is 
 on a very extensive scale. If it is intended 
 to keep meats for a period of several weeks 
 or months, the meat is frozen, and so per- 
 fect are the packer's facilities that frozen 
 meat can be kept in that condition almost 
 indefinitely. It is not often found necessary, 
 however, to keep fresh meats for a very 
 long period, and, in fact, meat is said to be 
 in the best condition after being chilled for 
 ten days or two weeks, though it will re- 
 main good, in a temperature just above 
 
 freezing, for three weeks or longer 
 
 "The great American public does not 
 know the care and caution which is neces- 
 sary to prevent the direct transmission to 
 377
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 man of disease common to animals, or to 
 prevent the setting up of diseased condi- 
 tions in man from the consumption of 
 meats from unhealthy animals. 
 
 "Most of the animals that are slaugh- 
 tered by butchers in country towns, or such 
 of the business as is carried on by retail 
 meat dealers in the larger towns and cities 
 who slaughter their own meat, are put on 
 the block and sold to the consumer without 
 having been inspected by government or 
 other supervisors, and no doubt in a great 
 many cases by men who have little or no 
 concern whether the food derived from 
 such animals is fit for consumption. 
 
 "Instances have even been known where 
 animals known to be diseased have been 
 purchased by unscrupulous dealers, simply 
 because their condition permitted of their 
 purchase at a very low figure, and the meat 
 from such animals has been sold to the con- 
 sumer at prices on a basis with those paid 
 for wholesome moat. The killer has reaped 
 378
 
 CAR LINES AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 a rich reward by his unscrupulous methods, 
 while the public has paid dearly in the loss 
 of health and even life. Small butchering 
 establishments by the hundreds are still 
 slaughtering disease infected cattle and 
 selling the meat to the public for food. It 
 would obviously be impossible to control 
 the slaughter of every animal killed 
 throughout the country. 
 
 "But the advent of the packers and the 
 centering of the great bulk of the slaugh- 
 tering at a few points has made it possible 
 to minimize the dangers which may arise 
 from consumption of unwholesome meats. 
 In fact, such dangers are practically elimi- 
 nated in so far as the cattle, hogs and sheep 
 slaughtered at the big packing plants of 
 
 the country are concerned The men 
 
 selected by the government to do the impor- 
 tant work of meat inspection do not receive 
 their appointment by reason of any political 
 pull, but because they are in the greatest 
 measure fitted for such positions. 
 379
 
 THE PACKERS, THE PRIVATE 
 
 "Candidates for inspectorships must be 
 American citizens who prove by sworn 
 statement and voucher to the United States 
 Civil Service Commission that they are 
 physically, mentally and morally worthy of 
 the responsibility of public office. They 
 must be graduates of recognized veterinary 
 colleges, must have had at least three years' 
 study of veterinary science, must pass the 
 examinations under Civil Service Commis- 
 sioners and must stand well up in the list of 
 passmen to receive the appointment. 
 
 "Thus is the public protected against the 
 vendors of meats which are diseased and 
 contaminated. It is one of the great advan- 
 tages over the old way of slaughtering and 
 dressing beef, pork, veal and mutton. ' ' 
 
 380
 
 University of California 
 
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