Senator WILLIAMS. And there must be some intervening cause of some sort of an abnormal or artificial character to create that condition. Now, what is the intervening cause?

Mr. CowAN. Senator, if you just follow me a moment you will get my line of thought the same as I have it and then I know your logic will follow the same as mine does, because logic must follow the same

course.

Senator BAILEY. Permit me to suggest that here is the plain exexplanation of it to my mind. The price of beef from year to year and from season to season depends on the crop, which determines the price of corn in the western country with which they feed them, and on the cottonseed supply in the southern country with which we fatten them, and consequently a change in the price of beef on the hoof does not reflect itself in the price of beef on the block as readily as it otherwise would, but I think it is undoubtedly true that if you inaugurate a condition that will permanently reduce the price of cattle themselves you will in time get a reduction correspondingly in the price of beef."

Mr. COWAN. On the block?

Senator BAILEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. COWAN. Now, I have not answered that you would not. The Senator does not follow, perhaps, my answer precisely.

Senator WILLIAMS. I was trying to get the answer from you. Senator Bailey gave what is his answer.

Mr. CowAN. I will give you mine if you will just follow my thought. I have pointed out that for the last several months the price of the beef in the carcass to the butcher on the block has been reduced a cent and a half to two cents a pound. I then said I went to the market, and the information I got there was that they are not selling any cheaper. I do not know. I only know what they told me down there. Naturally, we would suppose that it ought to result in a cheaper price for beef off of the block if the butcher can buy the carcasses cheaper. They have been buying those carcasses cheaper now for several months. Whether they are selling it cheaper or not at the market, I don't know. Whether they are selling it in New York cheaper, I don't know, but I will tell you what the butchers told me this morning when I said I wanted to arrange to buy some beef, and I inquired the price and said, "I understand meat has gone down." Every one of them answered me that it had not. One man said, "Who ever heard of meat going down this time of the year?" I said, "Have not bacon and hams gone down; are not they lower?" "No," he said, "they are higher."

I went over there asking these questions, because I knew these questions would be asked by some member of the committee. That led me to ask the question a while ago, if by introducing cheap Canadian beef it would have had the same effect as something else has had in the introduction of so extensive an amount of it in London-in the value of the beef in the carcass. Why, then, has not the price to the consumer been reduced over the block? By some it is claimed that this free list is for the purpose of giving the consumers cheaper beef. I want to know why the present reduction has not done it; if in this case it would reduce it, why did it not do it

in the other? Now, Senator Bailey's answer, in part, to your question, leads to the point that if it is permanently made lower in the carcass, then, naturally, it ought to be permanently lowered over the block. Now, I will not subscribe to whether it would or would not be; I do not know. It has not been done so far.

Senator WILLIAMS. In other words, let us just change from beef to something else for a minute. Suppose when cotton goes down, and continuously goes down for some months, would not it be rather curious if that price was not reflected in the price of cotton cloth?

Mr. CowAN. I never have gone into that, Senator. I do not want to drift into something I do not know anything about and am not acquainted with, because I could not answer it.

Senator WILLIAMS. Must there not be behind this tariff law some capacity upon the part of somebody, somewhere, to prevent the natural operation of the natural law?

Mr. CowAN. It has been so all the time everywhere I have been. I do not know who does it, but somebody does it.

Senator WILLIAMS. Is not there a point somewhere that is justin the first place they were telling you lies this morning; they told you that beef had not gone down, whereas you know it had.

Mr. CowAN. I took the advertisement of Swift & Co. out of the paper published here this morning to show that.

Senator WILLIAMS. Now, I will not interrupt you further. ahead.

Go

Mr. CowAN. I will answer as near as I can along that line. I do not admit that it would go down; I do not say that it would not, but I want to refer to some illustrations to show that these things happen in the same way; for example, let me refer you to the case of shoes. Now, you said that testimony had been given here that showed that the price of shoes had gone down. Now, the evidence to me is in what I pay for the pair of shoes I buy.

Senator SMOOT. We have evidence on both sides.

Senator BAILEY. The evidence was that they had gone down to the dealer but not that they had gone down to the consumer. There is no evidence here that they were reduced to the consumer.

Mr. CowAN. I went to Mr. Edmonston's place and bought a pair of shoes and paid him $7.50 for them.

Senator WILLIAMS. That class of fancy shoes does not go down. Mr. COWAN. I am telling you what he told me. He took my money. I have paid $7 for that shoe when hides were on the dutiable list during the time that the tariff debate was on, up here in the House. I asked him if shoes had not gone down since they put hides on the free list, and he said they had not, that they had gone up. He proved that they had gone up because he took my money. I have heard a number of people at Fort Worth say shoes are higher. I have never heard anybody say that shoes were retailing lower, and I am surprised by that statement.

Senator WILLIAMS. I am trying to get at the fact that there is a whole lot of robbery between the producers and the consumers, Mr. CowAN. I admit that.

Senator STONE. Do you know whether leather is going up or down? Mr. COWAN. I think that certain forms of leather have gone off about 2 cents a hundred. That is reported in the Bureau of Statis

tics report to the effect that leather has gone off about 2 cents a hundred, for heavy leather.

Senator STONE. Is that because the duty on hides has been removed?

Mr. COWAN. I do not know about that. I do know that it has gone off about 2 cents a hundred. It may have been.

I am now going to another point, and in illustrating what I have said, and in endeavoring to answer you, Senator-and I have been endeavoring to answer you. I lived in western Texas when the Wilson bill was passed, and a large number of people were in the sheep business there. Their business went down to almost nothing. Wool went down to nothing. It is a fact that will be testified to, I believe, by everybody who is willing to tell the truth, that there was not one bit of change for the better, at least with reference to making clothes and blankets cheaper after the Wilson bill was passed than they were before. Now, there must have been something wrong about that. I know they ought to have gone down a little, but perhaps the amount of wool in proportion to the amount of labor in the clothing was so small that, as to the leather or hide in the shoes, you could not find it.

Senator MCCUMBER. Are you not really now getting down to the real reason for every one of these propositions, and that is the proportion or percentage of the tariff or the duty on the product, compared with the retail prices in the stores, is so inconsiderable that it should scarcely be taken into consideration?

Mr. CowAN. That might be the case in the case of manufactured articles, but I do not think it would in the case of beef, and the amount of reduction for the tariff would probably be only to the amount of the tariff, which is equal to half of ours.

Senator MCCUMBER. Is their tariff only a cent and a half a hundred pounds now?

Mr. CowAN. A cent and a half is what they pay on fresh beef.
Senator McCUMBER. Oh, on the beef.

Mr. COWAN, Yes.

Senator MCCUMBER. If the tariff was a cent and a half on the beef, as reported, it would be equivalent to more than half of that, or three-quarters of a cent, to retail it, would it not, as it is retailedthe same percentage if it was sold for twice as much on the block?

Mr. CowAN. Perhaps not, if you work it out in the form of percentages. Answering Senator Williams, I will say that it is not my contention that if we assume that the retail price to-day is correct and profitable on a given article that cheapening the cost of the article to the retailer would not find its reflex to the consumer, but my experience has been that it does not generally do it. Now, who, between the purchaser and the consumer, gets off with the swag? Senator WILLIAMS. It is largely the Beef Trust, is it not?

Mr. COWAN. The Beef Trust gets a big profit, but I am talking about the price at which the beef in the carcass is sold, and after it passes from the Beef Trust it passes from them at 2 cents a pound less, and if they have anything to do with the retail price it is a matter that I know nothing about, but I think there is nothing in that at all.

Now, proceeding further. The price of cattle, we say, is now below the profit-making point. On page 1455 of the Monthly Sum

mary of Commerce and Finance of the United States for February, 1911, issued by the Department of Commerce and Labor, there is shown the number of cattle and their value, native steers, Texas steers, and cows received and slaughtered at the Chicago market each week for the years 1909-1910 and up to and including March, 1911. From these figures it will be observed that the value of cows for the period given in 1911 ran about 50 cents per 100 pounds less than for the year 1909 and about $1 per 100 pounds less than for 1910, and that the prices during the year 1910, up to the latter part of the year, for both native and Texas steer, would average about $1 per 100 pounds more than during 1911 and the latter part of 1910.

These figures are furthermore interesting as showing the number of cattle slaughtered. It is shown that for the week ending January 15, 1910, there were received at the Chicago market 63,980 head of cattle, of which there were slaughtered at that time 35,593 head. For the week ending February 12, 1910, there were received 59,166 head, and slaughtered 31,989-and so on-about the same ratio.

Skipping now to the fall months of 1910, it appears that for the period indicated the receipts of cattle and the number slaughtered were as follows:

It will be observed that native and Texas steers were valued as follows:

1 After this date there was a decline in the market.

While these figures are averages and may be affected by the relative quality and classes of the cattle marketed in different months, yet the general decline is undoubtedly evidenced by these figures.

As shown by the Chicago Live Stock World, issued on April 20, 1911, under the headline "Disastrous Slumps in Values of Live

Stock," the April prices (April has always been a high month) of cattle on the Chicago market in 1910 and 1911 were as follows:

Did this cheapen beef to the consumer? If not, how can South American beef do so?

The decline and comparative prices of hogs is shown as follows:

The comparative prices of sheep and lambs for April, 1910 and 1911, were as follows:

1910

1911

Northern sheep..
Western sheep..

Northern lambs.

Western lambs.

Colorado lambs..

Yearlings.

We quote the following from the article referred to:

Declining values for all classes of live stock, under an imposing array of bearish features, featured the April trade. Except in the case of calves and sheep, receipts were not excessive as measured by the normal April marketing, but the consumptive demand for meat was at low ebb throughout the month and prices bumped during the closing week, the lowest levels that have been touched this year on cattle, calves, hogs, sheep, and lambs, and, for that matter, the lowest basis on most classes that has been recorded within several years. It is further stated in this article:

Yet the demoralization of values of live stock, declines that took millions of dollars out of the pockets of the feeders, did not benefit, to any appreciable extent at least, the consuming public, retailers restricting the public demand by their rapaciousness.

And I set that out in detail in this paper, which I am not going to take your time to read. But you will find that comparing January 1, 1910, with January 5, 1911, native steer were worth $8.50 a hundred-that was the best quality of native steer-the same quality of native steer in 1911 was worth $7.10 a hundred. There has been a similar decline in all the markets. While these figures are averages and may be affected somewhat by the relative quality and classes of the marketed cattle for different months, yet the general decline is undoubtedly evidenced by these figures.