law protect them. Give me immunity from the law and the financial power of the packers and I can dictate the price of beef to both the producer and the consumer. I am not prepared to lay all the blame on the packers for the high price of beef to the consumer; in fact, I doubt if they make as much money as the retail butchers when we consider the capital invested.

IMPROVED METHODS.

The modern methods pursued by the packers in slaughtering beef has become absolutely necessary to the trade. The large saving under their method over and above the old-time slaughterhouse system is such as to make the packinghouse industry indispensable, but this fact should not justify in the least any violation of free operation of the law of supply and demand.

NUMBER OF BEEF IN TEXAS.

I estimate there are at least 700,000 steers in the State of Texas. Had cottonseed meal and hulls, on which the majority of cattle fed in Texas are fattened nowadays, sold at a fair price, about half of these cattle would have gone into feed lots and from there to market centers, which would have relieved the situation very materially; and what applies to Texas in this regard would apply to Oklahoma, Kansas, and in fact all the cattle-producing States, though in a less degree. Thus, you see the shortage of feed and the consequent high price of same is the principal cause of the shortage of beef.

FREE ADMISSION OF CATTLE.

There has been some agitation and a little apprehension on the part of the cattle raisers of Texas that cattle might be admitted into this country free of duty, especially from Mexico. Should this measure be enacted it would only aggravate the conditions and increase the number of cattle unfit for market. As stated heretofore, there are a large number of cattle in all the cattle-producing States withheld from feed lots on account of the high price of feed. Free admission of cattle would increase this number very greatly, but would not relieve the situation; it would only tend to aggravate present conditions and increase the price of feed, thus making it more expensive to fatten a steer than it is now.

I deny that the shortage of cattle is responsible alone for the so-called high price of beef. If the stock raisers and stock farmers are forced to sell their beef on the hoof at a less price than they are receiving at this time, it would cause them a loss, owing to the high price of everything required to put a beef in prime condition. Hence the cause of the shortage in beef is not a shortage in cattle, but a scarcity of beef in the market centers, owing to the high price of feed necessary to put the beef steer in prime condition. This is an inning for the farmer, and he is entitled to all he gets out of it.

BACK TO THE FARM.

The only way to reduce the profit of the farmer is to increase the output of the farm as well as increase the number of farmers. Turn the tide from the city back to the country. The slogan should be “back to the farm"; becc me a producer instead of a consumer. The idea of moving to cities to educate the children is an erroneous one; parents should move from the cities to the country to rear and educate their children, and thereby make of them strong, robust, selfreliant, and independent men and women, improving their condition physically if not mentally.

This is the true solution of the correction of high prices for the necessities of life. Farm life is altogether different now than it was years ago when the tide turned from the country to the cities. Telephones, automobiles, rural free delivery, and good roads have added a great deal to the advantage and convenience of farm life.

So long as the Anglo-Saxon race continues to be the greatest meat-eating people on the globe they will continue to set the pace for all other races in the arts of both war and peace. To do this they require the blood and nervemaking qualities of animal-product food. You need not fear a successful boy. cott on beef. To eliminate this wholesome diet from the American table would be a retrogression the people of this country would not tolerate.

FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1911.

UNITED STATES SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE,

WASHINGTON, D. C.

The committee proceeded to the consideration of H. R. 4413, Hon. Boies Penrose in the chair.

Present, Senators Penrose (chairman), Lodge, McCumber, Smoot, Gallinger, Clark, Heyburn, La Follette, Bailey, Simmons, Stone, Williams, Kern, and Johnson.

STATEMENT OF JUDGE S. H. COWAN, OF FORT WORTH, TEX.

Mr. CowAN. Mr. Chairman and gentleman, it was not my desire to submit any further statements, and I now submit them because requested to do so. Those statements pertain to the recognized evidences of the value of particular classes of live stock in the United States and Canada covering a period of a number of years. I ask that the typewritten statement which I have prepared, together with the documentary evidences attached, which is explained by the typewriting, be made a part of the record. Having asked that, I will say that the Table No. 26 of the Tariff Board, which gives the number and average value per head of live stock on farms and by classes in specified States and in Canada, was not, according to my understanding, prepared by the Tariff Board at all, but, I learn from Mr. Saunders, was taken from the bulletin issued by the Agricultural Department of the United States, gathered by the Census and Statistics Monthly of Canada for January, 1911, and that the Tariff Board knows nothing about it other than the figures that they get from this statement. I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Saunders very intimately, and have for years, and I know they would not put before the committee a statement which they intended should mislead the committee. Unfortunately in the remarks respecting this table the tariff committee used the expression which I think was quoted by Senator Stone the other day, no doubt with the utmost reliance on his part, that prices of "other than dairy cattle" vary in the United States from $14.30 a head in Minnesota to $27.40 in Montana, while in Canada the range of prices is from $31 in Saskatchewan to $34 in Ontario. As a matter of fact, the table in no sense refers to the price at which any particular class of cattle is sold.

That was merely an inaptitude of expression by whoever read the report of the Tariff Board. The only figures that they have given show the forty-seven and odd million cattle other than milk cows in the United States and their estimated value, and divides the total number of cattle, including oxen and the calves of milk and dairy cows and all others into the aggregate, and that produces a certain sum of money, but it is representative of nothing as indicative of the

relative prices of cattle in this country and elsewhere. We do not know whether those monthly statistics embrace the calves or other beef cattle, and I have been unable to find it, and I have searched everywhere. I went to the Tariff Board, and they could not find it for me, so I do not know. Now, we must cast that aside, as it is unimportant. We then went to the statistical department of the Bureau of Commerce and Labor and we found there a pamphlet, the name of which is given in my typewritten statement here, which is issued by the department of agriculture of the Dominion of Canada under its authority, giving the prices by months from 1890 to 1909 of cattle under the heading of "Butchers' choice steers" in one table and "Western prime steers" in another, the first being at Toronto, and taken from quotations from the Toronto Globe, counting that as a reliable journal. The other consists of quotations taken from the Manitoba Free Press, giving the quotations as at Winnipeg off the cars.

The next table is the wholesale price of meat in Canada taken from a report of the Harris Abbatoir Co. (Ltd.), of Toronto. Those are the sources of information I rely on and everybody in trade must rely on. Now, I submit the yearbook from the Chicago Drovers' Journal to show the price of cattle for the different years, of various classes of cattle at Chicago for the same period of time. Then I take from the annual report of the Chicago stock yards the range of price, high to low, covering that period of time. Then I take from the monthly statistics of Commerce and Finance of the United States, of the Department of Commerce and Labor, prices of natives steers, Texas steers, and calves on the Chicago market down to 1911. Then I have a reference headed "Diastrous slump in values of live stock," in which is given prices for April, 1910, and April, 1911.

Now, from all these sources we have compiled this information. In addition to that, in the typewritten statement will be found quotations taken from issues of the Toronto Globe, which I examined in the Congressional Library yesterday. The conclusion I reached is this: That the value of cattle, when we go to fix the price of cattle, the prices where they are sold and what they actually sold for, shows that during this entire course of time cattle had been worth less in Canada than in the United States, with the exception that export cattle to-day, since the great slump in the American market, has reached very close to the prices in this country and are somewhat lower there, as evidenced by the fact, as we recite from the Toronto Globe, that Swift & Co. and Morris & Co. have bought a certain number of steers in Toronto in May and shipped them for export to England. I do not believe the Tariff Board will dispute those facts. As to the value of dressed beef, the Tariff Board gives No. 1 and No. 2 classes, and I have not been able to find any such designation in any price list; but taking the value of beef as given there, this book to which I have referred, and taking the value of beef as given in the statement I filed a few days ago, that had been furnished by the Bureau of Statistics, you will find that the value of dressed beef is somewhat less in Canada than it is in this country. That is all I have to say in that particular. I want to acquit the Tariff Board of any intentions, of course, to present any statement

here or any other report that would be intended as misleading, but I think you must take the range of prices covering a period of years and not attempt the method that was used. Furthermore, the Tariff Board furnishes you no information whatever. I have furnished you all the information there is on this subject from the Government reports covering a period of years both here and in Canada from the recognized sources of information upon that subject. I also refer the committee to the prices which the Matador Land & Cattle Co. sell their cattle, going back 10 years, as reported to the Committee on High Cost of Living, and which will be found in volume 2, page 620, in the report of the proceedings of that committee. Now, it is a fact that at certain periods of time cattle for export have in the past been somewhat higher in Canada on occasions than they have in the United States, if you take into consideration the relative freight charges, but that was only for one year in the entire business carried on in Canada by the Matador Land & Cattle Co. Mr. MacKenzie, in his statement, however, makes some errors, which he did not have a chance to correct, as I personally know, before it was printed, in which he refers to certain cattle as 2-year-old steers and bringing them out at 4 years old. You can take them in for grazing for six months-I looked that up this morning and that is the identical rule under the Dingley Act and under the present act. So, Mr. MacKenzie was mistaken in that statement.

I only wish to submit these facts for your consideration, and I hope that what I have said, together with all I have submitted in typewriting and the documents, will be printed as a statement of what I have heretofore said, not with a view to criticizing the Tariff Commission or the Tariff Board, but in view of not furnishing facts, which it did not do.

Senator BAILEY. Mr. Chairman, I want the statements as submitted, together with all the other statements of Mr. Cowan, to be printed by themselves, and, without wanting to interrupt the next witness, it looks to me like all this matter, on being printed, ought to be kept as separate as possible. I think the whole lumber hearing ought to be printed together and the whole cattle hearing, etc.

The CHAIRMAN. An effort will be made to act on that suggestion, and we will endeavor to have the subjects all together as near as possible.

FURTHER STATEMENT BY JUDGE S. H. COWAN, TOGETHER WITH DOCUMENTS SHOWING THE PRICES OF CATTLE IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA.

I was requested to submit such evidence as I might have to show that the statement of the Tariff Board in the pamphlet entitled "Reciprocity with Canada," page 110, Table 26, does not represent the relative prices of cattle in the United States and Canada.

I have already submitted various price lists, as will be found in the report of my statements at the hearings before this committee on the 15th and 16th

2011-S. Doc. 58, 62-1-13

The table and comment on pages 110 and 111, Reciprocity with Canada, are as follows:

Number and average value per head of live stock on farms, by classes, in specified State

and Canada.

Prices of other cattle vary in the United States from $14.30 a head in Minnesota to $27.40 in Montana, while in Canada the range of prices is from $31 in Saskatchewan to $34 in Ontario.

Prices of sheep are much lower in the United States than in Canada, due to the fact that Ontario specializes on pedigreed flocks, as appears later on. In the United States they range from $2.90 per head in Texas to $5.30 in Illinois and Iowa, while in Canada the range is from $4 in Nova Scotia to $7 in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

First. I deny that the prices of cattle in the United States vary from $14.30 per head in Minnesota to $27.40 per head in Montana for the same class of cattle, or that prices in Saskatchewan or Ontario are relatively higher for the same class of cattle than in the United States, or that the Tariff Board's figures should be given that construction.

It will be observed that the figures given in the table under the heading "Average value per head of live stock on farms" do not refer in any sense to the price at which any particular class of cattle is sold. Whoever wrote the report substituted the word "prices" for "average value," and erroneously assumed that the averages