Senator WILLIAMS. Do you know where Lone Oak is!
Senator BAILEY. Lone Oak is in Hunt County.

Senator WILLIAMS. I passed through there lately, and I saw what I never had seen anywhere else-splendid cotton, splendid wheat, and magnificent alfalfa growing side by side.

Senator BAILEY. And you could have seen splendid corn.

Senator WILLIAMS. I happened to see those three crops, and I thought any time you could grow a bale of cotton so good as that, and what looked like a splendid crop of wheat, and what I know was a magnificent crop of alfalfa, with a fence separating them, that the people owning that land ought to be thanking God every day for his kindness to them.

Senator BAILEY. We do, every day and every night, too. That is the finest country in the world, and it will produce more things and produce more of every one of them than any similar area in the world. Senator WILLIAMS. And yet you want protection.

Senator BAILEY. No; they do not ask for protection.

Senator HEYBURN. Now, about fertilizers; I want to know if you use fertilizers on your wheat?

Mr. CowAN. There is no fertilizer used on any of the general crops in Texas in the black-land district or anywhere west of that, but in some of the lands in the piney woods or timberland district of eastern Texas I understand that they are using some fertilizers, but I have never seen it.

Senator STONE. The productivity of Texas land in wheat has decreased, in your opinion, approximately 50 per cent in 25 years?

Mr. COWAN. There would not be a decrease of 50 per cent. I would say about a third-I might safely say 50 per cent, however.

Senator BAILEY. I do not know whether you agree with that or not-I see no reason, however, why it is not true, that the same thing would not hold good throughout the country.

Mr. COWAN. I have read a great deal of that being so, but I have read after Senator McCumber on that subject, I think, and others who have stated that the production is decreasing about in the ratio I have mentioned, in Texas.

Senator STONE. You say the productive capacity of the land is still lessening from year to year? What I have in mind is if that process is going on throughout the country, a constant decreasing amount of wheat which can be raised, with the rapid increase in our population, we have about arrived at the point, or soon will, when we will not produce as much wheat as our people will need to consume.

Mr. COWAN. I did not come here to talk on wheat. That might be so or it might not, but you can not do it if you decrease the livestock production in this country so as to deprive the farmers of free fertilization through the method of live-stock raising, which they have been successfully doing in the State of Iowa and some parts of Kansas and elsewhere.

Senator WILLIAMS. Your agriculture in Texas is nearly all extensive instead of intensive?

Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir; there is very little intensive farming in Texas. In a few places there is. There is around Brownsville and a few other isolated places. There is no fertilizer used in the main black-land belt of Texas where cotton, wheat, and corn are produced most extensively.

Now, proceeding, with respect to the price and value of dressed beef and cattle, which we will have to compete with if we admit the Argentine cattle, it may be safely assumed that if this country is opened to the free importation of meat and meat animals the farmers' prices must decline so that they will be placed upon the level established by the cost of laying down those products in this country. We have no means of knowing that precisely, but it may be safely assumed that in the end they can be laid down in New York as cheaply as in London. I therefore submit to you a table furnished by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor, showing the wholesale prices per pound of River Plata mutton and beef at Central Meat Market, in London, from 1898 to 1911, from which it will be observed that in 1911 the value of chilled meat, hind quarters, was 7.9 cents per pound.

These figures are supposed to be authentic.

Average wholesale price per pound for River Plata mutton and beef at Central Meat Market, London, 1898-1911.1

1 Yearly averages computed from quotations in Meat Trades Journal, London, and published in Reports on Agricultural Returns of the United Kingdom. Quotations for individual days taken directly from Meat Trades Journal.

This shows that those prices are far below the average for the period. The last I gave you were for March, this year.

I went into the market this morning here at Washington to see what you pay for meat, if you buy it there, compared to what we pay for it at Fort Worth, coming right out of the packing houses there. I find that you pay less on the block, if you buy the beef in the places I went to in your market, than we pay in Fort Worth for the same quality of beef.

I wandered into a cooler-this was a little before 7 o'clock this morning, and I am pretty well acquainted with the beef business; I have seen a great deal of the business and I have helped kill and skin, but I have never helped steal any of it, although I have prosecuted a great many for doing so.

There were hanging in the market cooler probably 30 or 40 quarters of beef, and it was good beef. I should say that they were produced from 1,150 to 1,200 pound steers, well covered with fat. Another gentleman was already in the cooler with a salesman and another man came in about the time I did. I just stalked around to see what was going on, and I heard a dealer ask the salesman what he sold these hind quarters for. They had their fingers on them at the time. He said "12 cents a pound," and then he talked to him in an undertone. I was satisfied he was cutting that a little. I stayed awhile, looking at the quality.

Now, they are laying down from Argentina to-day in London as good beef as that and selling it at wholesale at 7.9 cents per pound for the hind quarters. Can any man who has got the interest of the live-stock industry of this country at heart invite free trade with Argentina, by which they may put that beef down in New York, and impoverish, as it will, the cattle producers of this country? Now, these are facts.

Senator KERN. Have you tried any of those $2 beefsteaks at the Willard Cafe?

Mr. CowAN. Yes, sir. I want to relate to you something about that. I know you will understand my reply is always intended to be the most courteous, as I have been acquainted with you for some time, and if I were not, it would be given in the same manner. I took Senator Hudspeth from Texas-I did not take him, but I met him at a little place across from the Willard café, a respectable place. We sat down at the table and ordered the highest-priced steak they had, porterhouse steak, and it was 50 cents, with bacon and a cup of coffee, and I did not eat more than one-quarter of it, and I had all I wanted to eat, I have seen that steak sell on the market at 25 cents, and it will cost the man stopping at the Willard, I should say, not less than $1.25 to $1.50. If we ate at the Willard café it would cost us that much, and if we took coffee there, with cream, it would have cost us 35 cents a cup. Now, so many Senators seem to get the idea that the cost of living is high because these hotels are charging such prices. They fail to go to these places where our farmers must go to see what a respectably good meal, consisting of the same good beef, may be obtained for. Senator KERN. I want to say to the Senator that I only stopped at the Willard two days.

Mr. COWAN. If the cattle raisers' association do not make any more money out of cattle than they are making now, they are not going to be able to pay my expenses any more and I will have to quit stopping there, but these are serious points which I am presenting now. I am telling you now what they are selling meat for in Argentine to-day. We can not compete with that meat. Mr. Lasater, a very extensive cattle producer, and the president of the cattle raisers' association, will demonstrate to you that we can not raise grass beef on that basis and lay it down in New York or anywhere near it.

Senator WILLIAMS. Do you think if the duty were removed that our people in New York would get their meat as cheap as the English people are getting it now in London?

Mr. COWAN. No; I do not think they would, Senator, for the present.

Senator WILLIAMS. Because if they did, that might, considering the general public welfare, somewhat compensate the loss the cattle raisers would suffer.

Mr. COWAN. I will reach that point later.

Senator SMOOT. Senator Williams, do you claim that the London people and the English people are getting meat cheaper than the American people?

Senator WILLIAMS. No, I do not; but he testified they were getting their meat under 7 cents and we were getting it at 123 cents, and he said it could be imported into New York as cheaply as London. Then Senator Smoot said that would be wholesale. Then I asked the question if our people could get it that much cheaper.

Mr. CowAN. I will answer that question-I think I can answer it. Commerce follows the trails of trade. The ocean has its trails like the railroads of the land. As I have read, there are 70 ships equipped for the purpose of carrying refrigerated meat from Argentine and frozen meat and other products from Argentine to England. England has the trade in Argentine going in the opposite direction. The United States has none. It has neglected its opportunities to make trade relations that would take care of our surplus, and it would take some time to establish as cheap transportation from Argentine to New York, on account of the difficulty of loading your vessels back, and therefore I should say that for a period of time, at least, it could not be laid down as cheaply in New York as it could be laid down in London; but if they were buying 1,200-pound steers for $25 in Argentine then they could profitably lay down this beef in New York at 73 cents a pound.

Senator WILLIAMS. Instead of 121?

Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir; and it is less than 12 now.

Senator WILLIAMS. Whatever it is.

Mr. COWAN. The prices on this statement, which I have filed, of the prices in London are not the prices I have just now been reading. I am going to call your attention to the fact that it has cost the cattlemen, the cattle producers and breeders of the United States, or will have cost them by another six months if the same prices prevailing now shall prevail then, $100,000,000. Take it from last October or November to next October or November, if the present slump in prices continues it will have cost us $100,000,000 because of the fact, in my opinion, that Argentina is laying down beef in London that cuts off the possibility of our export trade and dams up the supply in this country, demoralizing the market until we are selling cattle to-day on the market in Fort Worth that are shipped to Philadelphia for sale in the carcass at 13 cents to 2 cents per pound less than we sold them for one year ago. Now, these figures, in cents, for the chilled meat were: For January, 8.96; February, 8.30; March, 7.90 for the hind quarters, and fore quarters ran about the same. Going back, however, to January of the preceding year it was about the same for January of the preceding year-but during the year it reached a price as high as 11 cents for hind quarters.

This period, from November, 1910, to March, 1911, shows a decline of 1 to 2 cents a pound in the hind quarters in London. During that time we have had a similar decline at least, which shows now in the market in the wholesale price in the United States.

These figures are presented for the purpose of demonstrating the fact that if these products are placed on the free list we may expect a reduction in the wholesale price of fresh beef in all the great centers of population along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and that will dam up our western supply and cut off the eastern independent buyers and demoralize prices. Precisely the same thing must happen with respect to the Canadian surplus if it is admitted into this county free on top of the surplus which we can not now dispose of.

Senator LODGE. In regard to the point you just made about the Canadian surplus: Do you consider that the admission of Canadian cattle free would have a serious effect upon us?

Mr. COWAN. I do, Senator Lodge. I did not think so some time ago because of the expressed opinion of cattlemen in various parts of the country, but I have just read a pamphlet, which I wish could be procured for every member of this committee, issued by the Hon. Sidney A. Fischer, minister of agriculture of Canada, entitled "Beef Raising in Canada." I think that was issued in April, 1910-yes; that is what it says. I understand that since this Canadian treaty came out and this proposition to bring cattle into this country was agitated, and the assertion has been so repeatedly made that cattle were worth more money in Canada than they are here, you can not get these books any more.

Senator BAILEY. If you will give me the name of it I will have it printed as a public document.

Mr. CowAN. I borrowed this one and they said I had to hand it back. It is really a secondhand borrowing, I might say.

Senator CULLOM. Just what does that pamphlet show?

Mr. COWAN. I am coming to that. I have quotations from it. I will say now that it demonstrates the proposition that Canadian cattle of the class known as choice beeves are sold in Toronto, and have been sold there for a long period of time, from 1 cent to 2 cents a pound under the same class of cattle in Chicago, and that in the fall months of 1910 there were more cattle exported from Toronto than any other place in America, to England; that Canada maintained her exportations while Chicago was second to Toronto, and this pamphlet shows how much they pay for feeders; how much they feed them, what they cost them and what they sell them for, demonstrating that they are selling beef cheaper than it has been sold during the same period in Chicago by a cent to a cent and a half a pound in Chicago.

Senator BAILEY. There is no real inconsistency between the figures which you now give and the other figures which show the price higher in Canada than in the United States, per head, but the real explanation is that the head in Canada is much heavier than the average head in the United States and that explains how it is that the larger price per head is a smaller price per pound.

Senator STONE (interrupting). Let us see about that. Suppose the fact to be that beef per 100 pounds, wholesale or retail, in Toronto