BEEF PRODUCTION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1403, 1 April 1912, Page 8

BEEF PRODUCTION.

• ■.'■' ITS CHANGING PHASES AND SCENES. Mr.-Joint, Clay, of-" Chicago, head or the live stock firm of .'Messrs. .Clay, Hobiiwon and Co.,;is a lending , authority in 'the matter of beef production, and an address that' he delivered at Edinburgh recently, on "TlioiVaiii.'-hiiij; linnpc and Our Beef Production" is worthy of careful study. His first experience of range lifo. was-in California, then in Texas, ami'subsequently in Montana. When tho great Civil War was over between the North and South, and comnierco began to flow- again, there was ah 'immense reserve of cattle in Texas, and these cattle began to come up northwards, where they had free, grazing. Ho dated from 18S7 the vanishing ran go of that immense country in, the matter of cattle production, because, then (.he barbed-wire fence was introduced. . Tho consequence was tho range was heing divided up into small cattle farms; and while formerly millions of cattle came up from Texas, he did not believe that 'last year there were 50,000 cattle. The small rangemen. took care to provide hoy or grain, and immense ■quantities of,cottonseed were spread out oil. the. ground. The ■'rang* had practically passed'away.' "•" " i The Beef Breeds. There were three great breed.s of beef cattle on the range—Shorthorns, Aber-deen-Angus, and Hereford. Early in the yCentur.vv tnit,jnoro especially about- ISI7, a great number of Shorthorns were taken over. In 1832 many more were introduced, and gradually they grew to have a very large number of magnificent Shorthorns, more especially in Kentucky. When ho went out in 1574, Kentucky was the home of the American Shorthorn, but since then-it. had'lost its pre-eminence, and the Shorthorn-had spread everywhere. About IS7S -the Hereford* began to take a >proininent' place, and tho ranchman, finding that, the' Herefords; were the urs , /.- ing'nniinal; , .bought very freely of them, and there was tremendous-Strife between tho Shorthorn and the Hereford men. He remembered ut" the fat stock shows somc'of'thri breeders 'almost 'panic, to. fisti-. cuffs in discussing, the. Tho result was.that' the "Hereford ■ aimost took pos?DSsioir-of"lhp. raligo country. No , bovine animal that he knew of was so fitted for grazing as probably the Hereford, so'far as'beef'cattle were concerned, and the Ayrshire so for as dairy cattle' were' and' \M4 'cdii Sequence' was,that in the .Western' Stales they saw lolmosf notb fiij» ."lout cattle.; 1 X' few years later "Aberdeen-Angus eatile were tried, and? ho'hoped he would not.hurt, '.the ..feelings' 'of - Aberdeen-Aligns breeders when he said they were found to l>3 a failure upon tho range. But the Aberdeen-Angus..had. taken..its ..place in tho central corn-growing States, because lie believed there was no animal which could take the place of-.the Aberdeen-, Angus when they gave him rich pastures to.go upon and.plenty of. feed to "marble" h'is"boef." There were'parts.of the conii•try "over-"there" which could producejust as much as James Hope's farm at East Barns, and..that was the most prolific spot he knew of in tho.world. Ho bclieve'd' the" day', was not far off when the great streams of America would be impounded, and the Great West would be..co'iiip! the,garden spot '.of, the .world.

'Extent"of the Trade.'" ■: The railroads had made' src.it centres in the United States, and from ten in thp. western jnirl,, where he operated, there were received " in' 1011' !),8tH,0(10 cattle, against 10,515,000 cattle" in 1910—a Wof 657,000 cattle. Of liogs or pigs they received 22,486,000, against -17,000,000 in 1910 —a gain of nearly a>500.000. These ten centres received 1G.2.37,000 sheen in 1011, as qgaiii.<t"'.li,Dlii,oi)O.'. >in 1D0O—a : gain -of 1.722,000 "slican. The total receipts of animals at these ten markets were. •18,571,000." Those were vast figures. Not all the' animals went into consumption. A great many of the cattle and sheep went out to be fed again, but the hogs wont into 'consumption 'One way or another, The decline in .'the.cattle was oil account of the fewer numbers received from the vanishing rouges, and on that account prices luul kept up, more especially towards (lie end of- the- year, at n Iniich higher level than lie had-ever known before, aad lie believed that tho days of cheap beef, so'far as the United States was concerned, were over for ever.

Mr. Clay proceeded to spent of tho e?,!? with which all this enormous stuff is handled in Ibe killing establishments .and converted from the raw material into the finished product; and showed how thn beef production is economised, and how science ha? made possible tho saving of the waste Unit . . prevailed. ... He thought that probably they were wasting more in Great ' Britain thn*. would make many rich if economic methods were adopted, and their cattle were handled (he same as they had been handled in the United States. Check to U.S.A. Beef Production. ■ He believed the beef production of tho United States had received " h ' serious cheek. Their population was increasing to a great extent, and their beef prodii'j-. tion was dcfliniug, and that meant that they must either me ionic otlier methods, or lieef would be the rich man's luxury as it used to lie in Scotland when, he was a small boy. If it was any satis.Tacti'pn to the .farmers of this country., to. know, ha did not believe that tho United States" would bo able to send very' mutfh more beef to this country.- : He bejievfll tKat the homo demand -of- flic Tjiiitcd. .States ' V.-as. going to, meet, . the . supply. High prices, of course, : '4 a production. They had noticed that ii'. tlio case of their hogs and sheep. Given high prices, they very scon produced them. Of course, , their hog business depended a good deal upon the corn crop. Hogs increased rapidly, but 'cattle 'did'not.': "Ho believed their cattle business was going to go much •slower-thnn it had done, andit would tako a trcmendotis effort for them'to keep up-even with their own population. But if tho people wanted beof they would get it.' Argentina and

Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand were all looking to Groat Britain ns the place where they could put their surplus best. Ho had been getting just as Rood beef as ho had tasted in his life this winter from Liverpool that was killed in the Ai-Rcntine, from .]■,!. !„ njcl. ~„ ]),. ,\s long as they were as many cattlu in South America, as they were doin;;, the people in Great ISritain, for this genoration at least, would not starve.