They have always
pleaded poverty and explained the extremely small margin of
profit under which they have operated. Of course, the repeated
turn-over in their business has been an enormous thing; and their
industry, since the invention of refrigerator cars and the
shipment of dressed beef in tins, has been one which has extended
to all the corners of the world. The great packers would rather
talk of "by-products" than of these things. Always they have been
poor, so very poor!
For a time the railroads east of the stockyard cities of Kansas
City and Chicago divided up pro rata the dressed beef traffic.
Investigation after investigation has been made of the methods of
the stockyard firms, but thus far the law has not laid its hands
successfully upon them. Naturally of late years the extremely
high price of beef has made greater profit to the cattle raiser;
but that man, receiving eight or ten cents a pound on the hoof,
is not getting rich so fast as did his predecessor, who got half
of it, because he is now obliged to feed hay and to enclose his
range. Where once a half ton of hay might have been sufficient to
tide a cow over the bad part of the winter, the Little Fellow who
fences his own range of a few hundred acres is obliged to figure
on two or three tons, for he must feed his herd on hay through
the long months of the winter.
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