Smyrna times., 1878-08-28
.Ag2'ScWZ1axT0I.
Western Cattle and Western Farming

)t the Steauy lncredSe Vi INC ILL 0N0ASN "a |
fresh meat from the United States into
Great Britain. From four dollars head
of population the importations now reach
fifteen dollars head. This great increase
within three years indicates one of two
things, or perhaps both. There must either
have been an advance in the average wages
of different classes of the people which
allowed of larger expenditures for fresh
meats than was formerly the case, or there
has been diminution of the native supply
coming to market. Both causes have been
at work. The imports of fresh meats have
increased by reason of the falling off in the
domestic supply, and this has also been
concurrent to some extent with greater
consumption of fresh meat by the English
people, equivalent perhaps to the average
increase of wages. English cattle are highly
fed, pasturage is dear, and owing to the
care taken in breeding from choice stock
the meat is juicy and tender, and for the
best cuts brings high prices. On the other
hand the poorer class there understand |
better than we do how to make the inferior |
cuts palatable and to get the greatest |
amount of nutrition from them. Although |
the profits will continue to be small on our
exports of beef to England, so long as it is |
selling there on a general average of from
fourteen to sixteen cents a pound, the trade
is admitted to be fairly remunerative at
existing rates. But the Texas cattle, as
we'll as those of the plains, driven long dis
tances and subjected to the privations in
cidental to inland and water transporta-
ton, cannot compete in quanty with the
stall-fed English beef, and must therefore
expect to find in that country lower grade
of customers until such changes are effect
ed in the cattle themselves as we are about
to refer to.
Mr.. Macdonald, an intelligent Scotsman,
was sent to this country last year expressly
to study American cattle raising and the
American meat market, with reference to
the question of English supply. He gave
the matter thorough investigation. He
travelled ten thousand miles in pursuit of
information-over Texas and the cattle
ranges of the West, to Chicago and New
York His letters form the basis of this
article. His deliberate opinion, backed by
statistics we have no room to give, is that
the English and Scotch farmers need have
no apprehension that the importation of
American beef will be Immediately dis
astrous to their interests; for although it
will introduce an important element of
competition as to quantity, it will take
eight or ten years for American stock
raisers to compete successfully in point of
quality. What astonished him was the
vast cattle yards of Chicago, where 1876,
the total value of the live stock received
was over one hundred millions of dollars.
Accustomed to small holdings, the liberal
use of manures, thorough tillage, and the
utmost economy in the details of farm
management, Mr.. Macdonald criticises
strongly the Western farmers as being
more slovenly and less thrifty than they
are generally supposed to 0e abroad. There
is no reason to doubt that his structures on
this score are not in the main true. Many
Of the Western farmers are men who were
trained originally to other occupations.
They waste their manures because the lands
are naturally rich. They crop necessarily
with a very loose regard to any saving
system of rotation, take all they can from
the land without returning anything to it.
and with sort of blind confidence that il
will continue to answer Douglas Jerrold's
description of similar soil, "If you tickle
it with astraw it will laugh with harvest
But, from the earliest colonial days thi!
system of tickling has brought about its re
venges. After generations in the oldel
States have suffered in like manner from
the improvidence of their forefathers, it il
only of late years that by a better system
of tillage the more energetic farmers of the
Atlantic seaboard are retrieving the land
exhausted by over-cropping in tobacco and
corn. Mr.. Macdonald illustrates the diff
ference between good and slovenly farming
by remarking that while land near Spring
field, Illinois, rents for five dollars an acre
the same sort of land in Scotland would b,
worth to rent twenty dollars an acre, ant
that the difference in rental would almos
be saved in the more careful farming of tn
Scotch tenant. The same principle, h
argues, applies to stock raising. If we wan
to raise choice, marketable cattle, the bree,
must be improved; thoroughbreds must b
more sought after, and we must fatten les
with corn, which does not make the ter
derest meat When these things are az
complished, and the means of transport:
ton are improved, and the rates brougf
down to the lowest possible figures, he is
the opinion that American beef will be
Gvoral England at price and of
quality that will seriously affect the natil
market. These hints and suggestions a
valuable. But it does not follow that v
should not continue our shipments of catt
tc England so long as there is a steadily
creasing demand for them at remunerati
prices. In the meanwhile, our stock raise
might go on improving their cattle by GRO
ing them with Herefords, or Short Horr
or Holsteins, or any other blooded sto
adapted to market purposes, and th
bring the quality Of the meat up to t
highest European standard. And this,
learn, is what some of them have alrea
undertaken to do.