Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-13
ovER.PRoDucTIoN.
One Reason Why the Farmers Fave No
Money.

To the Gazette.
Many people, some of them shrewd and
successful business men, cannot under
stand why farmers in Northern and Cen
trail Texas have for some years past been
hard run for money when they owned well
| cultivated and unencumbered homesteads.
| In conversation with New England mil
| lionaire who visited Velasco last summer,
he remarked that their poverty as far as
having actual cash was concerned, was a
| problem ne could not solve unless he ad-
mitted them to be the most extravagant
livers of any working class on eartn After
had given him my ideas on the subject he
admitted that must be about right told
him that the same thing that had been keep
ing the big ranchmen from making money
was working against the small farmers
and few of either class had come in con-
tact with seemed to know it. The whole
solution of the problem was transportation
to foreign countries. The small farmer
raises too much cotton because ne can get
cash for it near home. Corn and small
grain had been for years drug" hard to
dispose of. If he raised the latter and de-
cided not to sacrifice it at the ruinousfy
low prices that prevailed for years, but
went TO raising hogs or cattle, what could
he do with the latter when ready for mar
ket2 After supplying the demands OF local
butchers, the rest were left TO eat their
heads of, causing the owners greater loss
than if they had let stock and hog raising
alone and sold their corn and oats for the
II and Is cents per bushel it has
so often gone at during the past
ten years. This has been SO well proved
during that time, especially in the great
central belt of black land counties, that
farmers, put to the wall for ready cash at the
end of the fiscal year, have oflen
sold their meat hogs for ridiculously
low prices and bought high-priced
Northern bacon on credit the fol-
lowing spring. There was no way for them
to ship their grain, if they raised it, and no
close home market and still worse facilities
for getting rid of surplus steers and hogs.
They dubbed together at times and sent
train loads of the latter to st. Louis, Kan
sas City and Chicago, and in nearly every
instance actually lost money. Even the big
cattlemen had close shaves TO come out
with expenses and interest on investment,
and many sold only to pay running ex-
penses and keep their pastures and ranges
from being overstocked. If they shipped
to New Orleans the peculiar location and
surroundings of that port made it impos-
sible to hold their cattle a day, and, though
a large ship could take frozen beef there
without Tightening, "a process frozen beef
will not stand), still the forced market put
the seller at everybody's mercy. At other
gulf ports no full cargoes could be taken
without using lighters, which, as noted
above, was, of course, out Of the question
and ii is a well-knoWn fact that ships can
not be made to pay by fitting them to take
half cargoes of frozen meat and half of other
freight. This was provec so often that no
ship owuer will attempt it now As one ex-
ample of this peculiar state of affairs. 1 will
remind you of the droath that five or six
years ago afflicted parts of Williamson,
Bell. Milan, Falls and Travis, and nearly
all of Burnett, Mason, Mccullough, Llano,
San Saba, Coleman Brown, Comanche,
Hamilton, Coryeu, ,Eastland. callahan, Run
nels, Menard and kimball counties. Good
COWS and calves were offered then by farm
ers in Burnett and even in Williamson
county for S. and there were no buyers be-
cause there was no way to get them out of
the United States and no market for such a
surplus in the country. Papers in my pos
session show that at that time beef was
twenty-seven cents pound in the city of
London, and frozen mutton was being
shipped in immense quantities to
Europe from Australia 1900
miles away simply because large
ships could enter harbors there and load
directly at the refrigerators. With deep
port on our Gulf coast, such as Velasco has
recently been made by the Brazos River
channel and dock company, there is every
prospect of this condition of affairs chang
ing for the better, and not only the cattle
kings of the western plains will have a
chance to make big profits, but the little
farmers who can raise from two to ten eX-
ira head of beeves or hogs, (when the
European grain crops are good and grain
values consequently low here) will have as
ready market at better profit than they
have had for anything they have sold for |
years past.
This is so patent that some OF the most |
wealthy and far-seeing cattlemen in Amer |
lea bought pastures in this county near We |
-. L
River channel and dock company charter |
to make deep water port here The buy |
ers of these pastures told your correspond |
ent at that time that they wanted these !
lands to hold their beeves on until they re-
covered the effects of shipment by rail, and
then slaughter them to some advantage
Besides having deep water right at the
doors of their refrigerators, they had these
holding grounds, something that does not
exist, nor can exist at any other port now
open to the entrance of deep-draught ocean
steamers You will quickly see how this
coming condition of affairs will affect the
farmers of the state and enable them to cur
tail their acreage of cotton to some advan-
tage to themselves individually, ana to the
at large.
a man may have his bins bursting with
grain ripe for the weevil, his stalls and pens |
crowded with cattle and hogs he cannot
use, and attention to which occupies his
time at loss-still, il he is without cash,
he is poor, and will get poorer
and more dissatisfied every day.
Some of them would almost be willing to
places with the man on the desert
island who found million gold dollars but
was in danger of starving to death. For
years past there has been cry of over
production. As far as the United States is
that was often correct. But at
the periods when this overproduction was
creating the greatest distress at home, for
eign countries were begging for a chance
to exchange their coin for our surplus
bread and meat
The tinkering of charlatan legislators,
the bowling Of demagogues, have helped
blind the great mass of producers to the
true cause of these evils. Millions of public
money were being thrown away on impossi-
bic Seaports under the direction of disso-
lutte, corrupt or ignorant officials, whose
entire record is one of failure, and this
money did not perceptibly swell the volume
Of currency in use because it went into the
hands Of equally as corrupt politicians and
combines of contractors, all concerned
f expended rightly the money would not
bring deep water TO the ports they pre-
tended to be trying to open.
With the building of large refrigerators
md grain elevators at Velasco, the only
ieep port now on the Texas coast, this
.rouble will be over-for number OF years
1t least-and an era of prosperity viii be-
gin for farmers.
This is what makes the success of the
8razos river channel and dock company