Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-02-15
AT DEEP WATER.
To Get Cattle to Refrigerator
and Ships the Problem
THAT HAS NOW BEEN SOLVED
velasco Offers What the Committee o
Cattlemen Said Was Needed-How
Great City May be Built 1T
the Mouth of the Brazos.

Notwithstanding Texas leads all other
states in the Union in the number of her
cattle, she suffers the most in the matter OF
price. The greatest cause of this is the
distance from her ranges and feeding pens
TO the markets. This has always been tho
case, and so long as cattle are marketed at
the present places, IL will continue. Texas
fat beeves in Kansas City stockyards suffer
by comparison with Kansas and Missouri
beeves. Ours have travelled by tedious,
feSh-wearing journeys of 400 to 900 miles,
consuming days. Theirs are fresh from the
fields and corn-bins, At Chicago, the diff
ference is more to our disadvantage. This
is true of cattle intended for use in either
Of these places; but more particularly is il
true of cattle which buyers want to ship
further East, for our beeveS present an IN.
inviting prospect for that use.
This evil can be remedied effe ctually and
forever by Strengthening at home. True,
many, experiments in this business have
been failures, but failures are the stepping
stones to success. Already we have one
successful packery of admirable capacity az
Fort Worth paying large dividends.
The cattle of Texas, numbering 9,S16,2Il
head and valued at S74. 800 600, show an in
uustry of such dimensions as calls for the
most careful consideration of every eco
nomic question relating TO it. Last year
there We're shipped out of this state l,0OO,-
that this great army of beeyes, which
would have covered whole counties in its
march north, would have brought TO the
producer fully 331s per cent more money
had they been sold TO Big Four composed
of Texas cow men, capitalists and business
men. Every disadvantage which you labor
under in business reduces your column OF
profits The man who hapls his wheat to
market forty miles cannot make as much as
the man who hauls it twenty miles. The
stockraiser who transports beef 600 miles
to market cannot possibly get as much for
his product as the man who sends 1t only
200 miles.
It is well-lzno Town that in Strengthening cat
tie every particle of the beef must be used,
from the tip Of the horn to the end of the
longest hair in its tail, and if for any rea-
son any part of it cannot be used, the profits
are cut down.
The cheaper the transportation from the
producer or factory to the market or con-
sumer the greater the price the producer
or factory Will get for the product. From
and to seaport points are the cheapest trans
portation rates 1t IS possible to ship with
profit articles from gulf water points to
New York, whose whole marketable price
would not pay the transportation from Fort
Worth or Dallas to said gulf points. But
gulf or any other seapor.s are useless as
locations for packeries unless the water is
deep enough to permit ocean trans portatlon
without Tightening. Refrigerated meat
cannot be lightered. It is absolutely impos-
sible TO take meat in lighter boats out to sea
five or ten miles to ship and preserve the
proper temperature until it is loaded. Re-
frigeIators must be located at deep water,
where the ship, while loading, is rubbing
the paint of of the side of the packery.
Two years ago q committee Of cowmen
visited the mouth of the BraZos and said to
the syndicate of men who were trying to get
deep water: ''If you will guarantee us deep
water, we will recommend that the packery
location. for which we are searching, shall
be here" These gentlemen were Charles
Goodnight, Gen. II. B. Stoddard, Ike Pryor,
X. E. Maddox and H NJ. Ehrenworth.
What they wanted guaranteed, at other
points is yet an uncertainty. Now it is
fact at BrazoS' mouth.
A city is rising around the only deep
water port on 1900 miles Of gulf coast, from
New Orleans to Tampico.
Vessels in Velasco harbor can load to the
gunwales with Texas beef and every pro-
duct of beef, and steam in ten minutes
from The packery caves out into blue water
without hindrance from any natural or I'M
natural cause, be it bar, sand, wave or
wharf octopus.
Steamship transportation of freights is
twice as fast and five tines as cheap as BY
railroad
The experience of business people at this
place is that freight by water from New
York is more rapid than express by land,
and that by water freights can be landed
here from Liverpool in shorter time than
from New York by rail Dressed beef from
Velasco can be landed at Norfolk and Balti-
more in five and one-half days, and in New
York in seven days. 1t can be placed in
Liverpool in the same time it can be from
Kansas City by railroad and water, without
rehandling. Horn, fertilizers aud canned
goods can be freighted to Liverpool cheaper
than from Fort Worth to Kansas City.
Governor Hogg in his speech to the stock
raisers' convention said: You can now
ship your cattle Mt reasonable rates and
with decrease per mile as you near the
coast" One could go on piling up advan-
tages for the location of packeries at Velasco,
but they are patent to anyone. With a few
words about the immensely of the business
l will close.
Last year Kansas City sent out 115,O0C
loaded cars; cattle, q, S04; meat, 1901, and
dressed beef, 10.473; hogs and sheep, 1852
cars. More than 50 per cent of all tho
loaded cars sent east out Of the city carried
livestock and meats.
An actual census shows that $4,000 o.
the people of the city of Chicago derive
their living and profits from the livestock
business. The urban wonder of the Nine
teenth century has long since been fully in
IDENTIFIED by the cow family for all thu
damage done her by Mrs O'Leary's ecow.
Oue-third of her boosted million have lived
and do live, if not by, certainly from meat
alone.
With the above, transportation facts be-
fore him. and with packeries at deep water,
who can say that the cow business IS not
preparing to flower and that the fruit viii
not be a harvest Of profits. Stick TO cows;
they will bring you out with the help Of
deep water. o. W. CRAWFORD.
velasco, February 10, 1892