The Washington times., 1913-07-08
MILK AND MEAT SUPPLIES.

It's heavy burden that is laid nowadays on the
back of Bossy Brindle She is reviled for her fail
ure to keep the supply of meat up and the price
down. BY people who never stop to consider that she
also has on her hands-or hoofs-the serious task
of providing milk for the huge and growing urban
population.
In her, efforts to accomplish all this she con-
fronts the Meat trust, the milk combinations OF the
bigger Cities and now is discovering combine
which Systematically finds fault with her milk product
in order to make market for pasteurlzatlon machn,
cry. AS Bossy provides meat, shoes, milk and most
of the fertilizer she is entitled to serious considera
ton. .-.....
Recently serious suggestion was put forth, that
farmers should not be allowed to kill, or sell for
killing, their calves. That is of the most silly
proposals lately offered. dairy farmer near Wash
ngton keeps sixty COWS on about $50 acres of land
That means about sixty calves year. To require
that the calves shall not be killed would mean that
they would have to be raised, somehow or other.
The farmer has not the land the facilities to raise
them. An effort to compel him to do so would
merely result in driving him out of the dairy busl-
ness, and intensity the problem instead of helping
solve it.
dairy cow, moreover is not commonly. profit
able as beef animal. Her calves would represent
no profit if raised and turned out for beef. The
meat-raising business is separate and distinct from
the milk business, and people so innocent as not to
understand the fact ought refrain from offering ad
vice that makes them look foolish.
What to do with the calves is perfectly plain
economic problem of the average farm. Either they
are needed or they are not NEEDED. When they are
not needed they 60 to the butcher; when they are
needed they are kept and raised. In the East, with
its vast number of great cities there is little chance
to raise important part of the meat supply simply
because the cows must be managed for milk pro-
duction. 1t would be just sensible to attempt in
creasing the supply and reducing the cost of eggs
by forbidding people to eat chickens. Even 1t the
chicken raisers would accept that regulation, it would
accomplish no good, because the supply of poultry
would be lessened and something else would have
to take its place.
The law of supply and demand doesn't seem to be
operative in this matter of the livestock supply
High prices and increasing demand do not, as they
logically ought, increase the supply of meat cattle
But the situation is not to be remeded by foolish
legislation --.:-- = -,r.... ~ s-~
Moreover, the fact that there is smaller number
of beef cattle in the country than at some former
times, does not necessarily mean that there is less
meat raised An animal is finished for mar
ket in a good deal less time than formerly,
which means that in a given period one stock
raiser can turn out more of them, while not
having any larger number on hand at given time.
farmer with sixty young steers today, taking three
years to finish" them, would contribute an average
of twenty steers year to the meat supply. That
same farmer with forty young steers on hand now,
would show reduction of ten in the supply of meat
cattle. But if he finished those forty in eighteen
months and then took on and finished another forty
il. the succeeding eighteen months he would have
produced eighty instead of sixty steers in three years.
despite numerical decrease in the visible supply at
any given moment.
That is the condition which is coming more and
more to prevail in the meat raising industry and it
ought to be understood by people with disposition to
get panicky about the supply of meat.