The Coconino sun., 1917-08-17
Range and Market News Items of Interest Pertaining the Livestock Industry Market Letter the Past Week.
PRICE OF FEEDERS TO BE DETERMINED
 BY COST OF NEW CORN

That corn belt live stock feeders are awaiting the outcome of the present corn crop before stocking up their feed lots with cattle this fall, is the opinion of Frank B. McClain of Lan- caster, Pa., member of the Pennsyl- vania food commission, lieutenant governor and live stock trader, who just returned from a tour of the west and the corn belt, where he inter- viewed feeders, traders and packers on the live stock situation in general.
 The price of feeders, he says, will be determined by the price which the new corn crop will bring. If corn will sell at $1.00 to $1.5O, feeders will be dirt cheap in September, October and November; but if prices go lower than these figures, then feeders are apt 10 lay in supply of cattle and feed out their corn, instead of marketing it at the elevator.
 Farmers Want Fixed Price
 Strange, but true," says MT. Me- Clain, "the great majority of western 1 farmers seem to think that it would be well for congress, or those intrust. ed at Washington with fixing food prices, to make the maximum price for corn after November first $1 per bushel and the minimum price of 75 cents per bushel. They say, and so dc the large operators in cattle, that if some such arrangement is not made a beef shortage of serious charact- CT will follow after January, 1918. They seem to think that fixing a maximum price for corn should be done soon, in order that all interested might have proper notice. It was pointed out to the writer that corn is practically the only cereal food tha. is used both as a human food and an animal food, and as we'll was it point ed out that six-sevenths of the entire corn crop was used for animal food | anu oHC-StFcHth TUT luLhdu iVOu, pluS distillation for alcoholic liquors. "It was further contended that should corn continue at high price, being held by producers for the same until after January first, it would then be too late to make purchases of cattle to feed it to, and the enormous yield now in prospect, if thus held, could not find mraket for purposes of human food, and, therefore, the price would necessarily drop lower | than if a price was fixed in advant e by the United States authorities, and, as well, as I have said before, serious beef shortage would result. Under such conditions the general public would suffer because of insufficient supply of meat food, and the farmer in the long run, would be worse off than if the procedure herein recited had been resorted to.
 "It may be interesting to the cattle feeders and the. public in general to know that the seven great cattle mar kets of the country have received more cattle up to this time than they did in the corresponding period last year. The hog receipts are smaller, likewise sheep.
 Hog and Sheep Crop Short
 "Thus it will be seen that the hog crop and the sheep crop of 1917 up to the present time shows a shortage as compared with the corresponding period in 1916, and the cattle crop for the same period shows big surplus. But, in considering the cattle crop, the fact must not be overlooked that the beef cattle, cows, heifers, steers and bulls of 1916, on the average, showed decrease in average weight of 10 per cent, as compared with the aver age weight of the same animals in 1915, and the 1915 crop showed the same decrease in average as compared with the 1914 crop. Therefore, the beef cattle being marketed today are on the average of a weight only four fifths as heavy as was the average weight of beef animals in the United States a few years ago, and though the number of head for slaughtering purposes has increased, the number of pounds of beef actually are not of a total greater"