The Elk Mountain pilot., 1918-02-07
THE BEEF TRUSTS sYs-
TEN Is LAID BARE
II Controls Chemical Plants, Render
ing Compsnys, Tsnneries and
Leather Supply, But Hides
Behind Dummies.
By RALPH L. HARMON.

By RALPH L. HARMON.
Everyone knows that the beef
trust sets the price on the meat we
eat. For years no one has eaten-a
steak or ordered bowl of soup
without realizing vaguely, at least,
that he owed these blessings to the
beef trust. But it took the Federal
gered probe, to show just how many
blessings the world does owe this
little group of captains of industry" I"
There are only few of them-a few
men whose fathers a generation ago
bequeathed them the softest, fattest
job in the world. The people of the
United States have been dividing
dimes with them good many years,
and they have been dividing millions
among themselves.
But the beef trust does not only
control the price and supply of the
meat the people eat. 1t controls the
fertilizer without which the farms
will quit yielding crops; the chemi-
calls made from the fats and oils of
meat; the tanneries and the leather
supply. The government can not
even equip it's army with clothing
without paying toll to the youngest
branch of the beef trust.
Here are few of the things that
the Federal Trade commission hear
ings have shown the packers control:
The packing houses; distributing
| agencies for the sale of meat; the
stockyards; the banks at the stock
yards; cattle loan companies. through
which enterprising farmers are
loaned capital to keep them in the
game of fattening the beef barons;
the newspapers, that give out pack
ing house news and livestock quota
tions; the livestock exchanges, by
owning the Offices used by the men,
bers; the railroads that deliver the
cattle to the packer-owned stock
Yards; the rendering plants where
refuse and dead animals are coined
into money; the land adjacent to the
Yards that might be useful to COM
petitors.
They dictate what kind of feed the
farmer shall feed his livestock while
he waits to have them sold, fix the
price, weigh it themselves|and then
Dick up the leavings and sell them
over again for a second profit. They
keep a watchful eye on legislative
doings and successfully head off bills
that might make dent in this solid
formation. All of these are admis-
sions wrung from packer representa-
tives themselves under oath.
Here, then, are the opportunities
that the packers have made their
own, but they refuse to show any
eagerness to enter into their own.
They hang back, keep energetic COM
mercial bodies in suspense for
months and years, and finally reluc-
tantly consent to enter new territory
only when the public has been hood
winked into bribing them with bo-
muses. to come and help themselves.
1t was not only in St. Paul, where
Armour refused to enter the field un-
til he got a cool million donation
from St. Paul, that this occurred
He got his million year ago and he
came, but the testimony showed this
was the regular practice by which
supposed competitors were brought
into new fields. Cudahy was pre-
sented with a complete packing plant
to set up at Sioux City, Iowa, during
the eighties. He only had to give in
-eturn his promise to stay there and
make money for himself for 20 years.
Armour got packing plant worth
s4OO, 900 free of cost, and $500, 900 in
bonuses to enter Sioux City little
later, and Omaha gave Swift a huge
premium-fgures not given-to get
him there.
The joke of it is that supposed
| competitors alreadv on the job help
| secure these newcomers. Swift, who
had been in St. Paul 20 years, guar
| anteed Armour the slice he wanted
before Armour would agree to butt
into Swift's exclusive territory, and
he kept his promise. Armour is now
building a competing" plant and
Competing" with Swift in the stock
yards they jointly own, where Ar
mour's share Of the livestock has
risen from 20 per cent to 80 per cent,