It must occur to all thoughtful persons that in a business of such large volume the securing of steady and sufficient supplies of fat animals is of prime importance, and the query naturally comes as to how this is done. Almost the en tire supply of live stock is purchased from day to day, as needed by the various packing com panies, at central markets in the large cities, such as the Union Stock Yards of Chicago, Kansas City Stock Yards of Kansas City, Na tional Stock Yards of East Saint Louis, South Omaha, Neb., South Saint Joseph, Mo., South Saint Paul, Minn., National Stock Yards, Ill., Fort Worth, Tex., Sioux City, Iowa, Oklahoma City, Okla., Denver, Colo., Milwaukee, Ike. These stock yards are equipped to receive live stock in train loads — unload, pen, feed, water. and otherwise care for the comfort and health of the animals.
Live stock raisers most frequently sell their animals at home to a dealer, who, in turn, con signs to a commission salesman at some central market, where the buyers for the various oack ing companies meet in competition and bid for each lot or carload. The bidding is not by pub lic outcry or auction, but by each buyer inde pendently. There is no public system of ing, but each purchase is made on individual in spection and judgment of the buyer and salesman.
The development of these stock yards has kept pace with the growth of the packing in dustry. Indeed, these large central markets for live stock and the packing plants are interde pendent and mutually helpful. Together they constitute one of the modern wonders of our commercial development. The benefits to the raiser of live stock, the live stock dealer, the transportation companies, the retail dealer, and to the consumer, of an organized business that affords the producer an every-day cash market for any number of animals, the carrier a reliable and steady freight volume, and the retailer— and through him the consumer —a constant supply of the widest variety of kind and qual ity of animal food products, can hardly be ex aggerated. To appreciate these benefits, let the reader try to imagine a return to the conditions of a generation ago. Within the memory of many still engaged in the business, the farmer had only a local and very uncertain market for his live stock. He could sell in limited num bers, must find his customer by inquiry and frequently had to wait for weeks after his stock was ready and ripe for slaughter. The butcher also depended on local supply, and must needs ride through the countryside and inquire, and frequently felt compelled to buy and use stock of a quality not suited to the demands of his business. He had to drive the animals to his little, unsanitary abattoir, slaughter them him self in the cool hours of the night, and hurry the sale of the fresh meat before incipient de composition. He was constantly oversupplied or undersupplied, had too much of one grade and too little of another, and so frequently met with losses that his margin of profit must needs be large. The consumer, of course, could fare but ill under these conditions. He might whet his appetite with the thoughts of a juicy porter house or a prime rib roast, and find his butcher could furnish only veal or pork chops, and was compelled constantly to choose from a narrow and unattractive variety, and to pay an excessive price. Values were unstable and varied greatly, and producer, dealer and consumer alike suf fered.
To-day the modern packing-house, with the central market for live stock which it has built upon one hand, and its system of refrigeration and distribution on the other hand, brings the producer and consumer into such near touch that the one can market his animals in any numbers any day, and the other can buy in any town or village of the country having railroad connections, any desired quantity and quality of so wide a variety of animal food products that his slightest whim or necessity can be satisfied.
This bringing together of the producer and the consumer the modern packer, with the aid of our railroads, stock yards and refrigeration, has accomplished, to the enormous of both; and to-day the actual producer gets a much larger part of the total price paid by the actual consumer than ever before. Investiga tion by the United States Department of Agri culture showed that the producer received about two-thirds of the price paid by the con sumer for meat and by-products.
In this age of engineering and mechanical advancement, the use of machinery has, of course, played a prominent part in the develop ment of the business of meat-packing. The modern packing plant is divided into many de partments, so related with reference to each other that the whole, in reality, constitutes a vast machine. The invention and perfection of machines to do the various kinds of work has been given a great deal of attention, and the practical men in connection with the different packing companies have vied with each other so that improvement has followed improvement, in many cases one machine being improved by another before fairly having the newness worn off. To-day, in the most up-to-date packing plants, the vast majority of the operations car ried on are done by machines. Such plants are operated entirely by electric power, are lighted by electricity, supplied with water by electric pumps, refrigerated with cold brine circulated by electric pumps, and in some cases even the live animals themselves are hoisted from the ground to the top floor of the slaughter-house by enormous electric elevators, carrying a car load at a time. They are hoisted by means of electrically-driven hoists. Hogs are scalded, scraped, cleaned and delivered to the chill rooms by machinery, hand work being reduced to less than half what it formerly was. The meats are cut by machinery, also sprinkled and rubbed with salt and packed. Hams are branded by machinery, and are carried by me chanical means to the loading platforms, ready to go into the cars.
In the handling of by-products, various ma chines do all of the most important work Fer tilizing materials are cooked, pressed, dried, ground, sifted and packed in bags and weighed by machines. Bones are dried, sawn, made into knife handles, buttons, crochet hooks, etc-. largely by automatic machinery. Glue is evap orated, jelly sliced, jarred, broken, ground. bolted and packed into barrels by Soap is cut into bars, stamped, wrapped, packed into boxes, and the boxes nailed and printed by machinery. Soap powder is mixed, ground, sifted, packed into cartons, labeled, pasted and delivered to the boxes by machinery. So on, throughout the various departments, great at tention has been given to the introduction and perfection of machines, so that the modern packing plant, volume considered, uses no more than half the hand labor that would have been required 20 years ago to do the same amount and variety of work.
The packing business is one of the largest industries of the country in the value of its output. For 1910 the census report shows 1,641 establishments employing 108,716 persons, with a capital of $383,249,000; value of output $1,370, 568,101. This industry returns to the producers of the raw material 87.8 per cent of the total value of the products. Statistics of slaughter for the year 1909, are as follows: The packing business is notable for furnish ing a spot cash market for any quantity of live stock that the producer chooses to send to the market. It is notable for its ability to distribute products of live stock throughout the world, where the demand is greatest, for the enormous volume of business done by the large firms and for their very small margin of profit per cent of sales.
Louts F. Swwr, President, Swift and Company, Chicago.