Page:Oscar Ameringer - Socialism for the Farmer (1912).djvu/18

 will feed and clothe the hog raiser while he raises the hog. Time has been when the price of hogs was set too low by the meat trust, then the half starved hog raisers quit raising hogs and the price had to be raised again to induce the farmers to return to the hog industry. Prices rise and prices fall, but on an average the farmer gets a bare living while the hog and pork manufacturers grow fat.

Tradition tells us that the cow man is the free born son of the boundless plain. A hale fellow well met, a happy-go-lucky kind of a chap. Independent—should say so; free man—no word for it.

Now let us see how things stand with the cow man. A steer has no value as long as it is a steer. Cattle raised in Texas are converted into beef in Kansas City or Chicago, and consumed as porterhouse or soup meat in New York, Berlin or Paris.

The ranch and the steer belong to the cattleman. To finish a steer for the market requires corn, and corn costs money. Like most farmers, the cow man is usually long on expectation and short on coin. So he borrows the money from the commission house at a more or less unreasonable rate of interest. To secure the commission house he mortgages the steers and agrees to deliver them at the stock yards any time the commission house may request it. He cannot take advantage, if there is such a thing, of a favorable market, but must deliver when told to.

But let us assume that our free-born cattleman is independent of the commission house. He takes his cattle. to the Kansas City Stockyards. This institution is controlled by the meat trust. Every morning the different firms composing this organization agree on the maximum price of cattle. Let us say this price is five cents per pound. There is still competition in the stock yard; every buyer tries to buy steers for less than five cents. It is a kind of Dutch auction, where the buyers beat the price down instead of up.

If your cattleman does not want to accept the top notch price of five cents, he may keep his steer in the stock yards by paying certain reasonable charges. He also may purchase feed for his animals at a figure usually charged the two-legged cattle at the Waldorf-Astoria or the St. Regis. In a short time the cattle eat their heads off. Our freeborn son of the prairie may have to sell them for less than he was offered in the first place and pay the board bill besides.