CHAPTER XI
THE PASSING OF THE STOCKMAN
Becoming
tired of music and profanity, we gladly accepted the invitation of an
old stockman we happencxl to meet to visit his ranch in Wyoming for a
hunt among the foothills for caribou. How good it seemed to be in the woods again and
away from that money-crazy crowd at California Gulch. Will the time
ever come when there will be some other aim in life than hunting gold?
It is an honest endeavor in the daylight fair to extract the raw
material from Mother Earth, but often through ways which are dark do we
extract the finished product from our fellow man. I was glad that my
friend offered me the opportunity to hunt for something else than veins
and fissures and hear something else than ''a mill run" and so many
"ounces to the ton." I was glad to get away from trying to solve the
crooks and turns of the two-legged animal, and study the habits of the
four-legged one.
In the preceding chapters the author has endeavored to so relate his
experiences on the frontier that the reader would find something in
this book of a pleasant nature, but the life he led and its culmination
was more of a tragedy than a comedy. While blazing the way, the many
ordeals through which I struggled and the sacrifices I was compelled to
make better fitted me for the life that followed, and I
attribute my success when I again returned to the Empire 8tate to my
experience on the plains. In order to fully appreciate the comforts of
this existence, one should have experienced the life of the frontier.
No one is competent to decide what is best for mankind without having
first communed with Nature. Manv of the oreat men of ancient times and
those Presidents of our country to whom we look as examples, lived in
the open.
It was a sorry day for me, while I was a stockman, that I wrote an
article and had it published stating the truth concerning the beef
combination. I regretted more than once that I wrote the article, but who is there that hasn't written
something he regrets? The only man I ever heard of who had no regrets
for what he had ever written lived in New Hampshire. He happened to
make the remark that he had never written anything he regretted. They
immediately proposed to run him for governor, but upon investigation
they ascertained that he couldn't write.
I was a marked man from the time I wrote that article. To my surprise,
the railroads took up the cudgel on behalf of the Beef Trust; while
other shippers had no difficulty getting cars to ship their stock in, I always seemed to have trouble.
They received rebates, while I got what the historical little pig did
who neither went to market, stayed at home, had the choice of the menu card, nor tweaked at the barn door. If
Charles K. Skinner, the agent of the Northwestern at that time at
Woodbine, Iowa, or John B. Anderson, the agent of the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul at Portsmouth, both good friends of mine, are
alive, they could tell of many orders they received concerning me, that
they found a way not to execute. After I got started with my stock I
was often hampered along the line. I was once sidetracked for four
hours at Cedar Rapids on the Northwestern in a sleet storm uuder the
pretense that there was something broken on one of my cars, but the
yardmaster, with whom I was well acquainted, told me there was nothing
the matter. On my arrival in Chicago I was fortunate enough to find
President Keep at the company's office, and I appealed to him, and, as
a New Yorker, he promised me he would look into my case. As the same
bill of fare continued to be handed to me, I infer all I got was a
"look-in.''
Before I threw up the sponge, however, I got one shot at the crowd by
being instrumental in sending an attache of the Union Stock Yards to
Joliet, and stopping, at least temporarily,
a practice which was simply murder. A disease that is always prevalent
among swine, and which has lost millions of dollars to the stock
feeder, is known as hog cholera. Whole droves have been swept away by that dreaded disease.
Carloads of infected hogs have been shipped to the Union Stock Yards,
Chicago, through the ignorance of farmers and carelessness of shippers, and are now, for
aught I know, I have seen cars of hogs start from western Iowa with
pronounced cases of cholera, with hogs dying all the way in, and on
their arrival at Chicago, the dead were sold to local butchers to be
tried into lard, and those able to walk over the scales into the great
packinghouses were converted into "sugar-cured hams'' and pickled pork.
Every shipper of swine product knows the truth of what I state, and
every inspector in the yards and packer knows that diseased meat has
been handed out to the consumer.
I would much prefer to draw the veil over man's inhumanity to man, but
I consider the duty I owe as an American to relate my experiences.
Picture to yourself the home of the cattle raiser on the great prairies
of the West, who, with his little family, is battling, like all of us,
for an existence. I can tell the story no better than to follow the
little calf who first saw the light of day on a storm-swept prairie,
until he, as a three-year-old, fattened for the market, entered one of
the great abattoirs in the city on the shore of Lake Michigan. The
first six months of its life it ran by its mother's side. The following
spring it entered the one-year-old grade, and roughed it, summer and
winter, until it became a two-year-old past, and entered the feed-yard
to be fattened, a corn-fed steer for the market. During those long
years corn was planted and gathered by willing hands in the lioi)^ that
in the end the reward would come, but, alas, what a sacrifice!
I was a shipper of live stock to Chicago before, during and after the
formation of the Beef Trust. Prior to its Union Stock
Yards, Chicago. formation, buyers from Pittsburg, Buffalo, Philadelphia
and New York were in the yards bidding for our stock, and the prices we
obtained gave us some reward for our labor. I will long remember the
morning when I arrived at the yards with a consignment of stock and was
informed by my commissioner, Harley Green, that the day of a profit to
the
stockman was at an end. He informed me of the forming of the Beef Trust
and that competition was no more. An arbitrary price succeeded "supply
and demand." The combination fixed the price. They knew wliat it cost
to fatten a steer, and the bid was just enough to encourage you to go
back and make another try. If you didn't like the price of the day, you
had the privilege of paying yardage - a rather expensive undertaking.
If you thought you were being robbed, which you were, you could reload
and ship farther East, but you would run against the same combination
with virtually the same bid. There was nothing for you to do but to
stand and deliver, and
return to your family and try to comfort those who had toiled with you
for three long years to convert that little calf into a fattened steer,
and tell the same sad story that other stockmen carried to their
isolated homes.
The Beef Trust was not satisfied with controlling the purchasing end,
but after the stock was slaughtered and passed through the
packing-houses, it was shipped to the cold-storage houses of the East, and put on the block with an arbitrary
price to the consumer. That was the condition then, and through the
non-action of the law-enforcing power it prevails to-day. An individual or corporation who controls the
price at both the purchasing and distributing end of a product exacts
all the profit - it is simply a question of how much do you want ere
you quit, and human nature's wants are never satisfied. The greed of
that great combination deprived the little children of the stock raiser
of education and the necessaries of life - their mothers, through toil
and deprivation, were driven to the asylum, and their fathers to their
graves with broken hearts, and as I, who they drove out of business,
see the offspring of the Armours, Morrises and their kind, and the
beneficiaries of like combinations, flaunting
their predatory wealth, it is easy for me to understand why there is
unrest throughout the domain of this great Republic.
As I look back to the herds of cattle and other stock I once owned, and
the little colts I petted and who wore tlieir lives away in my behalf,
as I cast my eye over the plains where so many friendships were formed, a feeling of sadness
comes over me. For I realize that they and those pleasant associations
are gone forever. When I remember the live stock that I was
instrumental in bringing into this world, who knew no other home than
mine, and who looked to me for protection, but whom I loaded into cars
to be shipped to their death, I feel as if I had committed an
unpardonable sin, and as I know that those animals gave up everything,
even their lives, for my profit, I cannot help but think, what good
have I done in this world to atone for such a sacrifice?
THE END.
