THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX 

A DISCUSSION OF THE ECONOMIC QUESTIONS RELATING TO
AGRICULTURE, LAND, TRANSPORTATION, MONEY,
TAXATION, AND COST OF INTERCHANGE:

A CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBLE REMEDIES FOR EXISTING INEQUALITIES,
AND AN OUTLINE OF THE POSITION OF
AGRICULTURE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD;

WITH A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE
LEADING FARM ORGANIZATIONS,
THEIR CONSTITUTIONS AND BY-LAWS.

By N. B. ASHBY,
Lecturer of the NATIONAL FARMERS' ALLIANCE.

DES MOINES, IOWA:  INDUSTRIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,  1890

CHAPTER III:   THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX.

            Now that we have fairly embarked upon our voyage, it is the part of good seamanship to take our bearings and find out where we are. The log determines the progress of the ship; the compass its direction, and the altitude of the fixed stars its latitude; and from these three the ship may be definitely located at any moment during the voyage.  Our location must be determined from the social and industrial bearings.  The doctor judges the health of his patient from the tongue and the pulse -- the one indicates the condition of the digestive apparatus, and the other the condition of the circulation.  He understands that these basal principles will indicate clearly the general condition of the system.  As We have seen in the foregoing chapter how agriculture is the basis and nourisher of all  industrial activity, in a like manner as the tongue and the pulse indicate to the doctor the condition of the human system, the condition of agriculture will indicate to us the health of the industrial patient.

The more especially will this be true in our own country, where agriculture has been the chief occupation since the Mayflower touched at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the Lincolnshire farmers began taming the wild coast of a new England -- a country where fertility laughs from the ground when tickled with the hoe, and which has ever seemed to the European the ne plus ultra of    [48]    earthly hopes.  The woodlands, enriched by centuries of forest growth, the wide and alluvial bottoms of magnificent and superb rivers, and the wonderful fertility of seemingly illimitable prairies, courted agriculture and domestic herds, and promised an elysium from cankering care.  The United States offered such natural advantages for agriculture that labor and capital sought this field as the one offering the best returns for a given outlay.  This advantage in favor of the farm was seemingly so apparent that our country early in its national life began a system of bounties with the object of deflecting capital into the factory, for the purpose of diversifying employments and furnishing a "home market" for the raw agricultural products; and later in our history commerce has been stimulated by similar means, as the extensive grants to railway enterprises testify. And our "Wet-nurse," Congress, still holds to the idea that it is necessary to continue to swaddle our "infant industries" in the garments of protection from the greater advantages offered to capital by the farm.  Beginning national life with a population of less than four millions, a century ago, and that distributed chiefly along the Atlantic coast, we have grown to a population of more than sixty millions, which fills the whole land, and have been driven to the necessity of taking by force the little valuable land left to the Indians of their ancestral estates -- which they possessed by right of discovery, and was pledged to them by solemn treaty.  And our agricultural lands have made room for a foreign emigration each year whose numbers would have been to any European State an invasion as terrible as the barbarian incursions from the North in the first centuries of our era. The history of agriculture for the last half of our   [49]      national century would have read to our revolutionary fathers as the magical creation of some imaginative dreamer, and would have seemed to them as visionary as the Utopia seemed to the Sixteenth century, or as "Looking Backward" seems to this generation.  The steel riding plows, the cultivators, the steel mowers, the self-loaders, the automatic stackers, the self-binders, the steam threshers, the patent methods of handling corn-fodder, and the bonanza farms were not in the range of their vision.  The most far-sighted of them did not fore see that in a century the agricultural population would be pressing against the boundaries of our vast empire, an illimitable expanse, as it seemed to them when the western limit was the Mississippi River.  Nor have other industries lagged; it is when we pause to consider the immense speed at which we have advanced that we may, bewildered, inquire, Where are we? Could our forefathers have seen the material greatness of this age, they would have dreamed that the "Age of Saturn" had returned, and that Plenty was walking through the land; that every man had abundance and to spare, and that the lean wolf, Poverty, had famished for want of victims.  But could they have seen the true condition of the farmers and laborers under the gild of all this outward pomp, pleased surprise would have given place to horrified amazement;  for they, simple and guileless souls, believed in a supposed law of supply and demand powerful enough to secure to the farmer and the laborer the just rewards of their toil. They were not familiar with the patents, trusts, combines, and exactions which secure to those who do not work the lion's share of the harvest and the fruits of the laboring man's toil.  Such a condition would have appeared   [50]   to them a monster more terrible than the sphinx which depopulated Thebes, waiting an answer to its enigma.  

Farmers of the present, however, believe that the material progress of our age has evolved such monstrous conditions that supply and demand no longer govern markets, and that, as a result, agricultural depression is wide-spread and impoverishment impending, and only to be avoided by a solution of this riddle.  They are aware of an agricultural depression at the present time which is grievous to be borne; but this may be due to temporary and local causes, which will soon yield to renewed prosperity, and hence be no cause for alarm. But if it be true, as has been shown, that agriculture is as much the center and dependence of the industrial system as the sun is of the solar system, then any general and serious disturbance at the center should manifest itself in some form throughout all the members of the system.  Hence, it will be seen that investigation must be broader than special or class interests to determine the real situation at present; the broadest possible grasp of the facts should be an index.

Investigation at the present time is especially opportune, for a two-fold reason: First, because thinking men are giving earnest consideration to industrial questions; and second, because of the vast farm and labor organizations, which give the workers, who of all people are most concerned, an opportunity to weigh facts and conclusions and determine their worth. In every country are classes of interested individuals who  decry all discussion which is not most optimistic, as the utterances of demagogues.  The answer to these is whether the facts given and the conclusions reached conform themselves to the     [51]     experience and judgment of the classes affected. Organization gives opportunity for making such tests; it is competent to determine.  

The first fact which claims attention is the wide-spread depression of agriculture.  In New England farms are standing deserted which are in sight and sound of the great factories, and this depopulation has gone on until the State authorities are busy with schemes of colonization by importation of poor people from Northern Europe.  In the Middle States profits in farming are among the "lost arts," and lands and rents have depreciated greatly.  In the Southern States land values are in the midst of the "Slough of Despond," and the condition of the farming classes hopeless,were it not for the fact and spirit of organization which now moves them as one man.  In the Western States farm profits are an uncertain and often minus quantity, and the mortgaged indebtedness hangs a pall over every rainbow of promise. The farmers of the Eastern and Middle States are told that they are being ruined by the competition of the Western farmer living on cheap lands;  the farmers of the South are told that their poverty is due to the devastation of the war and the lack of capital; the Western farmers are told that the trouble with them is overproduction.  In England the agricultural depression is as great as in America, and the English farmer is gravely informed that he has been ruined by "free trade," and the consequent competition with cheap production in America.  In the other European States the agricultural depression is as great, except, perhaps, in France, where more than half the population is engaged in farming, and where the government makes every effort to foster and encourage it.   [52]      

The second fact to claim attention is the wide-spread discontent and unrest among wage-workers which has manifested itself for several years in strikes and labor troubles, and which manifested itself on a grand scale in the first-of-May movement for shorter hours of labor. Dispatches from nearly all the leading cities indicated great labor demonstrations.  A dispatch from Detroit announced the strike of 15,000 union carpenters.  A dispatch from New York announced:  "Not only throughout the United States, but also in Australia, England, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Holland, and Switzerland, organized labor is asserting itself today in a demand for at least three of the principles which a score of years ago were sung in doggerel by the trades-unionists of Great Britain, from Land's End to John O'Groat's:  

"Eight hours work, eight hours play,
             Eight hours sleep, and eight 'bob' a day."

And this demonstration in favor of shorter hours was, as labor claimed, to free the labor marts from the direful effects of competition and to provide bread for mouths which have none.

The third fact to claim attention is the claims put forward in relation to the commercial and manufacturing interests.  It is claimed that ninety out of every one hundred men who engage in commercial business fail. Of late attention has been called to our manufactories; in the recent consideration of a tariff measure by the congressional committee, the manufacturers were heard. Almost every variety of manufacturing interest came before the committee to plead their case, and there was almost unanimity in demanding higher duties to protect their struggling industries. The railway companies are   [53]       not behind the manufacturing procession in pitiful tales to Congress; the bond-aided railways are clamoring for an extension of fifty to one hundred years in which to meet their obligations to the government, and all the roads are clamoring for a repeal of the "long-and-short-haul" clause of the Inter-State Commerce Law, alleging that the law is bankrupting them.     

The fourth fact to claim attention is the rapid centralization ofwealth by the corporation combine or trust and the creation of a few score millionaires, whose wealth and influence are becoming a menace to the republic,  The New York statistician, Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, in an article contributed to the Forum for November, 1889, showed conclusively the dangerous extent to which this concentration has already progressed. The following statistics of great millionaires are gathered from his article: $150,000,000 each -- Trinity Church, J. J. Astor; $100,000,000 each -- C. Vanderbilt, W. K. Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Leland Stanford, J. D. Rockefeller;  $70,000,000 -- estate of A. Packer;  $60,000,000 each estate of Charles Crocker, John I. Blair;  $50,000,000 each -- W. W. Astor, Russell Sage, William Astor, E. A. Stevens, estate of Moses Taylor, and estate of Brown & Ives;  $40,000,000 each -- P. D. Armour, F. L. Ames, William Rockefeller, II. M. Flagler, Powers & Weightman, estate of P. Goelet;  $35,000,000each -- C. P. Huntingdon, D. O. Mills, estates of T. A. Scott and J. W Garrett;  $30,000,000 each -- G. B. Roberts, Charles Pratt, Ross Winans, E. B. Coxe, Claus Spreckels, A. Belmont, R. J. Livingston, Fred. Weyerhaeuser, Mrs. Mark Hopkins, Mrs. Hettie Green, estates of S. V. Harkness, R. W Coleman, and I. M. Singer; $25,000,000 each -- A. J. Drexel, J. S. Morgan, J. P. Morgan, Marshall Field, J.   [54]     G.  Fair, E. T. Gerry, estates of Governor Fairbanks, A. T.   Stewart, A. Schermerhorn; $22,500,000 each -- O. H. Payne, estates of F. A. Drexel, I. V. Williamson, W. F. Weld;  $20,000,000 each -- F. W. Vanderbilt, H. O. Havemeyer, Theodore Havemeyer, W. G. Warden, W. P.   Thompson, Mrs. Schenley, J. B. Haggin, H. A. Hutchins, estates of W. Sloane, E. S. Higgins, William Thaw, C. Tower, Dr. Hostetter, Peter Donahue, and William Sharon.  Mr. Shearman reaches the conclusion that 25,000 persons own one-half of the whole wealth of the United States, and that, under the present rapid concentration, 50,000 persons will practically own all the wealth in thirty years.

The fifth fact to claim attention is the wide-spread discontent with social conditions, a discontent which is not confined to a single country or class of people. In Russia it is called nihilism; in Germany, France, and Italy, socialism and communism; in our American cities, anarchism.  This same discontent, although expressed by different methods and with different ends in view, is indicated by the giant labor organizations, unions and confederations which have grown up in the last twenty-five years among the wage-workers, while among farmers the growth of organizations is astonishing.  The National Farmers' Alliance, the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, and the various co-operative unions are developing strength and vigor in every part of the Union.  These, also, are a protest against existing conditions.  Nor is agitation and discontent confined to the industrial classes.  Edward Bellamy's book, "Looking Backward," in which is described State socialism, is receiving the thought and study of statesmen and philosophers.   [55]      

These facts indicate that the industrial system is seriously out of joint, and with a system so seriously impaired, it must be that something is radically wrong with agriculture, its foundation and center.  In Europe difficulties can be explained upon the principle that governments and institutions were founded by a privileged class, and with the purpose of maintaining that class.

The cost of royalty, the rents that must be paid to the lorded gentlemen who own the estates, and the maintenance of large standing armies, must rest ultimately as burdens upon the agriculturists, and so prove a direct cause of poverty and consequent discontent among all classes.  But when European conditions of labor are found to be rapidly becoming American conditions, it is time for genuine alarm and earnest investigation.

In this country there, are no privileged classes before the law; and hence, other causes than those of hereditary class privileges must be doing for our agriculture what class privileges have done for European agriculture -- viz., impoverish it.

But upon the threshold of our investigation we are met by the assertion that at no time, and in no country in the history of the world, has labor been as prosperous as the American labor is in the present era, and especially is the extraordinary prosperity of the American farmer affirmed. These assertions are often supported by comparative tables, which are plausible, and upon their face convincing.  The appended table, clipped from an Iowa paper, and purporting to be a page from the account-book of a New Yorker, in 1766, is fairly illustrative of this method:

[56]     

 History also gives color to these assertions. Wages, as we learn from histories of the United States, a century ago ranged from $5 to $10 per month. The common laborers who worked upon the public buildings and graded and prepared the streets at Washington from 1793 to 180o received $70 a year.  Fifty years ago, farm-laborers received $8 to $10 a month; carpenters, $1.00 per day; male school-teachers, $12 per month.

These statements are in striking accord and harmony. They prove nothing as to the condition of the farmer and laborer then as compared with now.  Wages and prices are not absolute, but relative. The conditions of agriculture fifty years ago, as has been shown, were those of combining all crafts as incidentals of farming.  The farm-family lived within itself, supplying its whole wants by its own industry.  Woolens and fibres were manufactured in the home.  Laborers' wages were nominally low, but the wants of a laborer, supplied by the wages of his toil, were met by the home-made products of labor whose wages were nominally no higher than his own.   [57]      

Whatever was sold from the farm was practically the savings above the whole farm expenditures, and was practically so much gain. Purchases, in a like manner, were more in the nature of luxuries, This view of the case is borne out by the easy feeling which pervaded communities everywhere, and the feeling that was exemplified by the practice that the whole capital needed by a young man starting out in business for himself was health and a willingness to work.  Young men without a dollar in their pockets, and without any property or any salaried or wage employment, married and set up housekeeping, relying solely upon the natural advantages open to labor in a community where the entire necessities were supplied by the labor of the family.

Of course, it is urged that young men can start in life to-day with no more capital than then, and have even better prospects of succeeding; but young men, as a rule, are not willing to take the risk.  No father would so advise his son; no father would willingly consent for his daughter to make such a union.

Unfortunately for investigation in this important field of research, we meet in the very beginning the heated controversy of a bitter political struggle, which has more or less divided the rival political parties since early in this century.  The question of a tariff for protection has always involved the question of labor and the returns of agriculture.  The agricultural part of the problem is now attracting chief attention, and around this problem will wage the hottest fights of immediate and coming campaigns; hence, the protective party are not willing to hear anything but that the most unwonted prosperity exists for all classes, under the protective tariff of the last thirty years.  But it is well to remember that    [58]     the friends of free trade are equally sanguine that free trade has resulted in an equally great prosperity to Great Britain.  In the discussion between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Blaine (North American Review, January, 1890), Mr. Gladstone states that wages for all classes have risen 60 to 160 per cent. since 1833, and this rise he attributes directly to the beneficent result of free trade. Mr. Blaine states that the United States increased her per capita wealth 93 per cent. from 1860 to 1880, and that during this period the agricultural States of the Northwest increased their wealth 396 per cent.; and Mr. Blaine avers this was "because of protection." However, the statements of Mr. Gladstone must be taken relatively, for, as has been stated, wages are not absolute, but relative; and, in like manner, the statements of Mr. Blaine must be weighed in their relations.  This point is well illustrated in Froude's "History of England." Mr. Froude was from 1856 to 1869 in preparing this work, and hence gave much patient research to his task.  He maintains that the laborer in the reign of Henry VIII was paid much higher wages relatively than were received by English laborers at the date of his writing. He gives in detail the cost of all the necessities, and concludes that the penny of the laborer in the early part of the sixteenth century would buy more than the shilling of the laborer in the nineteenth century. Measuring the penny by its purchasing power, he sums up as follows:   

"Allowing a deduction of one day in the week for a saint's day or a holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted, an equivalent of twenty shillings a week-twenty shillings a week and a holiday; and this is far from being a full account of his advantages.    [59]     In most parishes, if not in all, there were large ranges of common, and uninclosed forest land, which furnished his fuel to him gratis; where pigs might range, and ducks and geese; where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to be largely inclosed, Parliament insisted that the working-man should not be without some piece of ground upon which he could employ his own and his family's industry. By the seventh of the thirty-first of  Elizabeth, it was ordered that no cottage should be built for a residence without four acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the occupants."

Mr. Thorold Rogers, M. P., an economic writer of great research and insight, in his recent book, entitled "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," takes the same view of the relative condition of labor, and holds that laborers of all kinds were better paid during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than at any period since-wages being converted into purchasing power.  However, he agrees with Mr. Gladstone in the opinion of the rapid development of better conditions for all classes except farm-laborers since England abolished trade restrictions. Nor does Mr. Rogers hold to the opinion that free trade has prevented the farm-laborer from sharing in the present increasing prosperity.

Now, the relative nature of Mr. Blaine's statement also requires some investigation. The period from 1860 to 1880 covers the settlement (practically) of Iowa and Minnesota and the whole territory west-that is, the bulk of the population in all the States north and west of Missouri came after 1860. Population increased from     [60]      31,000,000, approximately, in 1860, to 50,000,000 in 1880. As to the rapid increase of wealth from such a vast increase of population and of cultivated lands, Mr. Blaine's statements are undoubtedly correct. The estimate is that we have increased 15,000,000 in population since 1880. Now, suppose our wealth has doubled in the past ten years (Mr Blaine calculates a gain of over 200 per cent. between 1860 and 1880), our national wealth will be represented, approximately, by eighty-eight thousand millions.  As wonderful as this seems, it is probably not an overestimate. - The increase in wealth is apparent; but that is not the question.  The question is, How is this gain in wealth distributed?  Who owns it?  Mr. Blaine implies in his argument that the greater part of this gain is with the farmers, for he says that the agricultural States of the Northwest increased their wealth four-fold from 1860 to 1880, and the agricultural States of the South increased their wealth 80 per cent., despite the ravages and devastation of the War of the Rebellion and the freeing of the slaves.  The South has increased in wealth; it is impossible that her millions of toilers, applying their vigor to a fertile soil, should not increase wealth rapidly.  Her cotton is found in every mart, and witnesses to the value of her labor. But the majority of the Southern farmers are poverty-stricken, and their lands are mortgaged for every cent of loan they will bear.  Cotton has been raised and marketed for years at a price below the cost of production.  There is no question as to the increase of wealth; but who secures it?  Certainly it has not been the farmers and laborers.  The States of the Northwest have been creating millions of wealth annually.  The 3,146,249 cattle received at the Union Stock-Yards at Chicago during   [61]   1889 witness to that; but these cattle were marketed, in the main, for less than the cost of production.  The eight States enumerated by Mr. Blaine -- viz., Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin--are all heavily mortgaged.  Kansas has more indebtedness than she can carry; Nebraska has all she can struggle along with; Minnesota is plastered all over with mortgages; Iowa consumes most of her splendid earnings for the year in paying interest on indebtedness and dividends in one form or another, which are charged against the business of the State; Illinois has sent up a cry of distress that she is becoming hopelessly involved, producing corn and marketing it below cost.  Nor is this giant indebtedness confined to the farms alone-there are millions of dollars in chattel-mortgage loans.  The real estate of cities and towns, and the business houses, are about as deeply involved in mortgage mire as the farms.  There is no question as to the rapid increase of wealth -- labor is continually adding to the sum; but where does it go?  Who owns it? Certainly not the farmers.   

Statistician Shearman has thrown some light upon this darkness -- has answered in part this riddle of the sphinx.  Sixty-seven men or firms control  $2,700,000,000 of this wealth; fifty others control $500,000,000; twenty-five thousand men own one-half of this immense wealth, accumulated and accumulating in the United States.  These men are not of the class who toil and spin; they simply gather into their vaults.  These fortunes are not the result of slow accumulations, year after year, from one generation to another; most of them have been made in the thirty years since 1860.

The committee of United States Senators who investigated    [62]   the beef combine have answered in part this riddle of the age. This committee made a thorough investigation into every feature of the cattle business, and have shown conclusively that markets are governed by combinations instead of supply and demand.  The report covers so many points of interest to the farmer, and explains so fully how combinations to control markets operate, how the law of supply and demand is made inoperative, and how speculators rob the farmer and laborer, that a digest of the report is appended.  The high standing of the committee, the careful research and investigation given to this subject, renders the report of great value.  The finding of the committee, which finding is declared to be not of a partial or ex-parte character," begins with a recital of the rapid decline of the cattle market, which began in 1885, and has continued to the present-a decline in the best grade of cattle from $7.15 per hundred to $5.40 per hundred, and on "good" cattle from $6.o5 to $4.05, and on "range and western" cattle from $5.60 to $3.75; and of the revolution in the method of the sale of beef-cattle which the country has witnessed in the last ten years, the committee says:

"This revolution in the manner and markets for selling cattle has been caused by the construction of railroads, subsequent combinations  between these corporations, and the establishment of stock-yards owned by parties controlling the railroads upon whose lines the yards are located, but especially by the fact that a few enterprising men at Chicago, engaged in the packing and dressed-beef business, are able through their enormous capital, to centralize and control the beef business at that point."   

The committee then take up the "Evener Combination"     [63]     to explain centralization of the market at Chicago by railroad combination.  This was a combination between the three great trunk-lines of railways between Chicago and New York -- viz., Pennsylvania Central, New York Central, and Erie -- by the terms of which $115 was charged on each car-load of cattle from Chicago to New York, and $15 per car was paid back in rebates to certain favored shippers at Chicago.  This combination lasted from 1873 to 1879, and destroyed the St. Louis cattle market, which was in a flourishing condition when the combination went into effect.  This is shown in a comparison of the cattle receipts at Chicago and St. Louis in 1888.  The stock-yards at Chicago received 2,611,543 cattle and 96,086 calves, while the St. Louis stock-yards received only 453,918 cattle of all grades.  The receipts at the Chicago stock-yards in 1872 was 684,075.  The gain of over 2,000,000 in six years shows the centralizing effect of the Evener combine.  These roads monopolize the cattle shipments t6 New York, and some idea of the immense profits to the parties in the combine may be gathered from the fact that 4,000,000 cattle were shipped to New York from 1871 to 1879.

The Evener combination came to an end just as the dressed-beef business began to assume large proportions. The previous centralization of the market placed Chicago at the head of this business, and of the nearly twenty-three millions of cattle received at Chicago from 1878 to 1889, about fourteen millions, or 60 per cent., were consumed at Chicago in the butcher-shops, canning and dressed-beef establishments. Sixty-eight per cent. of the immense receipts of 1889 were consumed in this manner.  The immensity of the dressed-beef business may be gathered from the fact that of the two million cattle    [64]    slaughtered at Chicago in 1889, the greater per cent. went into dressed and canned meat.  At the head of this gigantic business, and controlling it, are the firms of Armour & Co., Swift & Co., Nelson Morris & Co., and Hammond & Co.  The control of so great a business by so few men brought about a combination not to compete.  The committee are of the opinion that this has been the cause of low prices, and they sum up the evidence of combination as follows:     

     "First  It is admitted that they combined to fix the price of beef to the purchaser and consumer, so as to keep up the cost in their own interest, (P. D. Armour's testimony, p.481.)

     "Second.  It is admitted that they have an agreement not to interfere with each other in certain markets and localities in the sale of their meats.  (S. B. Armour's testimony, p.364.)

     "Third.  It is proved beyond doubt that they acted together in supplying meat to the Soldiers' Home at Hampton, Va., the National Hospital for the Insane and other public institutions at Washington, D. C., the bid for the contracts being made by one, and the meats being then supplied by each of the dressed-beef men alternately for stated periods.  (Testimony of Dr. W. W. Godding, p. 499; C. B. Purvis, p.50; G. N. Omohundro, p.504; W. H. Hoover, p.502.)

     "Fourth.  They combined in opening shops and underselling the butchers of cattle at Detroit and other places in Michigan, and at Pittsburgh, Pa., in order to force them to buy dressed meat.  (Testimony of John Duff, p.154; William Peters, p. 169.)

     "Fifth. They combined in refusing to sell any meat to butchers at Washington, D. C., because the butchers had    [65]     bid against them for contracts to supply with meats the government institutions in the District of Columbia. (Testimony of W. H. Hoover, p.502; J. N. Hoover, p. 505; Santus Auth, p.508.)

     “Sixth.  They acted together at Chicago in refusing to come before the committee as witnesses, and in preventing their employes and agents from coming, it being an open secret that they met together with their counsel and agreed as to their action.     

^“With this overwhelming proof of a common interest and intent, we submit that it is difficult to believe that, with the most apparent motive for such action, the same parties, or their subordinates with their knowledge, do not avail themselves of the opportunity presented by the centralization of markets to combine for the purposes of lowering the prices of cattle."

To cover up this combination, the Big Four would naturally give out to the country that the trouble is due to overproduction, and Mr. P. D. Armour alleged this as a sufficient reason in his testimony.  The centralization of the cattle market at Chicago, and the consequent increase of cattle at the Chicago stock-yards, give color and the show of. truth to such a statement, although thousands of the cattle received are stockers which are sent out to feeders and returned in the course of the year, thus swelling the apparent actual receipts.  The committee answer this plea of overproduction by a table of statistics, showing the total number of cattle, and number of cattle per 1,000 of population, from 1880 to 1889. Beginning with 1880, the number of cattle per 1,000 population was in order as follows:  738, 744, 758, 773, 787, 800, 794, 783, 771, 758, showing that the ratio of cattle per 1,000 of population is twenty-nine less in the      [66]    low prices of 1889 than during the extremely high prices of 1884.  The proportion of milk cows has been a well-nigh constant factor, and hence the proportions for beef-cattle hold as in the above tables. The per cent. of cattle per population increased slightly from 1884 to 1885, and then began to decline.  With fewer cattle in 1889 per population than in 1884, cattle were 30 to 40 per cent. below the prices of 1884.  In addition, the export trade must be taken into account, which is shown to have increased from 104,444 cattle in 1883, to 205,786 cattle in 1889, and dressed and canned beef from 81,064,373 pounds in 1883, to 137,895,391 pounds in 1889.  This would equal a gain for 1889 over 1883 of fully 210,000 cattle, and would have the same effect as adding 400,000 beef-eaters to our population without increasing the supply of beef; and hence the committee conclude that the argument of overproduction is absurd.

The plea that over-marketing has ruined the prices on cattle is demolished in the same masterful way by convicting them by their own testimony, and by the published reports of the stock-yards organs.

But it is argued that the supply of pork affects the cattle market, and that low prices in pork affect the price of beef products.  The committee reply to this by citing the agreement between Armour & Co. and Swift & Co. and other leading packers, and citing the agreement between them which began in 1886:

"By the terms of the agreement made between the parties of this combine, a percentage of hogs to be killed by each house was fixed, and any establishment killing more than such percentage would pay so much upon each hog killed over the ratio to the parties killing less."

Profits of beef-packers were figured by S. B. Armour    [67]    to be thirty-eight cents on a 1,000-pound steer, costing $25, while a 1,200-pound corn-fed steer, costing $45, would net a loss of $6.27.  P. D. Armour claimed a net profit of only $1.22 per head upon the 340,649 cattle killed by his house in 1889.  But the committee conclude that these estimates are wholly unreliable. They take S. B. Armour's published price-list and figure that his profit on the $25 Texas steer would be, not thirty-eight cents, but $7.13.  Hammond & Co. have recently sold to an English syndicate, and a statement of the business has been published in the London papers, and this statement the committee quote and say:       

"From this, it seems that one of the Big Four made last year profits equal to 29 per cent. on its capital stock, which may or may not have been paid in, and it is safe to assume that the other firms engaged in the same business to a larger extent made profits in equal proportion."

The profits of the butcher is next considered, and while the weight of the testimony leans to the Big Four securing the lion's share, the committee say:

"Between the dressed-beef men and the butchers, the producer and consumer are left vainly inquiring why the price paid the former has decreased, while the cost of beef to the latter has not done so."

The committee next take up transportation. They pay their respects to the combinations existing among the railroads, and say they are practically "one line in purpose." It is claimed that the stock-yards at Chicago and Buffalo are owned by the men who control the railroads, and that one object of centralization is to collect vast tribute from these central depots. The Union Stock-Yards at      [68]     Chicago are capitalized at $4,400,000. In 1889 the income from yardage alone was $1,327,325, about 30 per cent. To the charge of yardage is added $1 per bushel for corn, $1 per hundred for prairie hay, and $1.50 for tame hay.  A Missouri farmer made a shipment of hogs in November, which made a gross return of $1,586.61; from this there was deducted $265.48 to pay railroad and yard charges, about 15 per cent. of the gross sale.  A bill is given:

"October 29, 4 cattle; November 3, 15 cattle; November 1, 1 cow.  Charges, hay, $47.55.  February 3, 157 hogs.  Charges, corn, $28."

The committee charge a direct complicity on the part of the railways, and back up the charge with an expose of the discriminations practiced in the matter of mileage allowed to the dressed-beef men. The palace cattle-car is coming into universal use for reasons which are obvious; a great many of these cars have been constructed and put upon the road to supply the demand. Up to 1888 the roads comprising the Trunk-Line Association allowed the usual three-quarter cents per mile each way rent upon these cars shipped over their lines, that being the rent allowed all companies for the use of cars.  (The Trunk-Line Association embraces all the roads running from Chicago to New York.)  In May, 1888, the Trunk-Line Association refused longer to allow mileage on the palace cattle-cars, while they still continue to allow the beef-packers, who own their own refrigerator cars, the three-quarter cents per mile each way on the much heavier and more clumsy refrigerator car.  The net profit arising to the beef-packers, under the rule, is $85 annually upon each car.  The committee say, in explanation of this outrage:      [69]      

"If the palace cattle-car is allowed the same mileage as is given the refrigerator car, there would be very few cattle unloaded at the stock-yards, and no profits would accrue by reason of the exorbitant charges there collected. It is a significant fact that, upon all the railroads coming from the West to Chicago, mileage amounting to one cent, and in some cases to one and one-quarter cents per mile, is allowed upon private palace cattle-cars; but after entering the domain of the Trunk-Line Association, east of Chicago, no such mileage is permitted.  In order to get cattle to the Union Stock-Yards at Chicago, the rebate; for it is nothing else, is allowed; but on the lines east of Chicago live cattle must be shipped in the common stock-cars of the railroads."

The obvious conclusion is that a combination exists between the railroads, the stock-yards, and the beef packers to skin the producer of cattle at every turn, centralize and control ,the markets for cattle, and fix the price to the consumer of meats.

Mr. A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, gives some light upon present conditions in the "American Almanac."  His almanac is regarded as of the highest statistical value.  According to this almanac, the whole population of the United States (last census) over ten years of age was 36,761,607.  Of these there were engaged in all occupations, 17,392,099; of which 7,670,493 were engaged in farming,  3,837,112 in manufacturing, mechanics, and mining, 4,074,238 in professional and personal services, 1,810,256 in trade and transportation.  Hence we have 44 per cent. producing, 22 per cent. toiling in the factory, mine, and shop, and 34 per cent. engaged in living off the rest.  Nothing here is meant to imply that such services are not often necessary and of the highest    [70]    value. When it is remembered that these energies of the factory and shop are expended in working over the products of the farm and mine, it will be seen that not more than half the population are engaged in producing the materials upon which all subsist.  The farmer must bear the whole burden of these tolls ultimately.  The quack political doctors continually prescribe for the sick patient, agriculture, by proposing to add to its burdens. One of these political charlatans, who is a great man among his kind, has recently prescribed 30,000,000 emigrants to consume the farmers' surplus, thereby providing a home market. But these emigrants come to hunt a living. They are not retired capitalists; they are poor, and must work.  But the labor marts are full, and wretchedness and poverty are seen to throng our cities.  How, then, shall these emigrants be fed? By a tax on commodities to build up a home market, in which it is contrived that the farmer foots the bill, as will be shown at a later stage.

But one feature more in this riddle: Rating the farming population at 40 per cent. of the whole, and the population of the United States at 65,000,000, there will be 26,000,000 of the farming population, or about 5,200,000 families.  There is employed in the cultivation of the staple crops about 220,000,000 acres -- about 42 acres per family.  The total acreage, exclusive of Alaska, is 1,922,556,947, or 370 acres per farm-family.  Yet most of the arable land of the public domain has already passed into the possession of private owners.  How has it happened that the country has developed so much more rapidly than the needs of the country required?