Mr. GAINES. You want to file a brief, and we all want you to do it; and the chairman's suggestion, I think, is that you get it filed as soon as possible.

Mr. COWAN. But it takes a good deal of time, and the chairman. stated that I ought to have had it prepared before.

The CHAIRMAN. You will have a chance to offer your brief.

Mr. CowAN. I am satisfied of that, but if you gentlemen make statements of that kind to a witness the newspaper men get it, it goes home, and they say, "Why did you not reply to that?" I am not talking back out of any feeling or sense of criticism of the committee or yourself, Mr. Chairman, but if I did not say something back, when I go home they will say, "Why didn't you reply to that old fellow?" Mr. GRIGGS. But let me say, Mr. Chairman, that neither leather nor hides are mentioned on this card designating the hearings.

The CHAIRMAN. The schedules mention the subjects to which they apply.

Mr. RANDELL. But the ordinary reader would not understand that hides or leather or shoes might come up.

Mr. CLARK. But this fact remains, Mr. Randell, that the chairman is entirely correct. I do not care anything about that card one way or the other, but

Mr. COWAN. I want to excuse myself, if you please.

Mr. CLARK. All right.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Cowan has a copy of the tariff act, and seems to have all the literature published on the subject.

Mr. CLARK. What I was going to suggest was this, that the chairman's statement is absolutely correct, that this thing has been agitated, this hide question, around here in one way or another and in the newspapers practically ever since the Dingley bill was passed, and it has been thrashed out in the debate in Congress, in the Lower House, for the last four years; and the identical proposition that those New England shoe men were driven to at last was made four years ago next January on the floor of the House when one man was informed very abruptly that he could not get free hides unless he got free boots, shoes, harness, and so forth.

The CHAIRMAN. Which House do you refer to when you say "the Lower House?"

Mr. CLARK. I do not like that term myself, and I will withdraw that "Lower House," and substitute the remark "the most numerous branch of our National Legislature."

Mr. BOUTELL. You might call it the deliberative branch.

Mr. COWAN. The more popular branch.

Mr. GAINES. That is it.

Mr. CowAN. I wish to read in the record, or have the stenographer copy in the record, the schedule giving the days on which the different subjects were to be taken up, to show why the western stockmen have not made any preparation to come here.

The CHAIRMAN. That has been published time and time again, and I do not think we will publish it again in the record.

Mr. COWAN. Well, I would like to have it there; it is very short. The CHAIRMAN. There is no objection excepting that it takes up space.

Mr. CowAN. It will not take up much.

(Following is the schedule referred to:)

The Committee on Ways and Means will hold hearings on tariff revision at Washington, D. C., commencing on the following dates:

Tuesday, November 10, 1908, on Schedule A-Chemicals, oils, and paints. Thursday, November 12, 1908, on Schedule H-Spirits, wines, and other beverages.

Friday, November 13, 1908, on Schedule F-Tobacco, and manufactures of. Monday, November 16, 1908, on Schedule E-Sugar, molasses, and manufactures of.

Wednesday, November 18, 1908, on Schedule G-Agricultural products and provisions.

Friday, November 20, 1908, on Schedule D-Wood, and manufactures of. Saturday, November 21, 1908, on Schedule M-Pulp, papers, and books. Monday, November 23, 1908, on Schedule B-Earths, earthenware, and glass

ware.

Wednesday, November 25, 1908, on Schedule C-Metals, and manufactures of. Saturday, November 28, 1908, on Schedule N-Sundries.

Monday, November 30, 1908, on Schedule J-Flax, hemp, and jute, and manufactures of.

Tuesday, December 1, 1908, on Schedule I-Cotton manufactures; and on Schedule L-Silks and silk goods.

Wednesday, December 2, 1908, on Schedule K-Wool, and manufactures of. Friday, December 4, 1908, on sections 3-34, and miscellaneous matters.

Mr. Chairman, I have attempted to answer in the brief many of the questions that have been asked. If I attempted to answer others at this time I would take up too much time. I do not wish, at this time, to attempt to argue out the various questions which you will find presented in this brief; and if this committee expects to hold sessions from now on until the holiday adjournment, I will undertake to prepare the answer and forward it here for filing before the committee closes its hearings. If it holds hearings, and as I have seen it stated in the papers, this committee will ask the House to pass a resolution to continue the hearings

The CHAIRMAN. What date did you set?

Mr. CowAN. I was speaking of the holiday adjournment, and that generally takes place about the 19th or 20th. I will attempt to get it before the committee before that.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not think this committee will have a holiday adjournment.

Mr. CowAN. The Texas members will take a holiday adjournment; I don't know about the other gentlemen. But we will file arguments in specific reply to particular things which Mr. Cockran, Mr. Clark, the Chairman, Mr. Boutell, and others have called to our attention; and such others as we think necessary, in typewritten form. That I will send from Fort Worth because I will have to go back home, but I will undertake to get it here by the 16th or 17th. Mr. BOUTELL. I would like to ask one or two questions which I made a memorandum of. Your home is in Fort worth, is it not? Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. BOUTELL. And they have some considerable packing industry in that city?

Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir; Armour and Swift each have a modern packing house, and there is a very large business going on there.

Mr. BOUTELL. I understood from your statement that about 13,000,000 of large cattle were slaughtered a year.

Mr. CowAN. I take that from the Bureau of Animal Industry. It was given to me yesterday, and is printed in this brief.

61318-SCHED N— -09- -35

Mr. BOUTELL. Assuming that figure is correct, then the proportion of this slaughter by the large packers was 5,000,000?

Mr. CowAN. I have stated it at that.

Mr. BOUTELL. And there were 8,000,000 killed by the smaller packers or the local butchers throughout the country?

Mr. COWAN. That is what the department reports.

Mr. BOUTELL. Yes. Now, the chairman stated it as a fact, which is assumed to be correct, that where the raisers of cattle sold them for beef they were compelled to sell them at one time-when they were ready. If that is a fact and applies to the raisers of the 5,000,000 cattle who sell to the larger packers, it would apply with equal force, would it not, to those who raise the other 8.000.000?

Mr. CowAN. Yes; it is like selling a watermelon; you have to sell it when it is ripe.

Mr. BOUTELL. So that if the larger packers do anything with reference to dictating the price to the farmer they do that to the raisers of 5,000,000 cattle out of the 13.000.000, and if anybody dictates the price to the farmer for the other 8,000,000 cattle it is dictated by the smaller packers or the local butchers, is it not?

Mr. CowAN. That would seem to follow.

Mr. BOUTELL. Then if the large packers have anything to do with regulating the price of hides by holding them back or by dictating it, that would apply, would it not, to the 5,000,000 hides which they held?

Mr. CowAN. If they could raise the price of the hides, the other fellow would get the price, too.

Mr. BOUTELL. Exactly; and the men who held the 8,000,000 hides could hold theirs back in the same way, could they not?

Mr. CoWAN. As far as I can see. I know they do hold hides, and the bankers will tell you so. The bankers all over this country are in the habit of advancing money for stored hides. You will find that going on in every large city all over the country. Everybody stores hides and holds them.

Mr. BOUTELL. And if the men with the large number of hides. making up, in the aggregate, 5,000,000, to-day do that, those who hold 8,000,000 hides, in the aggregate, can do the same, can they not?

Mr. CowAN. They can if they have the money. It is just like trying to hold cotton. The farmers are holding cotton now, but they can not hold it forever; and that is the case, I assume, with the men in the hide business to a greater or less degree.

Mr. BOUTELL. In a very interesting article written some years ago by an English traveler after his visit to the Fort Worth, Kansas City, Omaha, and Chicago stockyards, he said that nothing had done so much to increase the value of cattle to the raiser in the United States as the establishment of these large centers for slaughtering, and then he used this remarkably picturesque description: That from his observation of the killing and packing and selling, if you would drive a steer onto a fair linen cloth, after it had been slaughtered and the material in the steer disposed of, there would not be enough left that was not used for utilitarian purposes to make a spot on that linen. If that very picturesque description is anywhere near true, it is certainly very uncandid, is it not, to say that nothing but the beef in that steer gives it a value to the raiser of the steer?

Mr. COWAN. That would seem to follow, even without accepting the Englishman's premises. The linen-cloth business gets beyond me a little.

Mr. BOUTELL. I say if anything like that is true, is it not at least uncandid for anyone to argue that there is nothing in the steer that gives it value to the owner except the beef?

Mr. COWAN. It would be uncandid. Those arguments are offered by men who manifestly do not know a thing about the subject. They know about leather, but do not know anything more about beef—well, they do not know anything about it.

Mr. BOUTELL. With what seemed to me lawyerlike acumen and judicial candor you have refrained in your entire argument from referring to what is designated in the press as the "beef trust." Do you know of any such corporation or organization?

Mr. CowAN. Oh, of course we all know that commonly the big packers-Armour, Swift, and Morris, and the concerns which they own under various names-are called the beef trust. Everybody knows that. And the beef trust is like every other trust-the beef trust is a trust when it can be a trust, and it is not a trust when it can not be a trust. Now, that is the whole cheese. If there is a short supply of cattle in the market, the beef trust has got to buy cattle to supply its trade, and it pays for them what it can get them for. If there is too big a supply, it is "We have got plenty," and the seller can not sell, and the cattle will go down, and the price of cattle will fluctuate every hour in the day and every day in the week; it will fluctuate a large per cent up and down every week and every month, largely dependent upon the amount that comes on the market.

Mr. BOUTELL. But, as a resident of Fort Worth and as a lawyer, and engaged in the cattle business, do you know of any organization or combination that can be called a beef trust?

Mr. CowAN. I do not; but most of our people believe that there is a combination between the packers to fix the price of beef. Now, of course, whatever sort of combination they need, just like the tanners, they have got; but combination or no combination, you can not control the market. If there is not a big enough supply, or if there is an oversupply, the market controls itself. You do not need a combination. It goes up or down anyway.

Mr. BOUTELL. What this committee wants is the fact, the accurate fact. There was a broker in here complaining about the price of glue. He was a commission man in glue, and he said that the packers had destroyed his business. I had a letter this morning to insert in the files here, from the president of the Diamond Glue Company, of Chicago, who says he has nothing to do with the packers, and that he manufactures more glue than any packer. And so we have had the man who was engaged in pulling wool off sheep hides tell us that the beef trust had assumed all the wool-pulling business and regulated the price of pulled wool; and then it subsequently developed from the testimony that fleece wool regulated the price of pulled wool, and that they went up and down together, and that the beef trust had nothing to do with it. Now, we come back to the testimony about hides, and the question whether you know of any actual combination which is known as the beef trust. Do you know of any such combination? Mr. COWAN. I do not. Of course, I know that the cattlemen have contended that there is. It has been the general opinion among stock

men, and I dare say the general opinion in the country, that there was a combination of packers, which we have all denominated a beef trust. I do not think that it has anything whatever to do with this case, because the question as to whether they dominate the price of beef is an entirely different proposition from the question as to whether they dominate the price of hides, and the man who makes the argument that because it is a trust in beef, assuming for the sake of the argument that it is, that therefore it is a trust on hides, is like your wool-pulling man; he is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. There is nothing to it, because the hide proposition is an entirely different thing.

Just a moment on that point. To take care of beef is a very different thing from taking care of the products of pork. There are a thousand places in the United States where hogs are killed, and probably better bacon and hams are put up, or as good bacon and hams are put up, as the packers put up, but to undertake to take care of the beef of the country, in the first place, involves a very large investment for plant. You have got to kill in large quantities, and you have got to kill where you have a constant supply in the market. You must have an outlet, so that as the cattle flow in the beef flows out to the consumer. You must be certain you can dispose of the product, and that calls for refrigerator cars and certainty of transportation, large storage houses, agencies scattered all over the world. The ordinary man can not go into the beef-killing business at all. The packer has got that class of men sewed up, except the man who can kill for local consumption in large towns. It is impossible to start a packing business without at the same time starting the means of disposing of your product. But that has nothing in the world to do with hides, because they are packed down in cellars, and salted down, and anybody can do it; and I hope that the committee will draw that distinction.

Mr. BOUTELL. It does not take any large plant to keep the hides. You and I can go out and kill our cattle and salt the hides down and keep them for sale at any time. The man with one hide can keep it as well as the man with a hundred thousand hides can keep them?

Mr. CowAN. Yes; but the reason that the packers can sell the hides so much better is that the packer's skinner does not cut the hide. You go into a packing establishment and they can locate a man who cut a hide at any spot. If he cut it on the leg, or on the rump, or on the side or the shoulder, they will know the man who did it, and as a result they cut no hides, and their hides are taken off and taken care of in the best possible way, and they are worth more money than hides that are not so taken care of. But the subject of handling hides is just as separate from the matter of handling beef as the subject of handling sand rock is from handling mortar. They are two entirely different propositions.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Does not the meat-inspection law tend largely toward concentrating the business of slaughtering and packing into the hands of the great city packers?

Mr. CowAN. Not at all; just the contrary. The total slaughter of the big packers has declined since the meat-inspection law went into effect. When the law went into effect, it gave everybody the same rate on the railroads, and it did not permit any discrimination in rates and when anybody could ship his cattle on the same rate that