in
large or in small numbers. The dealers of the stockyards, let us say,
gradually evolved a perfect understanding among themselves as to what
cattle prices ought to be at the Eastern end of the rails. They have
always pleaded poverty and explained the extremely small margin of
profit under which they have operated. Of course, the repeated turn-over
in their business has been an enormous thing; and their industry, since
the invention of refrigerator cars and the shipment of dressed beef in
tins, has been one which has extended to all the corners of the world.
The great packers would rather talk of "by-products" than of these
things. Always they have been poor, so very poor!

For a time the railroads east of the stockyard cities of Kansas City
and Chicago divided up pro rata the dressed beef traffic. Investigation
after investigation has been made of the methods of the stockyard firms,
but thus far the law has not laid its hands successfully upon them.
Naturally of late years the extremely high price of beef has made
greater profit to the cattle raiser; but that man, receiving eight or
ten cents a pound on the hoof, is not getting rich so fast as did his
predecessor, who got half of it, because he is now obliged to feed hay
and to enclose his range. Where once a half ton of hay might have been
sufficient to tide a cow over the bad part of the winter, the Little
Fellow who fences his own range of a few hundred acres is obliged to
figure on two or three tons, for he must feed his herd on hay through
the long months of the winter.

The ultimate consumer, of course, is the one who pays the freight and
stands the cost of all this. Hence we have the swift growth of American
discontent with living conditions. There is no longer land for free
homes in America. This is no longer a land of opportunity. It is no
longer a poor man's country. We have arrived all too swiftly upon the
ways of the Old World. And today, in spite of our love of peace, we are
in an Old World's war!

The insatiable demand of Americans for cheap lands assumed a certain
international phase at the period lying between 1900 and 1913 or
later--the years of the last great boom in Canadian lands. The Dominion
Government, represented by shrewd and enterprising men able to handle
large undertakings, saw with a certain satisfaction of its own the swift
passing from the market of all the cheap lands of the United States.
It was proved to the satisfaction of all tha