That is the condition that exists, also, on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway. It is the condition that exists from Fort Worth. It is the condition that exists on all shipments from the Missouri Valley to Chicago. There is that great producing and feeding belt of the country, and all those markets where animals are reshipped and carried on to Chicago. The distance from the Missouri River to Chicago is 500 miles. These cattle can not make Chicago, generally speaking, in twenty-eight hours. It is generally a little over that.

The convenient arrangement is, as I said, to load late in the evening for the second morning's market. The trains begin to come in from Chicago at 3 o'clock in the morning and keep that up until 9 or 10 o'clock in the day. They have to handle, sometimes, 40,000 cattle in a day and handle them within this time at those yards. You can not deliver them all at once. There are hundreds and hundreds of cars. These trains have to stand and wait for others to be unloaded, notwithstanding the extensive stock yards there. It is impossible to handle this business in any other way than that which I have indicated. Many of you gentlemen personally know that every word that I have spoken is true.

When these cattle have come in there on a thirty, thirty-one, or thirty-three hours' run and are killed they are uniformly in better condition, uniformly better meat, and have uniformly less bruises than when they have been unloaded once or more en route.

Mr. RICHARDSON. The present law limits the time of confinement in the car to twenty-eight hours?

Mr. CowAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. RICHARDSON. And you want it extended to thirty-six hours? Mr. CowAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What would be the shrinkage of a grass-fed steer of 1,100 pounds at the end of the first twenty-four hours' confinement out of the car?

Mr. COWAN. About 50 pounds.

The CHAIRMAN. What would be the shrinkage during the second twenty-hour hours?

Mr. CowAN. About 25 pounds. I am just speaking offhand about that. There are a number of gentlemen here who know about that better than I do. Mr. Cooper, is that approximately right?

Mr. COOPER. Yes; I think that is approximately correct.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the average rate of speed at which a cattle train runs west of the Missouri River?

Mr. CowAN. There is no average speed. There are two different sorts of trains. The Burlington, for example, runs one train for the purpose of taking cattle out of Denver, and leaves there at 6 o'clock every day, taking all the cattle, unless there is more than enough to make one train load, in which case they run an extra. I believe the other roads do the same thing, and I have heard them testify to that. I am speaking of exactly what I know. That train will have to be stopped and unloaded somewhere back 50 or 100 miles west of Omaha unless the twenty-eight-hour law is violated.

Mr. CRAMMOND KENNEDY. Or unless the speed is increased.

Mr. COWAN. If you will consider all the things that happen, I will show that it takes too high a rate of speed to be able to make that distance within the twenty-eight-hour limit. You must take into consideration that it takes from three minutes to five minutes a car to load a carload of cattle. Is that right, Mr. Cooper?

Mr. COOPER. Yes.

Mr. COWAN. Therefore, loading twenty cars takes an hour. That is an extremely rapid loading. I have heard testimony, and it is printed in the hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, of at least one hundred witnesses, in our rate case against the railroads, and in this I think all parties who understand the matter concur, that it takes generally an hour and a half to load a trainload of cattle out of the pens on the range. In the stockyards, at Kansas City and places like that, they are better equipped and load them more rapidly, probably.

You have an hour to load your train of twenty cars. The switch engine carries these cars out over the belt line. There is strung out there an immense number of freight depots and yards, and passenger trains have to come in. The business of the world has to go on. It is not only the cattle trains that have to be considered. Therefore it will be two hours, at best, from the time you begin loading your first car of the train of twenty cars until that train can be started upon the main line. Therefore you have lost two hours.

When you get to the first division point it takes from thirty to forty-five minutes to inspect the cars, to oil the cars, to change the crews, to change the engines, get the orders, and start out again. Those things are necessary. They have to be done. You can not run these trains without inspectors or without oiling. You have to use the greatest care, for fear of greater danger that might happen to life or limb or property.

Mr. ADAMSON. Are those trains permitted to run without interruption after they get started, or are they delayed?

Mr. COWAN. They are necessarily delayed, for the various causes that happen in handling business both ways on a single-track railroad.

Mr. RICHARDSON. They have no right of way?

Mr. CowAN. Oh, yes, sir; they are given the right of way over all other trains. There is plenty of testimony on file to that effect. Mr. COOPER. Of a similar class.

Mr. CowAN. Yes. Of course I am talking about freight trains. Mr. ADAMSON. They do not have the right of way over passenger trains?

Mr. COWAN. No; of course not.

Mr. ADAMSON. And they often have to lie on a siding, waiting for passenger trains?

Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir; but they have the preference over all freight trains. That is what I meant, of course.

All the railroad regulations that I know of provide that with five cars or more the conductors and engineers shall endeavor to make 100 miles in five hours. That is the standing order, a copy of which is on file with the Interstate Commerce Commission in our rate case, taken from the M., K. and T. Railroad Company files and introduced by them in evidence. And every traffic manager of every western railroad testified that that was the rule on each one of those roads. I refer to that because I have heard these men testify to it, and I presume, therefore, that that is true.

Mr. JOHN H. STEVENS. That is 20 miles an hour.

Mr. COWAN. Yes; for a division of 100 miles.

When you get into Chicago or Kansas City or any other place,

here is another thing that must happen: The train has to be broken up. It is broken up at the breaking-up yards, and the live-stock cars are switched in by a switch engine or a road engine, dependent upon the particular yards where this is carried on.

Mr. CRAMMOND KENNEDY. To what extent is that rate maintained? Mr. COWAN. In the absence of accident to that train or to some other train, or bad weather conditions and other contingencies covering a multitude of things, the speed is probably usually maintained in the southwestern country; I will say from Denver to the Missouri River, from Texas to the Missouri River, and from the Missouri River to Chicago, and from Texas to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to Chicago. But, mind you, in 75 per cent of the cases something happens along the road. Sometimes a passenger train breaks down or gets laid up, the engine gets broken down, and it is laid out between stations. And the experience of men who have had experience with these things and have seen them, is that they find innumerable things happen to prevent the speed that they intend to make. I suppose that it is the genuine intention to make the speed, because we generally make them pay damages if they do not. I think Judge Smith will vouch for that, and Mr. Stevens, also.

There has been a disposition to load down trains with too many cars, too much freight to make the speed, and that has increased the chance of accidents or break downs, of course. As to these matters, I did not intend to argue to the committee.

At all events, no matter what it is, it does happen that you have to unload these cattle in four or five hours of the market and to reload them. And you are as apt as not to have to unload them in muddy pens. You are as apt as not to have to unload them in a snow storm. You are as apt as not to have to unload them in a cold rain. It is an absolute injury to the cattle, in any way you can figure it. You can not find a shipper who goes along with the cattle and sees the actual conditions who will dispute that proposition on his oath, if he has had real experience. And if he did dispute it, go to the packing houses at Chicago and look at the meat. The man there will tell you that the cattle that came in when the twenty-eight hour law was enforced-I was told this by reliable parties-because of their being unloaded three times, from Montana to Chicago, the cattle brought 25 cents a hundred less; and the next train that came in under those circumstances the packers would hardly look at them at all, because they killed out so badly.

Take the case of cattle coming from Texas, southwest of San Antonio

Mr. MANN. When was that instance that you just mentioned? While the law was enforced?

Mr. COWAN. Yes, sir. I can furnish the witnesses who know these facts; but I did not expect to try to bring witnesses here at this time. I will bring them later.

Mr. MANN. That was while the Secretary was enforcing the law last summer?

Mr. CoWAN. Yes, sir. They were some of the first shipments that started from Montana to Chicago. They quit shipping until they could see the Secretary and make arrangements which would not result so inhumanely.

I want to instance this case from the San Antonio district

Mr. F. C. STEVENS. Explain that phrase "so inhumanely."
Mr. COWAN. I do not know whether that is a good word.

Mr. F. C. STEVENS. You had in your mind some sort of a condition that fitted that expression. Explain it to us.

Mr. CowAN. It fits this: You unload the cattle from Montana. They are carried 1,400 miles, and you unload them three times on the way to Chicago, and you will find that their hips and sides are a mass of bruises, and that the meat shows it when it is hung up. Mr. Gooding, brother of the governor of Idaho, sitting over there, will vouch to that happening from unloading and reloading.

Mr. RICHARDSON. The longer they are detained the better it is for the cattle?

Mr. COWAN. The less unloading there is the better it is for the cattle.

Mr. RICHARDSON. I thought I understood you to say just now that it was the detention of the cattle a certain length of time that injured the market price?

Mr. CowAN. It does that. I am speaking now of the bruises from the fact of unloading.

Mr. RICHARDSON. It is the unloading and reloading that is the Case of that?

Mr. COWAN. Yes; that is what makes these bruises. That can be proven by anybody who will investigate it.

Mr. WANGER. What effect upon unloading and reloading would this extension have as to cattle shipped from Montana to Chicago?

Mr. COWAN. It would save from one to two unloadings. I will give an example from Texas that will apply to the conditions from Montana just as well. Fort Worth is a good market. Swift and Armour have large packing houses there, and large stock yards. All of the railroads from southwest Texas converge there. So all the lines going to Kansas City lead out of Fort Worth. The cattle leaving the southwest, along the Rio Grande, come to Fort Worth to try the market. Many of them are sold there, some of them to be reshipped, others to be slaughtered. Oftentimes a man will bring in a train of cattle and sell half of them and ship the other half on. These cattle from that district are being consigned, however, to Kansas City, with the privilege of stopping off at the Fort Worth market. They are interstate freight, therefore, and controlled by the interstate law. Those cattle will not reach Fort Worth, ordinarily, in twenty-eight hours. Oftentimes they can not do that. So that they, finding that they can not do that, having no sufficient pens to accommodate a train load of cattle at every station, have to stop these cattle where they can unload them; and on the M., K. and T. Railroad they have such pens at Hillsboro, 50 miles south, and Waco, 100 miles south. They have to unload them and reload them at one of those places if the twenty-eight-hour law is enforced. If it is not, they will reach Forth Worth in thirty hours, about, and have one unloading. If the twenty-eight-hour law is enforced in the shipment to Kansas City they will have to unload at Parsons, Kansas City, if over the M., K. and T., and Emporia and Kansas City over the Santa Fe, or Herrington and Kansas City over the Rock Island. So you will have three distinct unloadings from southwestern Texas to Kansas City if the law is enforced. If not, you will reach Fort Worth in thirty-one or thirty-two hours, under ordinary circum

stances, from districts like Sanderson, Eagle Pass, and the like, and reach Kansas City in thirty-one or thirty-two hours from Fort Worth. So that you have one unloading instead of three. That illustrates the situation coming from Montana. If you will give us the thirtysix-hour law coming from Montana you will reduce the unloading two-thirds on the live stock coming to Chicago and benefit the cattle twenty-five per cent.

Mr. ADAMSON. The only increased detention required would be two or three hours?

Mr. CowAN. Yes, sir; but the reason for extending the time to thirty-six hours is to meet the exigencies of weather conditions, and so on. I will set it down as a proposition that every cattleman in the country knows that the cattle bring more money with less unloading; they weigh more; they are in better condition; they are better meat; they suffer less. At all events the cattleman is along with them and can see them and judge the circumstances as they exist presently to him. The common law gives him the right to have them unloaded when and where he pleases, if he makes a reasonable request for it, without being detained twenty-eight hours, or thirty-six hours or twenty-four hours, for that matter. If he sees that they are riding badly, or that they are being injured, or injuring each other, he does unload them; and it is a common thing for that to be done; and the railroads from Texas all obey those directions. These Congressmen from Texas here, every one of them, know that to be true.

I say, give the cattleman the right to exercise his judgment. Why? His judgment is in line with the humane treatment of the animals. His judgment is in line with doing the best for them. He can judge the circumstances from the facts as they present themselves then and there. Congress must judge them from Washington. How can Congress fix an ironclad rule that will operate as humanely as the judgment of the man to whose interest it is to act humanely? He can see the situation.

Take a case like this: I reach Muscogee, Ind. T., and I intend to unload there, shipping from San Antonio. I have got to make one unloading on the way to Kansas City, and I choose Muscogee, because they have well-equipped pens there, and they have good hay in that country. When I get to Muscogee I find that this blizzard that is just blowing over that country is in full blast. You can imagine what the result would be if I unload those cattle; and yet the law says that I shall do it. I say that the law is inhumane instead of being humane.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the tendency of a carload of cattle to get down, say, on the thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth hour after continuous movement, as compared, say, with the tenth or twelfth hour?

Mr. CowAN. There is very little difference in that, in my opinion. I will give some examples of that that I know about. I tried a case that Mr. Lincoln put before the Senate committee, in which the railroad was mulcted in damages for $11,800 for three trains of range cattle. These range cattle were shipped from Childress, Tex., to El Dorado, Kans., or in that vicinity. They could reach there in thirty hours. The railroad, instead of doing that, held these cattle for twenty hours after the twenty-four hours was over-forty-four hours and two-thirds of them were down and the others piled on top of them. We had begged them to unload them. But owing to