TESTIMONY OF W. J. BRYAN, ESQ.

Mr. BRYAN was duly sworn by the chairman, and testified as follows:

The CHAIRMAN. State your name, residence, and occupation.

Mr. BRYAN. W. J. Bryan, Abilene, Tex. I am in the cattle business, and, on the side, I belong to the Texas legislature. [Laughter.] The CHAIRMAN. You have testified before this committee before, have you not?

Mr. BRYAN. No, sir; I have not. I have been in the city for a few days, but I have not been before the committee before.

Gentlemen, there are, according to my opinion, but two questions involved in this subject. One of them is the manner and method of handling the live stock of this country. To that side of the question my friends on my left here are interested. That is the humanitarian side. The next question following would naturally be the business end of the proposition. That would concern the profitable way to handle these cattle and the way to get them to market.

I do not want to worry you, gentlemen, and I will just run over a few things that possibly have been overlooked. I want to state to you that in the early days of Texas, when we were out on the range, it was quite common that cattle would come to water only every other day. The facts are that the Texas cow-and these old cowmen know it if your range is not well watered, will only come in about every other day. Hence, in transit, the cattle from Texas to market are not going to suffer for water.

The cars are now fashioned so that you can place hay in them, and if they wish to feed, they can be fed.

I want to state to you that there are old Texas cow punchers that are here before me that would make creditable honorary members of this humanitarian society. Gentlemen, these people, from studying the market, have learned that it is necessary to preserve the meats to dehorn nearly all of their cattle. You can take from the ranch that we own and ship those cattle up here into any of the pens that are undehorned and you find the feeders do not want them. And why? Because they have punched one another and hooked one another around. When these men go to ship, they go to their cars and see that the cattle are well bedded; they go to the railroad men that are loading those cars, and they see that there are no nails or long spikes in the poles to punch those cattle in there. They overlook all that part of the business at that end of the line. And why do they do so? They know that the expert buyers when they throw their eyes on the Texas steer as he turns up at Chicago or St. Louis on exhibition, if he is prodded up, it means from a half to a quarter of a cent taken off of him; and it creates a loss back to the man that is either a speculator or a producer. I am a producer myself. That being true, these people have learned to give very careful attention to their herds. A man would be discharged from the ranch who would practice cruelty; and there is no bunch of men that attend with better care to their cattle than the men that are indulging in that business. If you gentlemen that are in Congress could go and place your money in a train load of cattle, and could place it on the trains in Texas destined to some market, and you were forced to unload that train twice before

you reached the place of destination, and then, on the other side, shipped that train through with but one unloading, when you got your returns, I want to say that you would recognize the trouble and the cost to the man who has to go up against the twenty-eight-hour proposition.

I do not think that it is necessary, nor do I wish to keep you gentlemen here. In Texas I have sat in committees, and I know how tired you are. But I thought I would run over just a few of these propositions, these little things that had not been noted, and then dismiss the thing from my mind, because I think you are going to report this bill out. I believe every one of you are ready now, as a subcommittee, to recommend that the time allowed in transit should be extended to thirty-six hours.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, being a member of a legislative body yourself, you know that your belief has nothing to do with the subject. [Laughter.]

Mr. BRYAN. I presume not. At any rate, I have learned to presume not. [Laughter.]

From my home town, Abilene, to Fort Worth is ten or twelve hours' run. If we wish to go to St. Louis, we can run there if we choose, unload, and load the morning that we are to be in St. Louis, nominally, and we can figure that we may have 'some bad luck. But if we have got to run and take off the cattle in twenty-eight hours, with any kind of bad results, it means two unloadings before we reach that market.

I think that the shipper ought to have the right of electing Kansas City, if he wants to go there, and St. Louis, if he wishes to go there, because those should be competitive markets. They may be in a trust; I do not know; but that should be a privilege at home; and if we find that we can reach those places better under the thirty-six-hour run, why, I am sure that the committee of this Congress would feel like giving it to us.

As an evidence that that is the proper law, and should be for a series of years, during the twenty years that I have known the cattle business there has never been a question but what the cow man had the right to take his cattle to market and be on the train thirty-six hours, if necessary, or forty; because when you throw a herd of Texas cows upon your doorway, and they come hopping out, snapping a rib or being crushed, and running to and fro against the pens, the facts are, unless you have a large pen, that they get very little rest. You can not rest wild cattle any more than you could a wild bear tied up in one of those pens. They are moving continually and are really, for a certain length of time, better off in the cars, I think, because there they have the riding space, they swing with the cars and get their exercise, and they come out of there, unless it may be the animal that may be next to the outside of the car, where he is probably pushed up against it in some way-they come out of there without any injury, as you gentlemen well know.

There is much that I could say on this question, but I think it is unnecessary to worry you, gentlemen, further. I thank you for your attention.

The CHAIRMAN. I assure you that you have not worried us at all, and I am sorry that we did not call you earlier.

TESTIMONY OF H. C. ABBOTT, ESQ.

Mr. ABBOTT was duly sworn by the chairman, and testified as follows:

The CHAIRMAN. State your name, residence, and occupation.

Mr. ABBOTT. H. C. Abbott, Springer, N. Mex. I will state that I am a sheep and wool grower, and I have been identified with the raising of sheep, the shipping of lambs, and the handling of sheep for twenty-nine years. I am going to go back a little ways, but Ï shall be brief.

In 1887 I bought 20,000 sheep at Trinidad, Colo., and loaded a train in single-decked cars, put hay on top of the cars, and started for Kansas City. About every hundred miles I would get out and take down a bale of hay and scatter it through and feed the sheep. I reached the destination, and I found the hay mostly was lying in the bottom of the cars. I returned and made a second shipment, and then I went to the general freight agent of the Santa Fe Railroad and asked him if he would not double-deck six cars of mine. He said that he would. That was in 1887. I put in the double decks in six cars, and in 1887 and in 1888 I continued that business of shipping, and I found that in all of those shipments the feeding and the watering of sheep counted but little. At Dodge City I made an arrangement at that time we had to pay our freight in advanceand engaged to take them out of the stock yards, so that we could graze them. After we overcame that, we shipped our sheep suc

cessfully.

There is one point that has not been touched on. We raise sheep in New Mexico, and our sheep none of them go to Kansas City, Chicago, nor Omaha. They merely go to the lamb feeders of Colorado. Near Denver, within a radius of 200 miles, there are 1,000,000 sheep on feed; 800,000 of them are lambs. Mr. McKenzie has stated to you that a calf should never be let out of the car. The condition is exactly the same with the lamb; 800,000 lambs are on feed within a radius of 200 miles of Denver

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The CHAIRMAN. You say on feed."

mean?

They are on grass, do you

Mr. ABBOTT. They are in feed lots, on alfalfa, and corn. These lambs are grown, you might say, in Utah, and principally for Colorado in New Mexico. I loaded in the months of October and November 121 double-decked loads of lambs, which were distributed within a radius of 200 to 500 miles. The point is this

The CHAIRMAN. Were those lambs that you had raised?

Mr. ABBOTT. We raised perhaps 20,000 of them, and the balance we bought from different parties, and we sell them to perhaps 50 different feeders. At our ranch 50 men who are feeding sheep in Colorado come and receive their shipments, and we put them on board the cars, and they take them to their feed lots.

The CHAIRMAN. These are spring lambs?

Mr. ABBOTT. They are born in May and sold in October. They are fed alfalfa, corn, peas, and different feed. From there they are shipped to Chicago, Kansas City, St. Joseph, and the river markets. The point is this: I would like to state here, one time in particular,

I had a shipment of sheep at Alamosa on the D. and R. G. road, merely 20 cars. We loaded them and took them down at Laveta, a six-hour run, and arrived there at 8 o'clock at night, and there were not men enough connected with that railroad to unload those sheep from the narrow-gauge and put them into the double-decked cars, and we had to stay right there from 8 o'clock, and had to let them remain standing in the car until daylight, until we could make the transfer. These men who buy these lambs are small feeders and farmers, and they come to us and say: "We want to buy 2,000 lambs." And we say to them: "So much a head." They figure right off: "If we buy these sheep, we have to go by Denver and stop right there and feed within 100 miles of our own feed lot." If this law was extended to thirty-six hours, we could place 500,000 sheep from New Mexico in the feed lots without unloading. To take a lamb away from its mother and put it on board the cars and stop at Denver and at intervening points and feed is one of the most absurd things that I ever heard of.

Mr. RYAN. Will they feed at those places?

Mr. ABBOTT. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. A lamb that is born in May has by October learned to drink water and eat grass, has it not?

Mr. ABBOTT. Yes, sir; but you take a bunch of lambs weighing 50 pounds to-day, and the first two weeks you feed them on corn and alfalfa they do not gain a pound. It is impossible.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there not the same impossibility with sheep,

taken under the same circumstances?

Mr. ABBOTT. With sheep? No, sir. Sheep will commence feeding earlier, right off; but they will not gain for ten days. There is no experimental station in the whole country but what has found that you take sheep right off from range conditions and put them in the pens and feed them corn or alfalfa and they will not gain one pound the first ten days.

The CHAIRMAN. Will the sheep eat if it gets hungry?
Mr. ABBOTT. The sheep will, the second day.

The CHAIRMAN. The question is whether it will suffer from hunger. Mr. ABBOTT. The point is this: We are producers. When the feeders of the country come down and buy lambs of us they figure what it will cost them to land the lambs at their feed lots. Every time they unload in Denver it is $20 on every car of lambs; and that comes out of the men that raise the sheep on the prairies.

Mr. RYAN. Tell us something outside of the financial interests. You are talking about the money invested and the profits in the business. We are talking about the humane side of it. Tell us a little about that part of it.

Mr. ABBOTT. Really, there is nothing that injures that lamb-that is, that lamb taken away from its mother and put on board the cars is much better off in that car for thirty-six hours or forty-eight hours than it is unloaded. You put it down in a feed lot, where they try to feed it, and it will not eat. But by extending this law to thirtysix hours it will cover our situation there, where at least one-fifth of all the lambs on feed in the United States are. A million are on feed in Colorado.

The CHAIRMAN. You think it is better to have the law extended to thirty-six hours, then?

Mr. ABBOTT. Yes. It is a matter that affects every feeder of sheep in Colorado.

The CHAIRMAN. It is better to get the lambs into the feed lots of the farmer at home as quickly as possible rather than to turn them over to the tender mercies of the cormorants at Denver?

Mr. ABBOTT. Yes, sir. What Mr. McKenzie stated to you to-day as to the care of calves applies with equal force to lambs. The same thing is good for them. Really to-day the sheep feeding has come right down to lambs, nothing else.

Mr. RYAN. And the principal feeding points are there in Colorado?

Mr. ABBOTT. Yes. I come here as a representative of the National Wool Growers. Fifteen hundred of them sent Mr. Knollin and myself and two other gentlemen here. Outside of that, you take, for instance, four States-Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexicoand they contain 35,000,000 of the 45,000,000 sheep in the United States. The extension of this twenty-eight-hour law to thirty-six hours will cover our needs. It will be a great benefit to every shipper and woolgrower in the United States.

Mr. RYAN. And will not be injurious to the sheep?

Mr. ABBOTT. No, sir. I presume in twenty-nine years I have spent every year two months in just loading and unloading sheep. I merely come down here as a practical man that has followed that business and nothing else from the time I was 4 years old.

These men that feed these sheep are farmers, and a man who puts his own money into a bunch of lambs is going to take good care of them. We do not own these lambs. He himself contracts with us, and we put them on board the car. Do you think that that man, who has his last dollar invested in these lambs, will take them and be cruel to them? It is absurd. He handles them with silk gloves. [Laughter.]

Mr. RYAN. He treats them as well as he does his children?

Mr. ABBOTT. Yes, sir. I believe there is nothing more that I need say to the committee, but if there are any questions that any members wish to ask me I shall be very glad to answer them.

TESTIMONY OF S. H. COWAN, ESQ.-Continued.

Mr. COWAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: For the purposes of the record I desire to hand the stenographer the memorial which was sent out in the mail to shippers throughout all of this western country west of the Mississippi River and to some States this side. These gentlemen simply answered and returned these memorials, and the list was taken, without the knowledge of the men, from the various stock-yard companies where the commission firms have a list of the shippers of the country and from the railroad companies.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you want us to publish all these memorials? Mr. COWAN. No, sir; I am just handing them to the stenographer. The CHAIRMAN. I am just trying to get at whether it is necessary to publish the memorials with the lists of names?

Mr. COWAN. No, sir; I just hand the blank memorial to the stenographer for the information of the committee.