Meat is high; the packers admit it, though they say that other foods are higher in proportion. The farmer says he is not getting too much for his cattle, in fact not enough, he says. How about numerous local slaughtering plants scattered throughout the communities of our country, or a more direct-from-farmer-to-consumer relationship?
There is almost a sentimental attractiveness about the thought, like dreams of one's boyhood home. It looks so simple. Indeed, it is simple after a fashion, and is the way most meat was handled before the industry grew to national and international proportions. But would it pay?
Tried to Build Up Local Market.
Experimentation and testing to doubt the best teacher. And inquiring minds have not hesitated to dig into the matter. Senator F. M. Currie of Broken Bow, Neb., himself a stock raiser, relates a bit of experience of his own along this line. He tried for years, he tells us, to establish a market for fat cattle with local butchers, invariably finding that he could not meet the price made to them by the packers.
"In other words," he says, "the packers could pay us more for our cattle on foot, and sell the product to our local butchers for less money than they (the butchers) could pay us for our cattle and slaughter the beef themselves."
During the fore part of the present year he carried his inquiry further. He shipped two carloads of cows to Omaha, and they were sold to Armour and Company for $7.90 per hundred weight. Among these was one cow which  He wished to have himself for this cow weighed 840 pounds beef. 