History of the Beef Cattle Industry in Illinois

by Frank Webster Farley

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Report of Bureau of Animal Industry, 1886.

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[VII. THE FEED INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES]

"Sixty years ago (1853) there was no knowledge of scientific feeding in the United States. Sixty years ago there was no feed industry in the United States. Thirty years ago (1883) the teaching of scientific feeding in the United States began. Thirty years ago the feed industry in the United States began. When I say that sixty years ago there was no feed industry in the United States, I mean that there was no feed industry such as we of the present day apply to the term. At that time, the population of the United States was only one-fourth what it is today. The problem of feeding domestic animals, as well as human beings, was simplicity itself, in fact it was not a problem. We had more land than we knew what to do with. The owner of livestock raised more grain and more hay and had more pasturage than he had animals to consume or than he had a market for. Domestic animals were fed on the natural grains and hays, grown upon the same farms as themselves. The city or town owner of horses or livestock bought his feed stuffs mostly direct from the farmer who grew them. By-product materials of the greatest feeding value, while produced in far smaller quantities than at the present day, were not sufficiently appreciated nor sufficiently needed to cause the farmer to make the effort to haul them from the mill or factory to his farm, much less to buy them. Scientific feeding with a knowledge of the balanced ration had not as yet been taught in our state universities. The value of grinding the natural grains was only slightly understood and was practiced only in a very limited way by a few of the more progressive and thoughtful feeders. Flour mills experienced the greatest difficulty in finding a market for their bran and middlings. While these by-products were probably the first to be recognized as of great feeding value, yet hundreds of thousands of tons were sold for a few dollars a ton, or burned, or run into streams, for there was no market. Cottonseed meal as a feeding stuff was at that time unknown. Holes were dug into the ground at the cotton gins and the seed was buried as a means of getting rid of it. Distillers' and brewers' grains, starch factory by-products, molasses, oatmeal by-products, oat clippings, and many others were frequently piled up on vacant lots to decay or run into the streams, or given to such farmers as could be induced to haul them away, and the earliest practical use of them was by the manufacturers who fed cattle with them in their wet or underground state at the factories. No attempt was made to dry them or put them into form to be utilized commercially. Instead of being sources of great revenue to the manufacturer, they were, in many instances, the cause of great expense. Because of the waste and expense and the low prices realized, the cost of the main products—the food for human beings—was very greatly increased."[39]

"Here is a fact worth careful noting, that in these days of close competition, every cent realized for a by-product is credited to the cost of producing the main product—the human food—and that in addition to itself being converted into additional food for man, that is, into meat, dairy products, poultry, eggs, etc., its sale operates directly in a very large way as a saving to the consumer upon the main product from which it is derived. In other words, there is only one profit figured, and that is upon the main product—the food for man—the by-product being figured solely as such, sold for what it will bring, and the returns credited to the cost in figuring cost prices for the main product.

"The problem of feeding the world—much less the problem of feeding the people of the United States—had not as yet commenced to trouble the scientist, the statesman, or the business man of the day. No one expected that in the short space of sixty years, all of our available lands would be occupied and that our population would have increased from 31,000,000 to 91,000,000 people, and that the problem of the cost of living, the cost of food, would, during the lives of people then living, be the thought and problem uppermost in the minds of our people. That this is the thought uppermost in the minds of our population today is evidenced by the daily conversations of our friends, by what we read in the newspapers, and by the action of Congress and our National Government in providing a commission for investigation of its cause."

The following data was taken from the Statistical Report of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture, December 1, 1913,—(Assessor's Reports)

Year	Acreage
1877	4,367,603
1878	3,983,450
1879	4,193,884
1880	4,257,054
1881	2,206,621
1882	4,697,966
1883	4,752,828
1884	5,085,817
1885	5,417,147
1886	5,537,873
1887	5,630,571
1888	5,796,935
1889	5,679,874
1890	5,083,438
1891	4,681,972
1892	4,338,899
1893	4,954,871
1894	5,052,952
1895	4,631,270
1896	4,389,666
1897	4,745,917
1898	4,669,270
1899	4,880,101
1900	4,857,961
1901	4,774,062
1902	4,569,905
1903	4,447,287
1904	4,377,486
1905	4,359,426
1906	4,243,030
1907	4,308,402
1908	4,022,598
1909	3,807,796
1910	3,970,302
1911	3,819,412
1912	3,593,523
1913	3,521,966

(United States Census, and Year Books of Agricultural Department)

Year	Acres of Imp. Land	Av. Val. of F. and Build's. per acre	Av. Val. Per Farm	Acres of Far. Land	Percent Increase in Farms	Percent Increase in Farm Land	Percent of Land Area in Farms	Percent of Farm Land Improved	Farm Land in Ill.
									Total	Cultivated
1850	5,039,545	$ 7.99	$ 1,663	12,037,412			33.6	41.9	35,867,520	32,522,937
1860	13,096,374	15.96	3,480	20,911,989	88.1	73.7	58.3	62.6
1870	19,329,952	28.45	4,358	25,882,861	41.5	23.8	72.2	74.7
1880	26,115,154	31.87	4,598	31,673,645	26.1	22.4	88.3	82.5
1890	25,669,060	41.41	6,140	30,498,277	-5.9	-3.7	85.0	84.2
1900	27,669,219	53.84	7,588	32,794,728	9.8	7.5	91.4	84.5
1910	28,048,323	108.32	15,505	32,522,937	-4.6	-0.8	90.7	86.2

(United States Census Report)

Year	Population	No. Farms	Average Size of Farms		No. B. C. Per Farm	No. B. C. Per Capita (Population)	No. B. C. Per Acre Farm Land
1790
1800	5,641
1810	24,520
1820	147,178
1830	343,031
1840	685,866
1850	851,470	76,208	158.	acres	7.1	.63	.0045
1860	1,711,951	143,310	145.9	"	9.9	.83	.0067
1870	2,539,891	202,803	127.6	"	7.7	.62	.0060
1880	3,077,871	255,741	123.8	"	7.8	.65	.0063
1890	3,826,352	240,681	126.7	"	7.1	.46	.0056
1900	4,821,550	264,151	124.2	"	7.07	.38	.0057
1910	5,638,591	251,872	129.1	"	4.9	.22	.0038

Year	Acreage	Yield	Price
1860	3,839,159	30	42½
1861	3,839,159	30	24
1862	3,458,903	40	23
1863	3,773,349	22	62
1864	4,192,610	33	75
1865	5,032,996	35	29½
1866	4,931,783	32	43
1867	4,583,655	24	68
1868	3,928,742	34	48
1869	5,237,068	23	57
1870	5,720,965	35	35
1871	5,310,469	38	32
1872	5,468,040	40	24
1873	6,839,714	21	32
1874	7,421,055	18	56
1875	8,163,265	34	34
1876	8,920,000	25	31
1877	8,935,411	30	28
1878	8,672,088	29	22
1879	7,918,881	39	32
1880	7,754,545	33	33
1881	7,157,334	24	53
1882	7,371,950	24	42
1883	7,304,596	25	36
1884	6,898,819	33	29
1885	7,212,657	32	28
1886	7,153,289	25	30
1887	6,719,126	19	41
1888	7,047,813	39	28
1889	6,988,267	35	23
1890	6,114,226	27	45
1891	5,754,147	38	38
1892	5,188,432	26	35
1893	6,416,488	26	30
1894	6,705,476	31	39
1895	6,922,921	39	21
1896	6,881,400	42	17
1897	7,051,527	34	21
1898	6,943,992	31	26
1899	6,941,548	37	26
1900	8,050,550	38	31
1901	8,077,621	23	58
1902	8,199,031	39	35
1903	7,955,980	35	34
1904	7,875,471	36	39
1905	7,698,411	40	38
1906	7,621,562	37	36
1907	7,294,873	35	44
1908	6,780,507	31	57
1909	7,288,563	36	52
1910	6,889,721	41	37
1911	6,623,579	38	55
1912	6,878,797	39	40
1913	6,635,847	27	63

Showing the corn acreage, pasture acreage, number of beef cattle, and the population of the state of Illinois from 1850 to 1914 inclusive.