Practical butchers, who are also feeders, have proved by test that they can ship their beef cattle hundreds of miles to the big packer, have them slaughtered, dressed and returned at less cost than they can do their own killing. This is possible because the utilization of every scrap of the animals in valuable by-products, and the saving in labor by wholesale slaughtering and handling, pay all expenses, including the freight both ways, and leave a margin for the butcher besides. The local butcher or livestock producer can little better afford to kill and prepare his own beef than he can afford to tan the hide and make his own shoes. There was a time, even in America, when the farmer himself actually did these things. He also sheared his own sheep by hand, while his wife and daughters spun the wool into yarn and wove cloth for the family clothing. Progress has made such methods absurd, unprofitable and impracticable. But the great machinery of economical production and distribution was not built in a day, or a year, or a decade. Armour and Company’s activities began more than fifty years ago. At first the packing house was only a butcher shop on an enlarged scale, preparing and handling pork products almost exclusively. Cattle were killed for local consumption only, as there was no such thing as cold storage, refrigerator car lines or branch houses for the distribution of fresh meats. In those days the offal from the packing houses was thrown away or buried, as is still done to considerable extent by the small butcher at the present time. The by-products industries, by which hundreds of valuable articles are now created from what was once waste, were developed through long years of scientific investigation and experimentation. The efficiency of the Armour organization of today is the result of the accumulated efforts of thousands of trained scientific and business minds, applied through half a century to the solution of the problem of factoring and furnishing food supplies for the nation and the world by the most direct and efficient means. Nothing less than a great and thoroughly organized concern could effect the economies that make such achievement possible. Armour and Company’s growth has been, and is, simply the natural expansion of a great industry keeping pace with the progress of the producer. Re-investment and Expansion Policy NO amount of criticism, investigation, misrepresentations or “exposures” has ever shaken Armour and Company’s faith in the fairness and final endorsement of the great body of American livestock producers. That the consumer found grievance in recent high food prices and attributed his troubles to the packer or producer, or both, was perhaps not to be wondered at, though his reasoning was not sound. That competing food distributors should object to the extension of packer efficiency to general food distribution is easily understood from these competitors’ viewpoint.