But while the cost of the leather steadily increased under the duty on hides, there was going on in the Beef Trust the inevitable combination which special privileges breed. Buying practically all the cattle on the hoof, the packers owned all the hides. Hides go to tanners to be prepared for sole leather. It has always been a prosperous and widely spread business in the country. But the dream of the Beef Trust is to allow nobody to do anything directly or indirectly connected with the steer which it can do. It owned the hides; why should it not tan them? And promptly it began to “acquire” tanneries. There is no space here to go into the history of the steady absorption by the packers of this great American industry which has been going on in the last few years. All that is essential here is the fact that to-day the united packers, Armour, Swift, and Morris control fully thirty of the largest tanneries in the country. And the next step? Signs of what it will be are already abroad. Repeated rumors have come that the Armours were going into the shoe business. In the reports of the tariff hearings of 1908–1909, is a letter from the president of the Wholesale Saddlery Association of the United States protesting against the duty on hides. In this letter he writes: “The statement that follows may appear to you very far fetched, but it is my confident personal opinion that if the condition which confronts leather manufacturers and the manufacturers of leather articles continues and advances with the same strides during the next ten years that it has during the past five, not only will the beef packers control the manufacture of the leather, but they will likewise _control by ownership the shoe, harness, belting, and other leather industries_.” And this is only one of the several such intimations to be found in the reports. There is nothing surprising in it. That the packers should absorb the manufacturing from leather is quite as logical as that they should make leather. It was these facts and possibilities that forced the duty off hides in the Payne-Aldrich Bill, but it was only accomplished after a fight of the most unusual character.