Plant Industry, the best bluegrass pastures of the North will carry only one head of cattle to two acres for about six months of the year; whereas on the alluvial lands of Louisiana, Bermuda grass and lespedeza combined forms permanent pasture which will carry several head of cattle ten months on a single acre.

With a network of waterways and railroads, nearer the great consuming markets of the East than any other important cattle-growing section, and but a short distance from Chicago and the important markets of the Middle States, Southern Louisiana occupies a strategic commercial position of great money-value to those who raise cattle, as well as other products.

Out of six thousand members of the American Hereford Society, a grower from the Gulf Coast took the greatest number of prizes for a herd of Hereford cattle, and also took the grand championship prize for a Hereford bull, against the whole of the United States, which shows the merit of this section of country.

The market today requires quality, and experience has proved that the greatest profit comes through producing quality.

The day of the inferior, lightweight animal, which was marketed at two to three and one-half years old, has passed.

The requirement now is for high-grade, one-year-old stock, weighing an average of 1,000 pounds.

This stock can be produced in Louisiana under organized methods, at a cost of 4½ cents per pound, delivered at the market, and will bring a price of 10 cents per pound.

Prior to the Civil War the best talent in America was devoted to agricultural pursuits, which offered the greatest opportunity for making large wealth—as wealth was counted in those days.

Afterward came the manufacturing era, which attracted the genius of the country and brought about the perfection of methods and combinations in almost every known line, with the result that no longer is there any general field of opportunity therein.

Another era has now arrived, which again focuses the minds of thinking men upon the greatest of all problems—supplying the human race with food—because of the imperative need of increasing the world's food supply, and because of the large profit therein.

In the United States today, the production of live stock is the greatest field of opportunity open to men of brains and capital; and it is, above all, the one industry that now attracts the genius of men of large affairs, and the great aggregations of capital.

In 1895 the average price of beef cattle in the principal markets of this country was $4.40 per hundredweight; in 1900, it had increased to $5.80; in 1907 the average was $7.60; in 1910, $8.85; in 1911, $9.35; in 1912, $10.25; in 1915, $11.60; and in 1916, about $11.90 per hundredweight.

The foregoing market prices tell the story of the cattle industry from a financial standpoint.

The following prices paid in 1901 and in 1916 for prize-winning exhibition beeves—at the International Live Stock Exposition held annually in Chicago, at the Union Stock Yards—well illustrate the trend of the cattle market:

In 1901, the Grand Champion carload of fat cattle was two-year-old stock, weighing an average of 1,497 pounds, and sold in the auction ring at $12 per hundredweight.

In 1916, the Grand Champion carload of fat cattle was one-year-old stock, weighing an average of 1,146 pounds, and sold in the auction ring at $28 per hundredweight.

In 1901, the Grand Champion Steer was two years old, weighed 1,600 pounds, and sold in the auction ring at 50 cents per pound.

In 1916, the Grand Champion Steer was one year old, weighed 1,120 pounds, and sold in the auction ring at $1.75 per pound.

The following top prices were paid in the auction ring of the Exposition for "show cattle" of various weights: