gerated beef naturally followed. At first, however, cattle on 
the hoof were exported—the first, it would appear, by Nelson 
Morris, in 1868, to London and Glasgow. Then, after an interval 
of five years, further live cattle were shipped to Glasgow, while 
shippings seem to have been fairly heavy between 1876 and 
1885. In 1874, frozen beef ‘‘ as hard as stone” was shipped 
to Smithfield in boxes, but only in small quantities, and not, 
so far as price was concerned, very successfully. The first chilled 
shipment was made from New York on October 1st, 1875, by 
Timothy C. Eastman and arrived in good condition—a sample 
was sent to Queen Victoria—and it is with this shipment that 
the trade in chilled beef begins. Eastman, in the early days, 
had the business in his own hands, and two years after his initial 
shipment, was sending about 4,000 quarters per week. His 
success encouraged others. By 1880, all the steamship lines 
sailing between the two countries were fitted for carrying chilled 
beef. The refrigerating equipment in common use consisted 
of an ice box and fans to keep the cold air circulating. In other 
cases, a freezing mixture—salt and ice—was pumped along pipes 
between the hanging beef. The rapid increase of the trade can 
oe judged from the fact that the weight of chilled beef exported 
in the year 1887 was nearly 700,000 cwt. 
At first the beef was shipped to commission salesmen on 
Smithfield and other markets, but soon the packers began to 
acquire their own stalls and depots throughout the country, 
They complained that the commission men did not give them 
a “square deal”; it would appear, however, as though the 
urge to acquire their own depots came from two causes inde- 
pendent of the services of commission agents. In the first place, 
it is always difficult for an agent selling perishable goods to give 
satisfaction to a distant consignor, for decisions must be quickly 
made, and are easy to criticise when viewed in retrospect with 
a full knowledge of subsequent developments. The salesman, 
it should be remembered, has to decide upon one page of the 
book of marketing, the critic after the whole chapter is written. 
Secondly, the packers had already acquired experience of similar 
marketing problems in their own country, where they were 
building up a distributive organisation of their own, and naturally 
sought to apply the same solution elsewhere. 
The trade grew from its beginning in 1874 to its peak between 
1900 and 1904, when the average export totalled nearly 22 million 
cwt. The big days of the trade were, however, already passing; 
the increasing population pushing further west involved close 
settlement of much land hitherto given to cattle raising or to 
the production of animal foodstuffs; the domestic demand 
mounted steadily, but supplies steadily declined. Meanwhile, 
competing beef-surplus countries were supplying a cheaper 
product to overseas markets*; in addition, the output from the 
* See ‘‘ Marketing of American Meat Products in Export Trade.” 
[J.S. Dept. of Commerce. April 1925.