Beef on Wheels

Ignored during the campaign by both Presidential specials, publicity-loving Floridians consoled themselves with a sevencar special of their own last week. As backwoods crowds gathered by the tracks at Jacksonville, Green Cove Springs, Palatka, DeLand, Kissimmee, Tampa, they went aboard to see the candidates for their favor: four heifers, one choice feed steer, one medium steer, one scrub steer, three dairy cattle, one big black Poland-China sow, eight pigs. Except for the scrub steer (brought along as a horrible example), all were sleek, handsome, groomed within an inch of their lives. Sharing their train were exhibits of various grasses, seed corn, peanuts, fencing methods ("Keep Ferdinand a Sissy with a Strong Fence"), poultry charts, pine seedlings, pruning tools, turpentining operations. While a sound truck played hillbilly music near the tracks, thousands of Florida farmers, black & white, marched through the train.

Thus did the Atlantic Coast Line launch the 1,500-mile trip of its "Live Stock Development Special." Object: to build Florida's cattle and forest industries, up the State's cash income, and help A. C. L.'s traffic. Less extravagant than it looks, the trip costs A. C. L. only about $5,000. An other $5,000 (for exhibits, advertising, etc.) is borne by Florida's Department of Agriculture. The third partner is University of Florida's Agricultural College, which contributed three months of hard preparatory work, a staff of 20 specialists who wear big "Ask Me" buttons, explain the exhibits through loudspeakers in each car.

Last week, as it pushed into the central cow country, the Live Stock Special had drawn 19,000 sightseers in 15 towns. This week the inmates, men and beasts, stretched their legs at Arcadia, held a small rodeo. Ahead lay 20 more stops, perhaps another 30,000 visitors. Ahead also, for Florida, lay potential new wealth. Boss of the trip, A. C. L.'s Victor Wallace Lewis, has run such trains thrice before. He ran one through North Carolina in 1930; in the next ten years North Caro lina's livestock traffic increased 400%. Polite, twinkling-eyed Dr. Arthur Listen Shealy, U. of F.'s exhibit master, believes Florida's 35,000,000 acres can feed more livestock too.

Dr. Shealy is not starting from scratch. Florida is the oldest cattle State in the union; its first herds were brought by the Spaniards 300 years ago. But by 1906 cattle ticks had so ravaged the beasts that the Government banned the interstate shipment of southern cattle. In 1930, Florida ranchers had only 431,000 cattle, one-half the 1910 total. Then State-enforced "dipping" (in arsenic solution) started a comeback. The Florida Department of Agriculture now boasts of 1,400,000 head. But many Florida cattle are still underfed and mangy, bring only $20.90 a head (against a national average of $40.57, New Jersey high of $98.40). Dr. Shealy's solution: better grass.

To A. C. L., livestock from Florida already accounts for one-third of livestock revenue, could easily account for more. Since only about 40 new carloads of cattle to New York City (at A. C. L.'s $125 share per carload) would return the $5,000 development cost, it is hard to see how A. C. L.'s long-range promotion can lose.

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