fortunate in having a Legislature which seems in
every way disposed toward doing everything in its power to help develop
the resources of the State.

The Government believes that live stock production is its second
greatest problem, and in every possible way that it can give
co-operation is pledged to do so. In fact, I do not think that I would
have been here at all unless a high official in the Bureau of Animal
Industry had not urged me to come, in line with their work of general
development throughout the South.

Another thing, I find that Florida is very much in the public eye, and
that all the live stock journals are anxious to have anything which
touches upon increased beef production anywhere, but in the South
particularly.

With the knowledge that I might be here some time this winter, I talked
to two of the great packers about the development of the beef industry
in the South, and they both said that they thought the South was going
to come to the front very rapidly, and that either they or some one else
would undoubtedly keep pace with the development by enlarging their
present facilities or building new packing houses.

In that connection a packer loves a hog country to work in conjunction
with cattle. Without giving the topic any more than this general
statement, I can see where hog production is going to be one of the
great things in Florida, and that while in Texas we do not attempt to
produce any hogs along with our cattle, that hogs will be to some extent
a part of the great pasture problems.

In a general way, conditions are very similar in Florida now to those of
some thirty-five years ago in Texas, at which time that State was an
open range proposition. Today, with the exception of a very small strip
along the Gulf Coast, the entire State of Texas is under fence, and in a
general way has been under fence for nearly twenty years.

There has never been a time in the State of Texas in the past twenty
years when practically all of the grazing area of the State has not been
occupied, and as against the cattle carried on the open range with
practically no water development, the pastures of Texas, which are known
as the range (but the word range in Texas means large bodies of inclosed
land), are carrying several hundred per cent more cattle than at that
time.

The thing which in Texas led to great hardships alike to the large
pasture owner and to the settler himself was the fact that so much of
the l