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To make money on cattle, Bob Kleberg runs his feudal domain with the hard fist of a feudal lord. But he has hundreds of miles of fence to mend and mind—and everything within those fences. To outsiders, the feudal fist sometimes seems too hard. There were unpleasant rumbles against the ranch in 1936 when two poachers supposedly disappeared within it. (The Klebergs think that if they really did disappear on their ranch, they might well have got lost and starved to death.) Now, as a good-will gesture, 40 hunters a week are permitted on the ranch during hunting seasons, but they are carefully circumscribed. "You'd be surprised," says Kleberg, "at the damage a couple of fellows with guns can do among cattle."
Poachers are still a prime trouble, now that airplanes have started dropping them and picking them up in remote corners of the ranch. With memories of the old days, when as many as 10,000 cattle a year were rustled from the King Ranch, Bob Kleberg makes no apologies for his tight patrol of his fences. Said he: "Don't think rustling is a thing of the past. We still lose cattle to rustlers every year."
But Bob Kleberg is free of the current problem of cattlemen—the sky-high price of corn for feeding. He is one of the small percentage of U.S. cattlemen who use virtually no grain. He has the vast acreage to grass-feed his cattle the year round, and his 82,000 Santa Gertrudis cattle now give as much beef as the ranch once got from 125,000 of its English breeds. He is planning to increase his herds.
Tight Belts. The majority of U.S. cattle raisers are not so fortunate. Worried by the grain prices—and anxious to cash in on high meat prices—cattlemen have depleted their herds. Breeding stock as well as steers have been slaughtered. Result: the total of U.S. cattle has dropped to 76 million, down 3,000,000 in a year. This has saved grain for Europe, but it will mean much less meat for the U.S. next year. Furthermore, the production of beef, which rises and falls in a regular seven-year cycle, is now on the downgrade and will slide till 1952.
Bob Kleberg thinks Americans can tighten their belts to help feed the world, because: "We eat too much anyway, especially bread. If necessary we can eat more potatoes, rice or other types of starch, to save wheat. At any rate, we should waste less." But he does not think that renewed controls would increase the food supply, because "you don't get more food by restrictions." In the present atmosphere of uncertainty of what the Government intends to do about meat, cattlemen cannot plan ahead. "It takes four years to make a steer," said Kleberg. "That requires some long-range planning."
There is already a reported 30% reduction in the number of cattle going into the Midwest feed lots. By spring, it looked as if Americans, who ate 156 pounds of meat a person last year, would be down to 146. This would still be well above prewar. But it would not be enough for the demand. This week Senator Robert Taft told the U.S. to get ready. By spring the nation may have to ration meat.
* The disease is so contagious, and so feared, that the U.S. will not permit the virus to be brought in even for research. Infected cattle develop mouth sores, lameness; they waste away, often die.