of farm produce, especially cream and poultry products. Lincoln is one of the largest buttermaking points in the United States, and is the home of the world's largest creamery plant, The Beatrice Creamery Co. Market gardening in Lancaster county is very profitable and the opportunities for engaging therein are numerous.
      Lincoln offers especial encouragement to reliable investors seeking a location for the establishment of manufacturing or wholesale enterprises. There is no lack of trackage facilities, and the distribution facilities are unexcelled. The Burlington's Billings line opens the markets of the entire northwest, while the Rock Island and the Union Pacific have opened the markets of the west and southwest to Lincoln business concerns.
     As a residence city Lincoln claims front rank. It is the home of thousands of well paid and contented workers, and it is claimed without successful contradiction that the wage earners of Lincoln own their own homes in greater proportion than the wage earners of any other city in the United States. Hundreds of families have moved to Lincoln to take advantage of the city's unexcelled educational facilities. The city's wide and excellently paved streets and boulevards, the wide street parkings, the thousands of shade trees and the handsome homes combine to make it one of the handsomest large cities of the country.
     The Nebraska State Fair annually attracts thousands of visitors to Lincoln, and the Nebraska State Fair is ranked as one of the largest and best of the state fairs held in this country.
     Lincoln holds out a welcoming hand to the industrious and the enterprising who are seeking a new location. It offers exceptional opportunities to such; exceptional opportunities to those who seek a clean city in which to rear and educate their children.
     The state institutions located in or near Lincoln are: The Nebraska State Prison, the Nebraska Hospital for the Insane, the Nebraska Orthopedic Hospital, the Nebraska Home for Dependent Children, the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska College of Agriculture, and the State Capitol.

     During the twenty year period, 1895 to 1916, Nebraska held fourth place as a cattle producing state, which gives it first rank in the per capita production of beef cattle. For the first quarter of a century of Nebraska's existence as a state, the ranges were broad and free, the cattle of the "long horn" variety and the herds immense. Feed lots were comparatively unknown and the markets were distant. With the advent of the first rush of homesteaders the cattlemen began feeling that they were being crowded out, and every possible effort was made to discourage the settlement of the state west of Grand Island. It was asserted that it was poor policy to spoil a great cattle raising country by attempting to make it a farming country, and that all efforts to cultivate the soil west of Grand Island would prove futile. But the homesteaders per

Nebraska State Prison, Lancaster

sisted, and little by little the free range disappeared. The immense herds of thirty and forty years ago are no longer existent. The unlimited range has been lost to cattlemen forever. But contrary to prophecy, instead of the cattle industry being ruined by the advent of the farmer and the crowding out of the big herds and the restrictions thrown around grazing, it has grown by leaps and bounds. Today Nebraska is the second largest beef producing state in the Union. The small herd in the feed lot has multiplied until today there are more cattle being fattened in those lots than were ever grazed upon the unlimited range. Better stock, too. The "long horn" has given way to the grades, and cattlemen are as careful today in cattle breeding as they were careless thirty or forty years ago. There is scarcely a farmer in Nebraska who does not feed from one to six or eight car loads of steers every season. The nearness of Omaha as a cattle feeder market makes it easily possible for the small feeder to secure animals, and financial conditions have been such for years that the small feeders have experienced little or no difficulty in financing their feeding operations.
     While range feeding has not entirely disappeared it comprises the smaller part of the feeding industry in Nebraska. Hundreds of thousands of head of cattle are grazed in northwestern Nebraska, where the Kinkaid homesteads have made it comparatively easy to secure wide areas for grazing purposes. But even the range fed cattle are now finished off in the feed lots.
     Under normal conditions cattle raising in Nebraska offers a splendid field for endeavor. It is a natural cattle feeding country because it is a natural corn, hay and alfalfa country. Where corn is fed swine raising is profitable, for the hogs follow the cattle and are fattened without material extra expense. The great stock yards and packing plants at Omaha afford a steady and profitable market, and the transportation facilities are excellent.
     Diversified farming is becoming the rule in Nebraska, and that means the feeding of farm products on the farm, thus preserving the fertility of the soil,

enhancing farm profits and lessening the labor involved. The man who can acquire a farm in Nebraska, either by lease or purchase, and demonstrate his ability as a farmer and stock raiser, need experience no difficulty in starting cattle feeding upon a small and profitable scale. Upon his industry, his intelligence and his "squareness," depends his future as a stock raiser. Eastern Nebraska, with its immense crops of corn, offers equal opportunities with western Nebraska with its immense hay and alfalfa areas. The silo has afforded a guarantee against shortness of winter roughage, and the small herds are afforded ample protection against the elements, in contradiction to the old days when the immense herds upon the open ranges were more than ,decimated by winter storms and short feed.
     The cattle industry in Nebraska is growing at a rapid rate. There is a world shortage of beef. High prices during the last four or five years have had the unfortunate effect of diminishing the supply of foundation stock-"she stuff" in cattle parlance. Men who get into the cattle business now, even though upon a very small scale, can scarcely help profiting by the sure demand for foundation stock during the next few years.

A Nebraska Cattle Shipment