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Show profitable than selling it and uy- in other foods in the shops. Some . stockmen are holding animals off the market in hope of a change in j the government's price directives. Most growers don't believe more price-juggling will improve con- ditions. Less government control might, they say. STOCKMEN LAY MEAT LACK TO BUREAUCRACY Out on the plains where cowDoys still canter after the cattle, stockmen stock-men blame the meat shortage mainly on bureaucratic tinkering with prices and secondarily on lack of labor. As for labor, the armed services and high war plant wages have stripped the area of young men with such thoroughness that a ranch worker is almost as certain to be wearing a gray moustache as a flyer is to have wings on his unform. Ranchers and feeders who fatten stock for packers say, though, that they could get by with middle-aged help if the "planners" hadn't put ceilings under un-der corn prices and over meat prices. There are plenty of cattle in the cow country just as there are hogs in the corn belt. But stockmen stock-men and feedersV point out that the government-guaranteed price of corn makes it more profitable for the farmer to let the government govern-ment have the grain than to feed it to livestock. Keeping It Borne . . . The present price of feed, it is claimed, would make fat beef cost 30 to 35 cents per pound, on the hoof, compared with the absolute ceiling of 17.4 cents at Oklahoma City, for instance where the usual price is near 15 cents. Packers say their costs and the government govern-ment ceiling won't allow them to pay more, even with government subsidies. Another factor in the meat shortage is that thousands of small farmers are keeping beef in freezers for home use,, as more |