The black market avoided price controls at every level of production. Unscrupulous cattle buyers paid ranchers higher prices for cattle sold straight from the fields than they could get at the sale barns, which had to comply with price controls.

The buyers sold these “extra” cattle, processed them, and sold them to meat markets with empty shelves for the ceiling price plus some additional “under the table” money. The meat market held back the extra meat for customers willing to buy it at a premium price. Thus a customer might pay unrationed black market beef for a dollar per pound rather than rationed meat at the legal price of sixty cents per pound.

As Nebraska Sandhills herds came to weight, many ranchers did not sell because the ceiling prices were below the cost of production. So while there was a meat shortage on the East and West coasts, in Nebraska there was a cattle glut.

In an article headlined “Beef Plentiful ‘Out Where West Begins’” (Lincoln Journal, Feb. 20, 1944) Winn Nelson wrote, “Countless herds of big steers having beef to the hocks darken the rolling [Sand]hills ... The herds are a sight which might panic a beef-starved New Yorker, as he remembers that in his city the department of agriculture posts each day not only regular ceiling prices but also black market prices of meat ...”

Grass-fed beef is lean, and a second version of the black market emerged to supply a demand for tender, marbled corn-fed beef that Americans had grown fond of. Some feeders would pay higher prices for cattle that had not been fed to weight on grass and would fatten them on high-priced corn. They would sell to packing houses willing to pay premium, above-ceiling prices for corn-fed cows. The packers would sell the well marbled beef to retailers with customers ready and willing to pay premium prices for corn fed beef.

The black market beef engendered new rural steakhouses located far from government scrutiny and offering high quality steaks for an equally high price. As Winn Nelson noted, “Most Lincolnites have observed that a short trip past the outskirts of a metropolitan center usually brings them to a not-so-well-lighted roadhouse where steaks are featured on the menu with large dollar signs.”
 
After the war, diesel technology added more muscle to tractors, and larger trucks further reduced cattle producers’ dependence on the railroads. Antibiotics, fertilizers, and herbicides improved corn production and led to larger and larger feeding operations.

The Forces of Change: South Omaha
After World War II South Omaha’s stockyards and packing houses were caught up in a postwar hunger for beef. In 1949 the average American consumed 144 pounds of meat per year; by 1950 consumption had jumped to 160 pounds—nearly half a pound per day for every man, woman, and child. The American Meat Institute reported in 1950 that meat constituted 24 percent of the average family food budget. And, since the “baby boom” had begun, there were more families in America than ever before.
 
Since the 1920s the major meatpackers – Swift, Armour, Cudahy, and Wilson, often called the “Big Four”—had held a near monopoly on beef production, and Omaha’s Union Stockyards was practically a city unto itself. In 1956 Omaha eclipsed Chicago as the largest meat producing city in the world. That year, too, Nebraska automobile license plates began carrying the nickname “The Beef State.”

But the dominance of the “Big Four” and preeminence of the stockyards would soon ebb.