MEAT PROFITEERING

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 57, 1 December 1920, Page 8

MEAT PROFITEERING

THE PROSECUTIONS IN AMERICA. The prosecution of Armour and Co., of Chicago, on charges of profiteering in New Zealand lambs, was mentioned in the "San Francisco Chronicle" of October 22. The following telegrams were published :— New York, October 21—Tho .Federal Grand Jury to-day, as the result of a secret investigation, conducted hv an assistant of the Attorney-General's office, returned an indictment against Armour and Co.. Chicago packers, and against the officers of the company individually, charging with profiteering in violation of the Lever Act. The company officers indicted include. J. Ogden Armour, president; S. E. White, vice-president; Herbert A. Phillips, manager of tho dressed sheep department in Chicago; Arthur H. Van Pelt, district superintendent in New York.

The indictment contnins 137 counts, each of which describes a sale of NewZealand lambs at an alleged unlawful and unreasonable rate during April, May and .Tune. The -meat, it is charged, cnst Armour and Co. 18..18 dollars per 100 pounds; that the lowest it was sold for was 23 dollars, and the highest 35 dollars. All the sales were mado to wis tomers in Manhattan and Bronx. Chicago, October Cf.—Declaring that "with our lamb business as n wholo showing a loss, it seems a rather bitter joke to indict us for making too ninoli money," officials of Armour and Co. today issued a statement commenting on the Federal indictments returned in New York charging profiteering. The statement said: "The reasonableness of profits cannot be jnds*<l by consideration of n few transactions. We made soni" money through the salo of New Zenlnnd lambs, but wo did not make enough on them to offset losses wo sustained in the sale of domestic lambs, ami with our lamb business as a whole showing a loss, it seems a rather bitter joke to indict us for making too much money."