THE EROZEN MEAT TRADE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2588, 24 July 1882, Page 3

THE EROZEN MEAT TRADE.

In our commercial columns appears an interesting report on this subject. Tha following article from the London " Times" also shows the rapid sucoess -which this new industry has attained : To-day we have to record such a triumph over physioa! difficulties as would have been incredible, and even unimaginable, a very few years ago. Had any fervid protectionist told Parliament, in heat of the free trade controversy, that Now Zealand would send into our London market five thocsand dead sheep at a time, and in as good condition as if they had b*sn slaughtered in some suburban abattoir, he would havs brought on him hicualf a storm of derision, and would have been otherwise than honorably mentioned on a thousand platforms. But this has actually come to pasf. We seem only just now to have arrived at the certainty that meat can be brought in good condition a mere week's voyage across the Atlantio in the most tempera'e of thcearth's zones. The preseat arrival is by a sailing ship, after a passage of ninety-eight days across the tropics; indeed, for a large part of the voyage in heat which Englishmen fled almost intolerable. The ship which has accomplished a feat which mutt long have a place in temmenial, indeed, in political, annals, is the Dunedin, belonging to the Albion Shipping Oompany. An apparatus, supplied by the Bell-Ooleman Meohacical Kefrigeration Company, has keft the temperature constantly down to twenty degrees below freezing point. Under a torrid sun and in a tepid sea, an arctic winter has born etewiily maintained belar. where wol-

nesra and circulation are generally least expected. How this has bates done and what is the nature of the mechanism we hare yet to leainv The fact ie prodigious. It u the produce of a very large grazing property, extending ever half-a-dozen parishes brought from the Antipodes, and discharged into on* dead meat market iu a day. Sheep-farming baa alwayi been- regarded in this country as something to fall back upon. When tenants would - not pay, nor the land either, when tt» most enterprising agriculturist had becomo wsary of steam Drought and chemical manures, and when.'finally, there arose the question whether to pull down an acre or two of farm builiiags or re-build on a better plan at an indefinite cost, there always remained the lait a3ts~i *-.ive of letting shetp into the ground to lire as they pleased in it. At ths veiy bott.m of Pandora's box there still remfiined the " prairie value." The un« hnppy king, who, whi'e his subjects were righting for and against him, wished himself a poor shepherd watching his thcep and notching his stick, has hai irta.av an imitator among our oxn gsnllenifin farmers. Nothing Jiko ehesp firming, unices you have plenty < f morey and can run besvv risks. The last hope of the British agriculturist seems to be on the wing when the mount sin slopes of Kew Zealand compete suocssefuliy with our own dovrca. But all things have their day. Among Jths sights and sounds of the past are the long streams of sheep flowing into Smithfield Maikst through all its narrow approaches on a Sunday evening for the Monday market. The market baa been latterly supplied more quiotly, but not quite in so picturesque a fashion. Bat even the dead-meat market is undergoing a "sea change." As the total number cf sheep in all our Antipodean Colonies is considerably more than twice that in the British Isles, it is impossible to Bay where this will end, end how it will affect the destinies of thie country. Few people have the land, or the money, or the skill, or the spirit, to contend with such odds. Yet foT everybody sheep farming has O' certain fascination, for everybody thinks that he can take care of sheep, till ba- tries, and then finds that a good shepherd fully deserves his name. It i; pKia that ordinary people with a pastoral taste haa better go whore the land is to b? got, and where the sheep are wanting shepheros. There is a certain grandeur in the thought of flocks of twenty or thirty thousand, and sheep walks twenty or thirty miles across. It is the real thing in comparison with our theatrical and make-believe scale. Of codes, if ail cur wheat

it grown abroad, and all our baef and mattoD, and all oar pork, and a pood deal more, there will arise the question, " What is to be done with our land t" It is a problem whi;k concern* landowners more than the general publio, who can, indeed, afford to look on and wait for the alow eolation of time. Even

the dairy is revolutionised. Few people can say whether their butter and cheese are

English or American, It may be said that even the arrival of five

thousand sheep in a day from the Antipodes need not alarm any one who thinks of the distance, the risks, the costs, and certain

irregularity of a supply ucder such conditions. We have no wish to alarm any one, but contingencies must be faced. Now near

the close of the nineteenth century, and on the eve of centenaries recalling events that changed the faoe of the world and turned the course of history, we fled still the truth of the old saying that nothing is so certain to happen as the unexpected. All the problems of life are receiving new elements of difficulty, and the country gentleman who finds

his carcases underbid from the world below our feet is only in the same case as his

neighbours ail around. The invfntians and improvements we are so delighted to enumerate may be good for the world on the whole, indeed, that hardly comes into question ; but they are equally available for all purposes, and can be used against na as well as for us. They are but weapon which naturally fall into the hands of the strongest or the cleverest. Education ought to keep pace with progress, even in its most mechanical and commercial forms. If it fail to do so, the consequences cannot but be disastrous to those who have to get the means of living, or even only to keep what others have got for thorn. At present nothing is more serious than the prospects of many thousand young gentlemen now entering life with the idea that a just and appreciating world will find positions and places for them according to their quality acd just claim?. While tho aristocratic and gentlemanly world increases day by day, what they ere to live on either refuses to increase or sensibly, and even rapidly, diminishes, Aores do not increase and multiply. Estates rever Increase witnout toil and thrift. The cattle are not on the increase. The hands to till the land are everywhere decreasing, end the agricultural reports tell a sad tale of weeds and of land generally in bad condition, ell for want of labor, whioh is now too costly or not to be got on any terms. Where are the me-. to be found is now the cry in many quarters where man was a weed half a century ago.

The only thing that increases it the income derived from trudo and manufacture. Happily, a large portion of this overflows from the seats of industry in a constant and beneficial stream, recruiting the exhausted strength of the land. It is the town that, enables the soil to retain its full strength. But this does not prevent the continual upcropping of a vast necessitous crowd asking for employment —that is, for lite on pleasant, easy, and dignified terms. They must follow the old rule of tracing the Nile.to its source.

They see many a life-giving stream of food fo? man and beast flowing into this country

across the broad sea?, and they must go where the food coinetfrom. New Zealand, from all accounts, can accommodate a good many more, and it is a very healthy, very pleasant,

and extremely beautiful country. Its only troubles aTe that it has too mcoh of what we waut, land and produce | and not enough of the people we are ready to send thera. Oo May 29th the following letter from Sir F. D, Bell appeared in the same joui . nal: " Ta the Editor.—Sir,—Every New Zealand colonist will thank you for your article of to-day. Let me ask jour permission to add a few words to say. why the arrival of our 5000 sheep should be- welcome to you. In a striking latter en AffiSfioan meat supplies whioh appeared in the ' Times ' last December, your correspondent, in order tc< ehow how enormously the export of meat h&a increased from America to England, told yes that the States had sent you in 18S0 more than 715,000. obt. of fresh meat, nearly the same amount of tinned and preserved meats, and still larger quantities of hams and bioon. Another letter said that these hams and bacon alone, in fact, had amounted to 7,000,000 cwt. Iq his 'Balance sheet of the World,' Mr Mulhall tells you how your annual deficit of meat ia more than 600,000 tons j how every year you are becoming mire and morv dependent on other countries for the food supply of your people ; and how 33 per cent, of all the meat you consume and 40 per cent, of the grain, weighing tsgfther nearly 8,000,00- i tons, carte to you from foreign nations. " Is it not better, since you must needs havt ro huge a supply, that you should get as mu.h of it as ycu can from your own colonies rather than from foreign countries ? We in New Zealscd, at any rate, mean to send you plenty of it, and ycu must regard this first shipmsnt as only the harbinger of a great trade. For our eoil and climate are favorable to laying down land to permanent pastures, and, therefore, to the production of meat and dairy produce of a high quality. Last year we had nearly nice tunes mor* land in English grasses than all Victoria, New' South Walcr, Queensland, and South Australia put together, and for six years past the sowing of these grasses ha 3 been extending at the rate of 300,000 acres a year. This meens that New Zealand meat and dairy stuff will bo coming to yon in these new refrigerating chambers, net only in Urge quinti'ies, but (vhat is more to ths purpose) in excoptionally gcod condition. If the landowners and farmers of England have to look at these food supplies from the other side of the world as a 'prodigious fact,' they will remember hoiT much bettor it is for England to receive I the food from her own kith and kin tlaa from those who may one day bo her enemies. —I am, <fcc, ' "Thb Agshi-Qbhebai o? Nsw Zeauhd." The "European Mail" says:—"lt is a • nitewcrtby feet that just at the time when : New Zealand is thinking about supplying the English markets with shipments of her finest i theep, the notification should be made that . the American dead meat trade has proved a l failure. It appears that with the greater aocee- • eion to the population in the United States • - greater demand has er'sen foj beef sad mutton, and these sell at higher prices. As i a reeult of thi.«, for some time piai American t i' eat has been sailing in this country at pries* v which have left no profit to the producer on 1 the o.hcr side of the Atlantic. This is an. i | unexpected result, but still one for wnico. ■ oclouiits wi"4 gouty!?** b? tt*#nklul."