AUSTRALIA OF TO-DAY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1247, 19 May 1914, Page 4

AUSTRALIA OF TO-DAY.

THE PRICE OF FOOD

A feature of present conditions of living in Australia is the steadily increasing cost of food. This is causing discontent amongst the generally easy-going Australians, especially amongst those who work for fixed salaries or wages, and are not able to secure periodical increases of pay througn the medium of wages boards’ awards or decisions by industrial arbitration courts. The position is such in connection with the cost of food supplies that in, say, Sydney and Melbourne, a man who is receiving the same salary as he got three years ago is now about half-a-crown in the sovereign worse off than in 1911. Undoubtedly there is some justification for the plea put forward by tradespeople that advances in rents and wages have substantially increased the cost of distribution, but people who go into figures complain that the distributors add too big a percentage for their own profit to actual and anticipated increases in both wages and rent. Then, too, there seems to be an increasing tendency on the part of distributors to enter into combinations for the purpose of keeping up and advancing prices. For instance, it is pointed out that whenever flour is quoted at a high wholesale price bakers raise the price of bread, but they do not lower the price when flour becomes cheaper. The selling price of bread remains at the elevated figures until the newspapers report again that flour is dear, when another increase is made in the price of bread. Householders in Melbourne have entered upon a campaign of resistance to a combination of city and suburban grocers, which meant a strong attempt at the abolition of all semblance of trade competition. Leaders in the householders’ rebellion made it their business to find out what grocers were in the “combine,” and distributed the information, together with an appeal to their fellows to join in a boycott of what were designated “combine” shops. So ready was the response and so great the flood of new businesses to “non-combine” shops that, according to the Melbourne Age, the “ring” has been broken. As regards meat, of which Australians are credited with consuming more per head than any other people in the world, prices continue to mount up, and men in the meat business say it is very likely that by the end of the year it will not be possible to buy good meat in Melbourne or Sydney for less than is. a pound. Again, the plea of increased cost of distribution is put forward, together with references to increased exports. But there is a spreading conviction that the dreaded American Meat Trust, which has had emissaries here for some time, is at the bottom of the matter, and that it is engineering a temporary increase of prices for growers of live stock to ensure a permanent grip of the growers, who will ultimately have to be content with what the trust cares to give them, while consumers will be compelled to pay still more.

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