ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES. The Holidays Over.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 143, 27 February 1886, Page 5

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES. The Holidays Over.

The holidays, thank goodnoss, aro now protty well over, and people are beginning to settle down to the more sorious responsibilities of life. Citywards, things geem to look brighter and brisker than they have done tor some time past. I called on most of tho Anglo Colonial set yesterday, and found them fairly hopoful about business prospacts. The sole exceptions wgio those concerned in the frozen meat trade "I fear," said one of the largest and most experienced of agents and importers, " wo aro going to find there is nothing in it after all. We analysed our accounts lor both New Zealand and Australian frozen mutton tho other day, and the result »ai most disheartening. Where there havo been profits they have been email, and where losses, large." Moreover, English meat is daily becoming cheaper. Our butchers are litorally howling with horror at the rates at | which they have been obliged to sell beef i this Christmas. Nevor before wore such prices known during the so-called "festive season." Various reasons aro givon for tho fall, such as the growing importation of American turkeys, the influence of the graziera' movement for ignoring middlemen, ote, etc My own notion, however, agrees with thatrerontly expressed by the "Morn- j Pobt," viz., " that the decline in prices is the necessaiy corrollary of the passing of the efficient moasu"O which gives our stock protection from foreign contagious diseases. If our stock is )rce fiom these, and havo not their breeding powers impaired by the insidious foot-and-mouth diseaso, our cattlo will increase in larerer proportions than in tho past, and this will mem a larger output on the markets of beef and mutton. Then, too, there is another reason, and that is that as we givo up corn and extend our grass lands and our flocks and herd?, this also will have the effect of again increasing the output. Importers of dead meat will con sequently have to compote against steadilydecreasing prices for the best Home-grown meat " I have since turned up the article in tho " Morning Post " roforred to above, and found in it tho following bit, which peems well worth extracting : — "It isvorjr doubtful (says the writer) if the return of the importations of frozen mutton from tho colonies is so successful as enthusiasts would have us believe There is a very dark side there, quite as black to the fiockmasters of New Zealand as to the English and Scotch farmers. Tho competitors of tho Homo farmer in the production of beof and mutton have beon as hard hit as the English toedor, and with fair crops and good v» inter foi'ago, with flocks and herds froo from disease, and with an extension of stock-farming, tho English farmer will bo able to increase hi 3 output of first quality meat, secure | lower but still remunerative prices, and hit his foreign compotitors far hardor than they have hit him. Wo cannot conceive that there will be found men who will permanently carry on a trade that does not pay, and so we do not beliove that either American dead meat or New Zealand will bo permanent visitors to our market. | Both trades— this is a very important point, j mark you — would bo dead long ago, but for i tho depression in tho shipping trade and the exigencies of freight. Since Christmas wo havo had very cold weather, more especially during the last few days, and frozen mutton has in consequonco remained pretty firm. Comparing the piices nowruling with thoso quoted during tho first week of January la<?t yoar, there- ia little or no alternative in tho value of frozen mutton." Sir F. D. Bell tells me that an antipodean meat market on a far larger ?cale than was attempted at the Hcaltherics will form a foaturo of tho coming show at South Kensington. He is busy even now arranging the details with Sir Philip Cnnliffe Owen, so that in my next I shall be able to tell you more about it. Australian meat will, I fear, have to be admitted, but by cai-eful classification it is hoped to teach people to discriminate between the various qualities of colonial mutton. If anything will materially increase tho demand for New Zealand mutton, tho Exhibition with its market, restaurant, refrigerators, and cooking clases showing how to manipulate frozen meat, will. Current rates: —New Zealand mutton, 8s to 3& 4d ; New Zealand beef, 3s to 3s 4d • Eivor Plate, 2a 9d ; Scotch mutton, 4s 4s to 5s ; English, 3a Sd to 4s lOd ; Dutch mutton, 3s 6d to 4s 4d.