The Daily News. SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1911. THE PEOPLE'S MEAT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 36, 5 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1911. THE PEOPLE'S MEAT.

American commerce is largely controlled by small bands o£ ogres whose special sin is to work in combination so that by the accumulation of capital they may be able to bily and control the output of any given commodity. The passion for adding dollars to a heap already so great as to be unspendable is related to all the other manias. The trust fiend is aware that if lie has command of sufficient capital, he has also the people in the hollow of his hand, and can make them pay a quarter of a dollar for a ten cent article. The trust fiend finds that his finest field is in the corner of necessities. Hence he loves to get hold of the wheat output; delights to seize the cotton crop; revels in the addition of a few more railway lines, another steamship company or so, or the whole available present and problematical meat supply, The American trust-monger looks upon the whole world as his oyster, and, as he has the meat' business of his own country pouring unearned millions into his lap every year, and is so gluttonously rich that his wealth worries him, he finds consolation in attacking the people of other lands than his own. He conceives it to be a fine thing to make the foreigners squirm, because it tickles his vanity and adds to his greatness. He has (if one may believe reliable witnesses) set out to bring Australia under the whip of the Meat Trust. The other day, Mr. J. L. Trefle, New South Wales Minister for Agricul- ; ture, asserted that the Meat Trust was i as busy as a bee in the Commonwealth. The Minister pointed out that as this Trust had forty million pounds sterling to play with it was a large, ugly thing to fight. He, however, mentioned confidently that though this engorged corporation had swallowed a great deal of Australian meat already and had thousands of tons of New South Wales and Queensland steers on the water, the Commonwealth was going to throw down the gauntlet and smite back. The Meat Trust is evidently not going round orating in Yankee fashion about the enormous size of its maw and the exuberance of its fatted banking account, but it is paying Australians heavy salaries to poke enquiring noses into the beef business, empowering them to buy meat works on sight, so to speak. Of course, the usual Royal Commission is inevitable, and no doubt it will find out, as Royal Commissions so frequently do,that truth is stranger than fiction, and that two and two make four, if not interfered with by American millionaires. The advice tendered to raisers of beef in Australia is to band together for protection as if they were mere dairymen or groeers or carpenters. In fact, it seems to be generally recognised in nowadays primal production that the intermediate person, whether he be a millionaire or a hawker, should be strictly cut out. There is at least no reason why Australia or New Zealand should buy priceless pictures for Mr. Armour or give Mr. Rockefeller some more millions to buy churches with or award money to Mr. Paton to buy jewel-encrusted teddy bears for his children. People in these rising countries are anxious enough to be millionaires on their own account, and the interference of the Beef Barons or the Oil Emper.ors is not to be tolerated at any price. Probably when the Chicago people hear that a Royal Commission is to set about thein they will apologise for their intrusion, leaving Australasians to handle their chops and steaks as it seems best to their wisdom.

THE BRITISH POLITICAL SITUATION .Thanks to Lord Lansdowne, a very large number of his brother peers have promised to bo obedient to the Government, and to give the Parliament Bill a helping vote through their House. The reason is obvious and expected. The alter-

native to their disobedience was the creation of ft large body of coerced peers, men who are probably in the bulk more distinguished for work than the majority now wearing coronets, but still carefully awarded the distinction on promise of a vote for a specific purpose. The throught of the sudden growth of these mushrooms was anathema to the bluebloods, whose chief claim to consideration and a place on the pedestal is the fact that an ancestor did something, somewhere, sometime. Whether the "last ditch" policy would have kept the ranks of the Unionists intact and strong, only those whose intimacy with British political craft can say, but it is certain that if the Unionists have made their problematical return to power still more problematical, they have at least prevented the growth of those dreaded mushrooms. In the meantime the chief business of the Government is to get the Veto Bill passed. If the Lords pass the Bill, it is exceedingly unlikely that any future Unionist Government will repeal it unless it is aching for civil war. ■ By bringing refractory peers to heel, the Government has lifted a burden from j Sovereign and people.