THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICAN MEAT TRUST.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 August 1920, Page 6

THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICAN MEAT TRUST.

(Article 3.) (Tliis is the third of :i series of four articles, ,o£ which Nos. 1 and 2 appeared in our issues of August 16 and 17. Read the earlier articles.) THE ROMANCE OF BY-PRODUCTS. It was in the decade 1880-1890 that the utilisation of by-products began to assume serious shape. The full story of the evolution of the by-products and the work done by the scientist and the inventor in their development would read like a romance. We can only indicate here, very briefly, its most salient features.

Ifake the steer as an example. A native American steer, averaging in weight one thousand pounds, has approximately 440 pounds of inedible waste. 111 Other words, only 56 per cent, of the weight of the live steer is fit to eat. Sold at ordinary market prices to the consumer, therefore, the meat alone would not fetch what the grazier receives, for the animal at the stockyards. If the 4401b of inedible parts were thrown away, therefore, either Hie farmer must accept much less for his beast, or tlie citizen pay much more for his meat. This is an elementary proposition which has always beeii recognised—to an extent at least. From time immemorial the hide was made into sandals, jerkin and buckler-shield for the primitive warrior, and the horns converted into drinking cups. But from that primitive utilisation of by-products to the presentday development of them is a very far cry.

Tiie fundamental benefit of Big Business is that it has the resources to make scientific investigation in developing new products, and the organisation to sell them when developed. Let us take a few concrete and familiar illustrations: The hides go to the Tannery. Knife Handles are made from selected bones. Buttons from the hoofs. The hair goes into cushions, mattresses, artists' brushes. " Soap is produced from miscellaneous bones. The waste of the bone becomes bonemeal and fertiliser. The blood is converted into nourishing foods and curative medicines. Some of it becomes chicken-food «md some of it manure. 1 "Stearine" from the fat is refined into oleo-margarine. The intestines appear on our breakfast tables as sausage-casingsin our concert halls as fiddle-strings; on our playing-fields in lawn tennis rackets, and sometimes, unhappily, in our own insides as surgical ligatures.

IT IS A TBITE JOKE to say that in Chicago they use up every part of the pig except the squeak! .IT IS A SIMPLE TRUTH to say that, thanks to ''Big Business," every portion of an-animal slaughtered at the Chicago Packing Plants contributes something towards reducing the cost of the meat consumed by the public.

So far, most of the By-products mentioned above are known to our readers.' But here are a few "side lines'' with which our readers are perhaps not equally familiar.

Pepsin—invaluable drug to unhappy dyspeptics—comes from the hog. The Thyroid Glands of the sheep yield a serum which, as the famous London physician, Sir William Gull, discovered, is an antidote to the dread disease of ■goitre. • Glycerine, invaluable in the ailments of children, and indispensable in the manufacture of high explosives, is made from animal fats. Fantastic combination! A By-product that saves our babies and won the war! Again, aviators demanded a wood veneer* for their planes that would not loosen in the damp cloud s . Armour's chemists, just before the war, had worked out a method of obtaining albumen from blood. This albumen makes a glue impervious to water. Armour & Co. at onee turned over to the United States Government the whole of their new albumen process and plant, and fighting planes on all fronts used "Armour Glue" for safciy. But if you want one more clinching argument for the services Big Business does to the community, take this:— One of the most remarkable medical discoveries of recent times is yiat Pituitary Fluid is an invaluable preventive of shock after wounding. It was largely used in the War—the drug known as Pituitrin. To produce one pound weight of Pituitary Fluid you must kill 5000 steers! Who in the world but Armours or some one of the Big Five could do it? We quote again the words of Mr. J. Ogden Armour himself:

"I should fill page after page if I were to go fully into fhe fascinating tale of the By-products that we have been able to develop. They range from potash to perfume, and they can hardly number less than several hundred different articles and commodities. I hardly need say that only a - firm of the very first magnitude could afford to employ the talent and the machinery necessary for these discoveries. CONTROL OF TRANSPORT. But the Bigness of the Big Five, it will be said, lies not only in their enormeus turnover, and' the variety of their products; it depends also upon their ownership of refrigerator cars and their alleged control of transport. 'So far as Armour and Co. at least are concerned, we can say that they never desired to own refrigerator cars or to control transport. Thev were driven to construct cars because the railway companies did not or would not supply them in sufficient quantity to meet the demand. And from the outset they have lost money on tbem. It was no difficult matter, therefore, to persuade the Packers at any moment to forego priva' ■ "\vs on the railroads, so long as the ' inment would guarantee an eflliucn. -vrvicc in their stead. And as a matter of fact, as the result of recent negotiations on the Kendrick Bills in the United States, the Packers have willingly agreed to forgo the control of transport, to which the Commission took I exception.

APPLY THIS TO NEW ZEALAND. In this small island Dominion, it is not railway transport as on tlie American continent, but sea transport that is of importance. What railway transport i 9 necessary is controlled by the Government directly through State-owned nil-

ways and by the people indirectly through One Man One Vote. BIG BUSINESS—A COMPARATIVE TERM. . And, after all, what is Armour and Co. in comparison with such a big business? There are 105,000,000 people in the United States. There are a little over 1,000,000 in NewZealand. Divide the turnover of Armour and Co. in the United States by, say, 100, and compare the turnover of, say, any of the large refrigerating companies doing business in New in relation to the population figures. Figure it- out for yourselves, and wo think you will come to the conclusion that, for the size of this Dominion, the local Companies are by comparison just as big, or bigger. ■ Yet we have never heard any New Zealand farmer so foolish as to suggest that anv local Company should be driven out of the Dominion because it is doing Big Business. On the contrary, the New Zealand Farmers know; that these concerns perform an invaluable service to them and to the Dominion; they market our products.

It is true they do it for profit, as Armour and Co. do. None the less they are indispensable benefactors to the whole community. PREJUDICE AND CONSERVATISMAN ILLUSTRATION. This bigotry against an alleged Trust —which has found expression in legislation deliberately directed against American meat companies—is only another case of history repeating itself. Some of our readers are old enough to remember the stonewall of ignorance and prejudice with which the pioneers of the Freezing Industry had to contend—first In New Zealand—the producing end; then at London—the consuming end. If the Farmers of New Zealand could but read the intimate life history of the late Mr. John Grigg, of Loligbeaeli, of the fight he made for years against conservatism and prejudice, and of his ultimate triumph over both, as the true Pioneer- of Freezing in this Dominion, they would perhaps understand how easy it is for the same conservatism and prejudice to-day—fanned by interested persons—to have produced the present attitude towards Packing firms that are ready to compete for their products and pay the market price for them!

The statue of Mr. John Grigg, in the Domain at Ashburton, is an eloquent testimony to his life's work, but it wrs a belated tribute —only tendered after he had battled for years, and finally triumphed. THE POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND. "You can fool all the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." —Abraham Lincoln.

We have taken these encouraging words of the great American President as the text of the latter section of this series upon which we are now about to enter.

For the time being "The Slaughtering and Inspection Amendment Act, 1918," is on the New Zealand Statute Book, and Armour and Company, of Australasia, Limited, has been refused a license under the Act.

It looks as if at this moment of time "all the pepole" arc being fooled. But that state of things cannot last, says Lincoln, "all the time.'' And so we proceed to the concluding part of our task, namely, to expose the utter folly and iniquity of this piece of legislation and the rank injustice perpetuated under it.

THE HISTORY OF ARMOUR & COMPANY, OF AUSTRALASIA LIMITED. This Company was incorporated on October 3rd, 1910. It is a New Zealand Company, with its registered office and headquarters in Christchurcli. It is incorporated under "The New Zealand Companies Act, 1008," and is in all respects in full conformity with the Company Law of the Dominion. Its Memorandum of Association, the amount and distribution of its share capital, the names of officers and shareholders, all these matters are on Public Record with the Registrar of Companies at Christchurch. Anyone-who is curious can search the file and read all the information for himself for the statutory fee. If he choose to call at the Company's office, he can read it there for nothing. The share capital of the Company is 1 £IOO,OOO, and practically all the shares are owned and registered in the name of Mr. ,T. Ogden Armour. The Company operates, therefore, with American capital: But it is as fully domiciled in New Zealand as if every pen% of its capital were locally owned. When tho Company was established, its application for registration was accepted without demur. There could be no demur, for it conformed in every particular to the laws of the country. That law, similar to the Company Laws of i Great Britain, Canada, and Australia,! was in itself A STANDING INVITATION to such a Company to establish itself and enter into the business.

Its objects were clear and unequivocal. They are set out in its Memorandum of Association for all to read. They are identical with those of a dozen other Companies of the same class doing business here, namely, to buy meat in New Zealand, either in the form of live stock or to- be killed, for export and sale abroad. The Company paid the usual fees on registration. It pays an annual license fee under the Companies Act of £50 — the fee, proportioned to capital, which every registered Company pays for carrying on business. . That fee of £SO for the year 1010 was twid. on 241.1 i January, 1010, to the Registrar of Companies at Christchurch. That fee. so paid and accepted, was the fne prescribed by the Companies Act for permission to carry on, during the coming year 1910,' the business for which the Company was incorporated, that, namely, of Buyers and Exporters of Meat. Thus on the 24th day of January, 1919, Armour and Co., under "The Companies Act, 1008," bought, paid for and obtained a license to trade for 1010, and in January, 1920, the same fee was again paid and accepted. And yet, under "The Slaughtering and Inspection Act, 1918." Armour and Co. have been refused a license to carry on the identical business for the same year.

All our readers, no doubt, have heard of "The Slaughtering and Inspection Act, 1918," and have seen reference to it in the newspapers. They probably do not know the exact purport of this extraordinary piece of legislation. The Act is a short one of three clauses, and the following ia a summary of

It shall not be legal for any person, firm or company to carry on the business of a meat exporter unless authorised to do so by a meat export license issued under the . Act. Applications for such licenses must be made to the Minister of Agriculture. Every" license is to be valid for the term of one year only. THE MINISTER MAY, IN HIS ABSOLUTE DISCRETION, GRANT OR 'REFUSE THE LICENSE "AS HE THINKS FIT. The penalty clauses of this law are in keeping with the rest, of its arbitrary provisions. The penalty for carrying on business without such license may be a fine up to £2OOO, with a further line of £4OO per day for every' day during which business is carried 'on after service of notice. All meat shipped by any person or firm not ( hokling" a license shall be forfeited to his Majesty and l'nay be sold or otherwise disposed' of as the Minister directs. Why was Armour & Co. refused a license?

We our readers to understand the position clearly. Armour and Company, of Australasia, Limited, is a company domiciled, incorporated and registered in New Zealand under 'the New Zealand laws. Its capital is supplied in America. Many other Companies whose capital is exclusively American are registered in New Zealand and engaged in various lines of commerce. There is no restriction in, our law on the right of a Company, domiciled here, to engage in business with foreign capital. Armour and Company,'of Australasia, Limited, does not own freezing plant, or cold stores, or even offices in New Zealand or elsewhere. IT DOES NOT OWN A QUARTER-ACRE SECTION..ANYWHERE IN THE WORtD. It owns anil controls 110 railroads, no stock-yards, no refrigerator cars» A rented office in Christchurcli, and a dozen motor cars for its buyers, comprise its whole outfit. It commits none of the "sins'' charged against the American Packers in the famous Federal Trade Commission report, and it has not the remotest intention of committing them! ■The whole operations of the Company are IN THE OPEN. When Armours decided to enter into bnsiness in New Zealand and buy stock from its farmers, they did so in the full light of day, under the name of Armour, in fair and honourable competition with the companies and firms already established here.

Armour And Company, of Australasia. Limited, has not committed, not- is it charged with, nor, we trust, even suspected of committing, any single act that is not absolutely in conformity with the law of the country, and absolutely in harmony with the highest code of business ethics.

Why, then, is Armour & Co., alone of all the meat-buying concerns in the Dominion, refused a license?

Because the Minister of Agriculture had perused the Report, of the Federal Trade Commission without giving Armour and Co., of New Zealand, any more chance to reply to it than Armour and Co. in America had!

11l America, at. least, certain charges were made against Armours and the other Packers. On these charges they were condemned without a hearing.

In New Zealand, not only were Armour and Co., of Australasia, Limited, Condemned unheard, but there was not even the hint of a charge made against them! And for the best of all reasons.

There was no thing, to charge them with!

This piece of injustice is so flagrant, so scandalous, so utterly opposed to ac cepted idea 9 of British justice and fair play, that our readers will hesitate to believe what we have here stated. AVe cannot believe for one moment that the Minister of Agriculture would have refused the license were it not that his judgment was blinded by the precious "Summary of the Report." The War is over; 'the country is faced with the work of reconstruction; and Politicians as well as Farmers realise that, if the prosperity of this Dominion is to continue, if its products are to maintain high prices, and if we are to escape a slump competition must not be restricted, and this food-producing Dominion crinnot afford to shut the door aganist American capital and American competition. What the Dominion can do, and will do, is to prevent American or .any other influences from putting restrictions 011 Free Trade in Meat!—and Law and Parliament are strong enough to do it without perpetrating injustice at the uncontrolled cr,price and whim of any single Minister or other person whomsoever.

We trust that members of the Cabinet will find itime to read this series. And if they give it fair and impartial consideration, we have little fear that the injustice meted out to us will not be continued.

Armour & Co. have invested capital here ,and have incurred obligations to staff and officers. They have the right to expect that, now that the commandeer is lifted, they slmll be allowed to carry on in conformity with law 'e business they have established under the protection of the law. We desire to put on record, here and now, this statement: — THE MOMENT ARMOUR & CO. IS, PROVED TO HAVE COMMITTED ANY INFRINGEMENT OF THE SPIRIT OR LETTER OF ME DOMINION'S COMPANY LAW OR GENERAL LAW, OR-TO HAVE DONE ANY ACT, WHETHER LEGAL OR NOT, WHICH IS IN CONTRAVENTION OF PUBLIC POLICY, THE COMPANY WILL DISCONTINUE BUSINESS WITHOUT ONE WORD OF COMPLAINT OR GRIEVANCE AGAINST THE LAWS OR THE PARLIAMENT OR THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY. WE CAN SAY NO MORE iTHAN THAT.