THE BEEF TRUST

Te Puke Times, Volume II, Issue II, 5 August 1913, Page 3

THE BEEF TRUST

A' correspondent in America, writing to one of the Sydney daily papers, says :-."The people of Australia do not realise the power of the Meat Trust: It will be a miracle if this gigantic concern is prevented from obtaining a foothold in Australia. The United States Government has b;en prosecuting the combine almost in every State in the Union without securing to date a conviction against their illegal methods of monopoly. The latest movement ,of the Board of Agriculture is to prepare a Cold Storage Bill, preventing the holding, of millions of of pounds of foodstuffs in refrigerated chambers over a psrid of six months. It is thought that this Bill, will prevent the packers fim keeping fo: an indefinite time in cold storage in order to manipulate pri2is the world over, besids a menace to health. This Bill will give discretionary power to ths superintendent of the Health Department to allow an extra thres or six months at the most. While I believe this will be a temporary ranedv, and will lower prices, eventually the Trusts, with Australasia in their/ grip, will control the world's exports, and high prices will rule to suit

the, packers's interests at the cost of the consumer and pastor■alists. How such conditions can affect the pastoralist or sheep farmer can be easily explained. The Trust acquired in its early stages practically every large interest in tiie United States so that the small man found it impossible to compete against it, and finally threw in his lot with the combine. It has practically done the same in Argentina, and three of its agents are now in Australia, and have been getting the best information with the object of controlling that part of the world. The concensus of opinion on your side is that this is impossible. I venture to say from my three years' experience that nothing is impossible for the Meat Trust, l't has millions at its back, and to absorb the big Queensland works and other Sydney meat concerns would not present any difficulty. This would form the key of admission, and would control Flemir.gton Yards at Melbourne and Homebush, N.S.W. ; then the growers would be the lambs as the price would ' be fixed by this organisation, and they would have to takp thu price . that was offered by the combine. ; I feel sure that the Australian • people outside the meat trade do not realise the p.nver of the com- • bine ; I at, looking at the situation entirely with Australian . eyes, I have a firm conviction i that if the trnst gets a foothold in- Australia or New Zealand. , then in less than ten years it will . control not; only the meat trade, ; but the entire fo'jd supplies and i spell ruin to every wool and cattlegrower in the Commonwealth.