The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. SATURDAY, FEB. 5, 1887.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2274, 5 February 1887, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

SATURDAY, FEB. 5, 1887.

Equal and exact justice to all men, 01 whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political.

Captain Steele and a committee on behalf of the syndicate recently formed to work proposed public abattoirs meets a committee of the Borough Council on Monday afternoon next, to arrange the terms of the lease, and the committee then report the same evening to the council when the whole matter will be discussed and decided upon, previously to asking the authority of the burgeses, at a public meeting, to authorise the expenditure from the loa,n.

That the syndicate know well what they are about in their own and in the interests o£ Waikato farmers may be. fairly presumed, or they would not have entered upon the undertaking. The council themselves, we believe, fully appreciate the direct and indirect benefits which will accrue to the borough from the establishment of such an industry at Hamilton. This journal has referred on previous occasions to the growth and successful working of the dead meat market in Victoria. From the Sydney Bulletin of a late date we find that the Sydney and New South Wales meat market has been in as unsatisfactory a state till very recently, that the grazier was losing by the depreciation of the meat, through

the injury done to the live cattle carried by railway, and that the Sydney consumer, like the Aucklander at the present time, was eating meat killed in an overheated condition—the consumer was paying more than he should have done to the retail dealer, and the producer was getting less than the real value for his beast.

That state of things is all altered now in New South Wales—and how 1 By exactly the same means as it is proposed to reform the meat market here. Their case was a parallel one with ours, and what has been clone there by the enterprise of a single individual is now to be undertaken here by a Waikato syndicate, and almost under conditions identically the same. The same difficulties stood in the way of the New South Wales enterprise, the same failures were predicted as here. The story of the Sydney meat market, as told by the Bulletin, briefly detailed is this. Some time ago there was a great outcry in the papers as to the way in which the Glebe Island abattoirs were managed. Every description of live stock was found to be badly and shamefully handled before slaughtering. The want of accommodation at the Island and the worse defects at the Homebush cattle yards were held to be the explanation of the whole thing. Then the authorities of Sydney erected the costly cattle yards at Flemington, some nine miles from Glebe Island. The cattle were brought by rail to the Flemington yards, were sold there, and then, perhaps after a night in a paddock, driven to the Globe island abattoirs. What Waikato farmer or Auckland butcher but will recognise in the Bulletin's description the truth of the picture of a bullock sent to the metropolis alive by rail from the country :—" He is beaten or hallooed into a truck at Byrock or Bourke, and is detained, cramped, and thirsty for hours, and after hours of jolting, shunting, and delay, arrives at his destination, the best portions of the meat bruised, and the blood over heated and in a condition unfit to produce wholesome meat." The way reform came about was thus, we are quoting from the Bulletin :—

For years Mr Richards who, with a few other well-known men, owned grand fattening country on our big northern rivers, used to entrust his stock for sale at Fullagar's old yards on the Western Bathurst-road, and being satisfied with tho work done declined to distribute his stock to other auctioneers. Eventually an arrangement was successfully made here in Sydney to dislodge the auction business of stock from Fullagar's and bring it on to Homebush yards, just then started. The trade coming to Homebush gave the Sydney men the pull, and an arbitrary arrangement was made, the yards having been secured, to demand higher percentage from the stockowuers. The price had been per cent, and the demand was 34 per cent. Mr Ben.- Richards resolutely resisted this ; and the Sydney men said they'd force him to came to terms or they wouldn't sell his stock. Very well was the cool reply ; then I'll not sell at all, but I'll kill the cattle in the country and send the beef killed to market by rail direct.

And he did so, despite the opposition of carcase butcher's rings, and the trade generally. He selected a site on the Windsore and Sydney railway, and erected paddock accommodation and slaughter-yards at the township of Riverstone. What has been done for that small township is to be found in the fact that one hundred men and youths find employment in and about the abattoirs all the year round. The work is done by night, the electric light rendering the works as bright as.the noonday sun. The carcases of beef and mutton as soon as dressed are placed in specially built trucks which which are run on the siding to the railway line, and are then attached to the train, -which reaches the depot at Darling before the sun is up. There, at early morning, the first class butchers of Sydney and its suburbs roll up, take their pick of the meat, and whatever remains is sold to the trade at auction each day at 12 sharp, the entire supply being always got promptly through. When first started only 130 carcases or so were got through per week, but now up to 300 carcases of beef and 3000 of mutton are put through weekly. As in Auckland, the freezing company's depot is conveniently to hand so that there is no waste.

What tlie cost of railway transit from Kiverstone to Sydney is we cannot say, but, as here,. this was made a great bugbear of to deter Mr Eichards when he first took the matter in hand. Messrs Eichards and Sons, says the Bulletin, have found that what they paid in railway freight for the killed meat they more than saved in the weight and quality of the bullock. As might have been expected these abattoirs have made a busy town of the little railway side village. The firm are now intending to carry on the entire trade connected with the enterprise, fellmongering, the washing and baling of wool, the tanning of hides and pelts, and manufacture of artificial manures. This will make Riverstone a still more busy and thriving town. Even, as it is, after the removal of the beef and mutton to market, sufficient work, says the Bulletin, remains next day for a fresh relay of men in the way of curing and packing the hides, drying and packing pelts, baling and dumping wool, cashing the tallow and the oil, and packing the bones, hoofs, &c, at present sent away to Sydney. That our Waikato syndicate, like the proprietor of the Riverstone works, will have an uphill undertaking at first is only to be expected. We are told that combinations were formed in the city, of the carcase butchers, auctioneers, and the trade generally, which did their best to crush the new enterprise, but that the man who had taken the work in hand was not to be deterred by any opposition. Doubtless, as

here, many of the small retail butchers wero in the hands of the carcase butchers, and others again in those of the auctioneers but what was done then in self-defence can be clone in Auckland and, if needs be, retail butchers shops be run for the sale of Waikato meat. Waikato beef, we are told, is only a fraction of what is ottered in the Auckland market. True, and so it was with the meat sent to Sydney by Mr Richard and Sons, but nevertheless the system of sending the dead meat to Sydney, from its own inherent advantages to the consumer, came in the end to take command of the market, as the system now proposed will undoubtedly do in Auckland, and causes the Sydney paper from which we have largely drawn in the above, to predict that the Riverstone Meat Works are the true source of the great supply of the Metropolis and that the extinction both of the Globe Island Abattiors and the .tlemmington yards is a certainty. That Auckland itself is ripe for the change is believed by many, and certainly the following paragraph which we take from a recent advertisement of "for sale this day " by Messrs Hesketh, Aitken, and Co., in the Herald shows that the principle of the new enterprise is understood and appreciated : Special to Hotelkeepers, Restaurants, and Boardinghouse Keepers—3o aides veale, 30 sides lamb, 20 aides pork, all dressed and killed morning of salei; also, dressed calves heads, ready for the cook.