PROFITEERING IN EXCELSIS.

Free Lance, Volume XVIII, Issue 984, 14 May 1919, Page 8

PROFITEERING IN EXCELSIS.

Cheap Stock and Dear Meat. THE way in widen meat keeps at a high price despite a heavy drop in the. value of cattle and sheep, owing to the dry weather and congestion in storage, is little short of scandalous. In Hawke's Bay last week quite good store sheep were selling as low as 4s and 5s a head and fat sheep at corresponding values, and cattle were fetching correspondingly low values. Prices of stock have been dropping steadily and substantially for some weeks past and, yet the public is still being made to. pay the old war-time prices. "With sheep at such low prices what excuse is*there for charging 7s or 8s for a leg of mutton? Is there any wonder that there should be severe discontent amongst the working classes? In fact, that discontent on this particular side of the cost of living prr blem should be rife amongst all classes?

Some one must be making a very fat thing out of meat dealing just now. Where is our old frrend the Board of Trade? Has it got stolen or strayed yet again? It is clearly the duty of the Government to move in the direction of regulating and fixing the price of meat in some due accordance and consonance with the greatly-reduced prime' cost. The Government stepped m, on one occasion, with regard to -butter prices and prevented the consumers from being impudently exploited. It should take similar and yet more drastic action with the meat profiteering now going on.