WHO IS TO BLAME?

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 125, 27 May 1919, Page 4

WHO IS TO BLAME?

FOR LACK OF SHIPPING. OPERATIONS OF MEAT TRUST DISCUSSED. i (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.'T WELLINGTON, this day. In the course of his address to the I Provincial Conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union to-day Mr. G. L. Marshall, president, referred to severe?, matters of Dominion importance. In discussing the gloomy prospect for graziers owing to the shortage of feed and the scarcity of ships, Mr. Marshall said that the insulated tonnage did not arrive in time to enable th* freezing i works to cope with the quantity of fat stock offering, and the president expressed regret that the blame for this could not be sheeted home. The Board of Trade, he went on to say, had allotted a certain number of ships for the Australasian trade, and it was known that Australia had got more than half, in fact nearly all, her meat away. Mr. Marshall asked why the ships were allowed to go there first? In answering the query, he suggested that the American Meat Trust owned a large proportion of the Australian output of meat, and it seemed probable that influence had been at work to clear the Australian meat first. It would, he said, be very interesting to he able to get at the bottom of it, hut it was certain that Xew Zealand producers did not get a "square deal." It seemed to be a fact that the American meat packers out-manoeuvred the Dominion representatives all the time, and their last balance-sheet disclosed a profit of xrver twelve million pounds. They had been paid nearly double the price for their beef that New Zealand producers had been getting yet it had been sold at Home at the same price as the New Zealand product.