A GREAT BUTCHERS' FIRM.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9739, 29 May 1897, Page 7

A GREAT BUTCHERS' FIRM.

The Companies engaged in the importation of Australasian meat into the United Kingdom and their intermediaries make very little profit, and often a loss, out of the business. Bat the great butchers' firm Eastmans Limited, with its 500 shops, is reaping a golden harvest. The annual meeting of this Company was held in Lon don on the 31st March, under tite presidency of Lord Greville, who stated that the Company made a net profit on its business in 1896 of £50,674 Ss. Eastmans —mited, with a paid-up capital of £1,126,490, is a remarkable Company, the -result of a fusion of the Eastmans of New York and the Bells of London, besides other firms. It is cosmopolitan, selling hi the United Kingdom 20 per cent, of —I the beef and 11 per cent, of all the mutton imported. It makes its profits "partly on the general prosperity of the United Kingdom and partly on the low prices at which imported meat ia wiling." Nobody can begrudge prosperity to enterprising butchers, bat- inasmuch as the retail distribution of Australasian frozen meat is the most profitable branch of the basinses, the question suggests itself whether enterprising At—trait-—* cannot take it into their own hands. We _« not writing at random, says a Melbourne paper, for old residents of Melbourne know that the two origin— partners in the great* concern of Spiers and Pood Limited (p—d-up copit— £1,295,000) were Mali tounae men, and that Mr Alex. Gordon,' the foamier or the Gordon Hotels, I-mitod (paid-up capital was a Melbourne publican. A quarter of a century ago a Melbourne man re±_rning to JLondon was noted for spirited enterprise, and if the c___ct—istic remaios the control of the ipiports of Anstralian meat —to the Unit d Kingdom ought to era-—ate from M_bc-—tae. _i that case the trade would be d_—_—-very Australian, to the profit of alle——arned. / Wfe ought not to look to Kafftrn-", an essentiaHy _u**ierican cosce-a, ar to Thos. Nelson and Co., _t_-dek—_y to the A-*gent__, _c the __- t_ibation of oar _eat tax -oug-out the United