CHEAP GERMAN MEAT!

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 38, 8 November 1917, Page 8

CHEAP GERMAN MEAT!

HOW ALSACE-LORRAINE IS EXPLOITED. i The cheapest place in Ihe world 10-day lo buy meat (writes Jlr. Henry Wood in a message to tho Exchange News Agency) is precisely where the ordinary mortal might consider it the dearest, namely, in the- German occupied portions of Alsace and .lx>rraine. While meat in nil other portions of Germany is telling at an average of sis and seven marks n pound, it is being sold on the orders of the German Government in Alsace anil Lorraine at ten cents h, pound. The inhabitants of (lie two provinces ;irc allowed to have it in nny reasonable quantity, and the great bulk of Iheui are nowbuying aud eating more- meat than before the war. While the motives of the German- Government in this matter are quite apparent, Swiss investigators who havo recently looked into it, and whose reports have just reached France, declare that the ultimate effect upon both the population and the meat supply of the two provinces will bo disastrous in the extreme. Under the system which the German military authorities are enforcing they purchase from the farmers of Alsnce and Lorraine all ot their live stock at a very higli price, giving them in payment a Government certificate, which "up to the present time, however, none of the farmers have succeeded in cashing. Tho animals are then fumed- over to the locnl butcher, who must kill, sell, and account to tho military authorities for every pound. His report must provide for the disposition of all the meat at two marks a pound, which is the price established for those who are wealthy enough to pay it, and which is still several marks below the prevailing price in the rest of Germany. To the poor, however, tho meat is sold for thirty pfennigs a pound, and the difference between, this and the two marks is charged by the German military authorities.to the municipal authorities, who are thus obliged to pay several thousand marks every week. Iniquitous as this is from the standpoint of "high financing," Swiss investigators declare that it is by no means the tyorse aspect of the case. While less than cost price, at which the meat is being sold to poorer people, increases the consumption far above normal, the peasants and farmers, tempted by the high price which is paid them by the military authorities in certificates, are selling all of their live stock at a .rate that in a few months must wipe out entirely the whole live stock of the provinces and completely ruin that industry.