AMERICA’S GREATEST INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 131, 27 February 1937, Page 15

AMERICA’S GREATEST INDUSTRY

Meat-packing Means £750,000,000

One is so impressed with the great industrial development of the United States of America that it will come as a surprise to learn that meat-packing is the greatest industry of that nation. It exceeds even the automobile and steel industries.

The 1936 turnover is estimated at

3,000,000,000 dollars, equivalent to £750,000,000 in New Zealand currency. This sum represents 12 times the Dominion’s 1936 exports of every kind. As the American population is approximately 80 limes that of Now Zealand, their meat bill may indicate the wholesale meat bill of the Dominion, pur meat is cheaper, but consumption is heavier, and so results may be much the same. On the U.S.A, basis, our meat bill would be £9,400,000, plus retailing costs. Certainly it would exceed £1,000,000 monthly, to the consumer.

THE WOOL MARKET

The firmness at Napier, following the easing at the Wellington wool sale is reassuring to sheep-farmers. There is now a fair assurance that prices should be well maintained to the season’s conclusion.

Actually, the Wellington decline was, for crossbreds, a modest one. Medium crossbreds dropped Id. a pound—that is. equivalent to a 7 per cent. droit, Such could not be considered unexpected. especially as the January sales were at a higher level than those earlier.

The Napier official price list is really a most extraordinary one, in that almost all classes of wool made the same price. Average halfbred is quoted to T7d.: average, coarse crossbred, 15d. to 16d.; Southdown B made only jd. more than inferior, coarse crossbred. Was ever such a season before? And who would like to bet on getting as good prices uext season?