PRICES OF FOOD.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 83, 9 April 1910, Page 5

PRICES OF FOOD.

AN AMERICAN CONTROLLING MEASURE. By Telegraph. — Pres-s Association.— Copyright. NEW YORK, Bth April. Senator Lodge 'has introduced a Bill in the United States Senate with the object of limiting cold storage used for the purpose of artificially maintaining the prices of food. One of the results of the widespread popular clamour against the high cost of living in the United States has been a demand for the regulation of cold storage. _ Various grand juries have heen investigating the subject, and in the plants visited they have found tons of meat, eggs, and other provisions stored away. According to the newspapers the turkeys which are found on tha tables of American families on Thanksgiving Day are as often as not birds which were killed, but not sold, twelve months before. Cold storage is, of course, an extremely valuable process (says the Tirres's Washington correspondent). Without it it would hardly be possible to feed large cities like New York and Chicago. But, improperly used, the method becomes a weapon for manipulating prices by controlling supplies and cheating the consumer, who buys stale food when he thinks he is buying fresh. Before the Jaw can step in a conspiracy to raise prices must be proved. A single corporation guilty of abusing the device of cold storage does not come under the law of the courts. What appears to be needed is'ttiicter supervision and regulations forbidding the retention of food in cold storage beyond a fixed period and preventing the sale of such food unless .duly labelled.