MONDAY DEC. 21, 1896. THE MEAT TRADE.

Hastings Standard, Issue 202, 21 December 1896, Page 2

MONDAY DEC. 21, 1896. THE MEAT TRADE.

A Joint Committee of both Houses of the Queensland Parliament, reporting on the frozen meat industry, recommend that the Government should establish cold storage at several distributing ccutres in Great Britain ; also that the Government should seek the authority of Parliament to borrow half a million of money with which to provide for the better distribution of meat in England. If the recommendations of the Joint Committee are accepted by the Government, and the scheme receives Parliamentary sanction, we may rest assured that the other colonial Governments will follow in the footsteps of Queensland as nearly as possible. No less an authority than the Wellington Evening Post is advocating similar vigorous action by the Government of this colony. We can scarcely agree with those who fancy that Government interference is all that is needed to push an industry to the forefront. There can be no doubt that the Government can do a good deal indirectly, but a direct interference on the lines proposed in Queensland would be a huge mistake. We do not want to see the Government embark in the butchery business, for that is practically what is proposed, but the Government can help the industry, by seeing to the inspection of the meat before and after being killed. The Government can in an indirect manner, say by mail subsidy, induce the shipping companies to provide vessels fitted with the latest and best refrigerating machinery with cold storage for other products besides beef and mutton. In such ways the Government would we think be justified in proceeding, but to wholly embark as wholesale and retail butchers would be just a trifle too idiotic.

If it is argued that the Queensland system is the only true course open to the Government, then there is opened up a multitude of other questions. Why should the Government stop at the meat trade ? Why not indulge the producers further by taking up the buttjr and cheese trade, the flax trade, tallow, kauri-gum and others of our export products. They all need more or less assistance and the Government that can take up with one can take up the others. It might be asked further why the export trade alone should be propped by the Government, when there is an import trade also that requires nourishing ? And perhaps if the matter were enquired into closely, the key to the position would be found in the import trade. The barriers to trade which have been erected by our prodigious customs duties, presses with severity 011 all sections of the people, and in a specially serious maimer on the producers of the colony. Our farmers who find the cost of living greatly increased by the Customs duties have to compete in the open market of the world against the farmers of other countries where the cost of living is much below what it is in this colony; how is it possible, then, under such conditions to fight and win. The meat industry had better be left to its own fate. If private enterprise, hedged in by selfishness, is incapable of making it profitable, an altruistic Government can never hope to succeed. No such Government interference is attempted in New South Wales, nevertheless the export trade of the mother colony is, in point of value, much in excess of any of the other colonies, and the variety of the exports also we believe are greater. In thi only freetrade colony the producers do not look to the Government for nourishment, 011 the contrary they believe in playing their own game. A combination of frozen meat exporters is now in process of formation in Sydney, and a delegate is now in England arranging for a mode of action with the importing and distributing houses. There is some liklihood of the combination being successfully formed, and we would rather expect to see good results from private efforts of this nature than from any Government interference however well intentioned and costly. If, however, action is to be taken by the various Governments, or any number of them, then surely it would be better that concerted action be taken than that ench Government should initiate and carry out a scheme of its own. Tnited action would be less costly and perhaps more effective, and this affords a fitting subject for consideration at the conference of Premiers which the Hon. H. J. Seddon seeks to bring about early next year.