THE MEAT TRUSTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18286, 23 December 1919, Page 7

THE MEAT TRUSTS.

DISSOLUTION OF THE BIG FIVE. AMERICAN COMPANIES TO DISSOLVE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. WASHINGTON, December 19. The packers have been given two years in which to complete dissolution. The firms concerned are the Big Five, which control 674 subsidiary concerns, and they have an interest in 188 others. Armours, Swift, Cudahy and Wilson grew, within the past fifteen years -from 92,000,000 dollars in worth to 479,000,000. They paid 105,000,000 dollars in dividends in the same period. They had total sales in 1918 amounting to 3,200,000,000 dollars, and controlled twenty-two of the fifty existing American stockyards. Mr Louis Swift, president of the Swift Company, in a statement says We hav o already made a dissolution of pur packing business in Australia and South Africa. (A recent message stated:—The At-tornoy-General, Mr Palmer, announced that the Big Five packing interests have consented to sell all their holdings in public stockyards, stockyard railways, the stock market, newspapers and public cold storage warehouses,! and to dissociate themselves for ever from the retail meat . business and wholesale groceries and canning business. The packing firms concerned have submitted to the Government injunction forbidding the monopolisation of food products in the United States. The concerns affected are Messrs Armour, Morris, Swift, Wilson, Cudahy, and their main subsidiary companies.)