THE BEEF TRUST.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 1, 3 January 1910, Page 6

THE BEEF TRUST.

HOW IT IS SEEKING TO CONTROL ARGENTINE MEAT

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT

Wo are continually being told (says the N.Z. Times) that the American Meat Trust is a bogey, and that New Zealand has nothing to fear from the operations of the Chicago ring on British, markets. Information published from time to time has proved that the American octopus is fastening its tentacles on the chief sources of supply as well as on the retail trade of Britain. The- latest news of the trust's operations is contained in the Review of the River Plate, just to hand. This is the following significant effect: —

A new and vastly important move on the part of the Beef Trust towards securing control of Argentina supplies is foreshadowed by the announcement that Mr Samuel Mcßoberts, treasurer of Armour and Co., will shortly become vice-president of the National City Bank, of which Mr J. Ogden Armour, head of the great packing firm, is already a director. The National City Bank is concerned with a plan for establishing the'muchdiscussed Pan-American Bank,, which will have branches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other South and Central American countries. Discussing this announcement, the New York Journal of Commerce, the leading business newspaper of the United States, remarks that the development "means not only absolute control of cattle-raising and beef-producing, but also the domination of banking interests in those countries, which for a generation have been in the control of .English and Germans." "Argentina," the Journal adds, "in grain and cattle now constitutes a menace, which it is easier to controlthrough financial operations than to face as a competitor."

It has been an open secret among astronomers for several weeks (says the London Daily News of November 13)' that Messrs "Cowell and Crommelin, of Greenwich Observatory, would be declared winners of the international competition for the most accurate prediction of the path and movements of Halley's Comet, and in this week's Nature the decision of the Astronomische Gesellschaft is announced according to these expectations. Germany occupies such a proud position in the mathematical world that the success of the Greenwich mathematicians is peculiarly* gratifying. The task set the competitors was one of the most difficult mathematical problems to soTve, so many different and constantly changing sources of disturbance which would affect the comet's passage in its orbit having to be separately computed and allowed for. It is'understood that Messrs Cowell and Crommelin specially invented some ingenious methods which considerably shortened their abstruse labors.

Tho modern Maori is no fool, says the Bay of Plenty Times, but sometimes he has queer ideas. The other day a native in Tauranga wanted to have his watch cleaned and repaired. He proceeded with caution. First he visited a shop on the Strand and producing the watch to the lady in cjiarge politely asked "Yon weigh this for me?' It was done arid then the native took his timepiece to the watchmaker's establishment. In due course it emerged from there duly cleaned and repaired, and the first thing the owner did was to visit the lady of the Strand with an anxious request that the watch might be again weighed. This was done and the weight declared to be the same as before. "When ho realised that none of the works were missing he vented his foc'lings with. "Kapai to pakeha" and lofi- tho promises with a smile on his