FIGHTING THE BEEF TRUST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 14

FIGHTING THE BEEF TRUST.

THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST AND THE WORLD’S FOOD.

(By “P” in “Morning Leader.”)

.wie outcome of the next great battle in Manchuria is very important, but the issue of the coming struggle between the United States Government and tbe Beef Trust (so-called) in the American Courts is more important still. The second big engagement in the war between wealth and commonwealth across the Atlantic is now preparing: the result of the first having proved significantly indecisive. In Januray of this year the SupremeCourt of the United States confirmed a decision of the lower courts declaring that Messrs Swift and Co./.one of the leading firms of packers, had conspired illegally to fix prices on fresh meats and other articles of food-supply, and that they should be restrained from continuing so to do by legal injunction. This decision was unanimous ;_ yet the abuse alleged has not ceased, nor shown any sign of ceasing. Now, more drastic measures are to be tried, and their nature was outlined in a tiny cablegram from Chicago published recently, of the greatest moment, not merely to all American, producers and consumers alike, but to every person in the world who eats or deals in American meat, corn, wheat, fruit, or dairy produce, or uses American fertilisers, brushes, or any of the hundred and one other by-products of the American cattle and corn industries. GROWTH OR ANNIHILATION.

The Roosevelt anti-Trust campaign apparently is to be fought to a finish. . . . First the Beef Trust is to be attacked; then the co-operating railways ; and then, let us hope, the Standard Oil Trust. Toe American people will not beat the Trusts with ease, or soon; hut the fight is well begun, and is worth a share of public attention. If tbe Beef Trust be not beaten, and that within the year, the domestic expenses of every British working-man will rise ©eriously : for expansion is of the essence of the Trust. It must widen it© sweep day by day to maintain its position, it must grow unceasingly or collapse entirely. The industrial evolution of the UnitedStates has produced it; we have yet to see whether the political evolution of America has kept pace. Such is really the meaning of the decision of the Federal grand jury, after three months of investigation (following an inqury by tbe National Department of Commerce and Labour and

two years and a half of ineffective skirmishing “in the civil courts), and after hearing oyer 100 witnesses —to indict eighteen of the officials of the American packing houses on various charges, including “combination in restraint of trade, conspiring to monopolise trade and illegally granting and receiving rebates.” The Government is said to have spent 300,000 dollars on the mere preliminaries of the case, and Messrs J. Ugden Armour, Edward Morris, Ira N. Morris, Louis F. Swift, Edward F. Swift, Charles N. Swift, and Edward A. Cudahy are stated to be among the defendants. All these men are of high personal character and vast philanthropists, as these things are rated in the United States, victims of the beef machine, whilst at the same time its enthusiastic drivers. For it is one of the little ironies of this huge monopoly that it has been forced upon its makers by mutual fear of one another, as well as mutual interest ; its beads must needs hang together so that they may not hang one another separately. “A VOICE ON THE TELEPHONE.”

The late Deimarest Lloyd and Miss Ida far bell have told us the story of Standard Oil, and at least as large a vplume would he needed as that written by Miss Tarbell to describe the rise and scope of the Beef Trust. But the essence of the matter may be stated quite shortly. “The greatest trust in the world,” as this working arrangement has oeen described, although it is not really a trust at all, m the sense uiiat Standard Oil is a trust, has no apparent organisation. It is merely “a voice on trie telephone!” But it fixes the price to be paid for 90 per cent, of the live meat reared in America, for most of the fruit, for a great deal of the corn, and a score of other commodities of general use: it fixes the price likewise at which they are sold. It terrorises great railways, it wipes out banks, it defies the law, it deludes shrewd officials of the State into incredible processes of whitewashing. Tbe price of live meat to the slaughtering and packing firms is kept down by the abolition of competitive buying: the price of dead meat is pushed up by the abolition of competitive selling. Yet Mir O. E. Russell, one ’of tbe most enterprising and well-informed of American journalists, who has especially investigated the question, is bound to admit that the elusive wires by which these things are worked are magnificently concealed, and that the U.S. Government will find it difficult to expose and cut them. “To-morrow,” he says, “it may be able to oontrol tbe price of every loaf of bread” in, America; and despite Free Trade it will be able to raise the cost of food in England as well as America —unless it* power be broken by the United States Courts.

This menace to tbe people was founded on the refrigerator car and discriminating railway rates, and advantages for the big men against the little, and fostered by Protection. It has been consolidated by the rebate system, and a network of amalgamation, which the mind of the common man may not hop© to dissect. To combat the Standard Oil Company the United States Legislature passed a law making railway rebates illegal; but all the same the Beef Trust’s chief weapon has been, and remains, the rebate and the mileage charge for its iced cars on the American railways. BY LAW FORBIDDEN.

“Probably in this year of grace the railroads of this country,” says an. American writer, .will pay to the Beef Trust 25,000,000 dollars in the rebates that are prohibited by law ; everybody that knows anything of the subject will know that they are paid;, it will appear on the books of the various railroad companies that tney are paid. This giant monopoly has been in. the making for just thirty years—since the first cold-storage car was invented, rendering possible the carriage of perishable goods over thousands of miles. Today i/irere are some fifty thousand refrigerator cars on American railroads, and over forty thousand of them are owned by the great houses collectively known as the Beef Trust. This trust, by giving or with-bolding trade, can. make or mar these railroads: by taking or refusing produce it can give prosperity or spread ruin over wide areas. It can tie up America’s food supply. Yet the only tangible basis for its united operations that can be seen by tb© man in the street is the ten-year-old National Packing Company of New Jersey, “with office boys for directors and a microscopic capital.” Tbe Trust “now owns, controls, or dominates every live-stock yard in the United States, except two,” and one of these is doomed. Vanderbilt and Morgan control the other; and combination ratner than a prolonged conflict seems likely to bring this last serious competitor at lengtn into the magic circle. A similar tale of expansion has characterised the dealings of the Trust with the American fruit trade, and the market in dairy produce; and no one can foresee the end of its multitudinous and dangerous activities.