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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8191, 5 August 1912, Page 8

The sixpenny restaurant-keepers in Sydney have decided upon raisins’ the price of meals to ninepence. This agreement has been arrived at as the result of a conference between the proprietors. When asked on what grounds the restau-rant-keepers based their-claim to an increased charge, one of the principal movers informed a "Daily Telegraph” representative that the advance was brought about by the exorbitant prices charged for the supplies, which are in-, dispensable in a restaurant. "Butter,” he said, “has gone up to 140 s per cwt. as compared with 84s some four or five years ago. Vegetables have advanced fully 100 per cent.; bread has shot up from 2d to 3id; and the price of sugar is now .£24 a ton, as against .£2O. Even rolled oats during the past four or five years have increased 7s per cwt. and potatoes have had a most ridiculous advance placed upon them. Four years back the top price for them was 3s 6d; now it is 125.” Firewood was stated to have gone up from 17s to 24s a ton while the advance in coal was from 19s to 235. The indignation of the restau-rant-keepers seemed to receive an extra fillip when another of their number told the newspaper representative that mutton was now Bd, '"nstead of sd. and that beef had shot up correspondingly in price. ‘-The charge for irnit is enormous,” said a third; "and milk _ has pone to an extravagantly high price.” Stress was laid on the fact that "thorn sands upon thousands” of carcases of mutton lav in cold storage while famine prices ruled.