ARMOUR & CO.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10962, 26 July 1921, Page 4

ARMOUR & CO.

DOMINION GOVERNMENT AMERICAN CONSUL-GENERAL AND ACTING-PREMIER. TRADE REPORT REPUDIATED. It has been agreed by the parties to the controversy that the lengthy correspondence by letter and telegram which has passed between Sir Francis Bell, the Acting-Prime Minister, and the United States Consul-General in New Zealand, as to the restrictions placed by the Government on Armour and Co.’s operations in the Dominion, shall be published. Accordingly, as announced in yesterday’s “Times,” Sir Francis Bell is having a paper prepared, setting out the fall details for presentation to Parliament early in the forthcoming session. The correspondence, which has given rise to a unique diplomatic question, concludes up to date with a reply from the Consul-General to the ActingPremier’s neat retort that the New Zealand Government’s views on the operations of the Meat Trust have been derived from official documents published by the United States Government, amongst them being the report of the Federal Trade Commission. The American Consul-General maintains that the Commission’s investigation was not a judicial trial, that its report was not a judicial decision, and that it expressed only the views of the Commissioners. The New Zealand Government, he adds, “ascribes to the report greater weight and much larger application than is given to it by the appropriate officers of the United States Government, who are charged with the enforcement of those laws which Armour and Company were alleged to have violated.” He holds, therefore, that the report of the Federal Trade Commission cannot have any bearing upon the internal regulation of the' operations of Armour and Co. in Australia and New Zealand.

On its being suggested to the Act-ing-Prime Minister that this repudiation of the Federal Trade Commission's exposure of the methods of the American Meat Trust—an exposure which has received world-wide publicity—was significant of the great political changes which have recently occurred in America, Sir Francis Bell stated that it was a, very interesting development, but be did not care tr pursue the matter further.