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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 135, 14 July 1914, Page 6

Complaints have been frequent in Australia with regard to the high price of meat, and there is a tendency to lay the blame on the broad shoulders of the American Meat Trust, which is popularly supposed to have fastened its tentacles on the industry. Probably the cause is to be found elsewhere. The meat importations of the United Kingdom regulate to a great extent the pi-ice of this commodity. New Zealand, Australian, and Argentine producers can testify to.the excellently remunerative, rates that have ruled for the past few years. Since 1908 it is shown that the estimated supply of beef and mivtton to Britain has remained almost stationary. The Mother Country is as dependent on importation for its mutton and beef as it is for its grain foodstufls. Suddenly a large quantity of Australian and Argentine meat was diverted from the Home trade —when the United States, from being a large supplier itself at one time, came into the market as a large purchaser. While the population in the States has increased remarkably of late years, there has been a pronounced decline in stock and stock breeders. Elsewhere in other producing countries the quantity of stock is diminishing, while the population increases, and it can be demonstrated along these lines that one of the main causes of the high price of meat is that the supply has outstripped the demand. A Government that would give the Home farmers a reasonable agricultural protection and relief from the disproportionate rates that are strangling the land industry, would do a really national service to the United Kingdom. And the time was never more opportune than at . the present.