AUSTRIA’S FAMINE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13278, 18 January 1911, Page 4

AUSTRIA’S FAMINE.

In connection withh the cabled reference:! in another column to the admission of frozen meat into Austria and Switzerland, it is interesting to note that Sir George Reid, as High Commissioner for Australia, formally applied a few weeks ago for permission to send at least a sample of Australian frozen meat into Austria, at the cost of his own Government. The request was met by a refusal, however, and the Vienna, representative of the Standard stilted that he had ground for believing that the Ministers intended to maintain the prohibition. "It is not even pretended," writes the London correspondent of the Lyttelton Times, “that Australian meat is inferior to the Argentine product, or that the inspection of animals is less carefully carried out. The recent commission which went to England to study the frozen meat trad? reported most highly on the Australian and New Zealand beef and mutton. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a small shipment of Argentine meat has been admitted to Austria as an experiment, while meat irom the Hritish dominions in the Southern Hemisphere is excluded." The shipment of Argentine meat admitted to Austria realised per lb wholesale in Vienna. Similar meat could bo bought in London at the same time for 2Jd per lb, but the carcases sold in Vienna had been charged duties amounting to nearly gd per lb. In the meantime the people of the Austrian capital are paying Kid per lb for beef, Is Hid per lb for veal, and 13d per lb for pork. Mutton is not sold in the city to any great extent. The prices are out of ail proportion to the wages paid in Austria, and, moreover, there is not an article of common consumption, with the single exception of sugar, which has not risen in price in the monarchy since last year. Rents have advanced even more rapidly than the foodstuffs. Under the circumstances there can be no doubt that the agitation for the admission of frozen meat will be continued by the Austrian people, and that the powerful agrarian interests will find increasing difficulty in convincing the consumers that the iutofosts of the nation are advanced by the deliberate maintenance of prices at an almost prohibitive level.