The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1920. BRITISH AND AMERICAN WAYS.

Waikato Times, Volume 92, Issue 14261, 12 January 1920, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1920. BRITISH AND AMERICAN WAYS.

In another column we publish a portion of the evidence given before the British Royal Commission on the income tax by Sir William Vestey, of the wellknown Vestey Meat Company. We think it will be somewhat of a revelation to the majority of our readers, showing as it docs that foreign companies and concerns can carry on business in Great Britain on better terms than can a purely British organisation. We hear a great deal about the menace of the American Meat Trust. Our Governments and producers recognise that it is a real and considerable danger to the meat industry, threatening to strangle competition and to form a huge monopoly, by which course it will be able to buy and sell at its own fixed prices. Sir William Vestey points out that this organisation has a capital of over £100,000,000; it is energetic and skilled in the pursuit of business, and is being aided and assisted in its operations by the whole force of the American Government and every State official. The British competitors are therefore under disabilities from the commencement, for the British Government does not assist, but hinders British companies in their efforts to combat the Trust, which, being free of British taxation so far as its British business is concerned, has an undue advantage over British enterprise, rendering it impossible for it to successfully maintain the struggle. How serious this handicap is was disclosed by the figures quoted by Sir William Vestey, they showing that a British company operating in Britain is called upon to pay in taxation £S2 18s on each £IOO of profits in excess of 9 per cent—an impost which the foreign competitor escapes altogether. Sir William, apparently more in sorrow than in anger, points out that it is “a pitiable state of affairs that we should have to ask our own Government for equality of treatment with foreigners in our own country, or that we should have to remove our business abroad in order to be able to trade in England on an equality with foreigners." With that conclusion few will disagree, and the general opinion will be one of amazement that such obtains, for it undoubtedly is fastening the tentacles of the Meal Trust firmer and stronger on the meat industry and, unless checked, will eventually have a strangle-hold upon supplies, enabling it to dictate terms to Governments. It is extending its operations rapidly in all countries, building huge works wherever it can obtain a footing, and is now turning its eyes towards Australia. Sir William Vestey emphasised that ids .company did not desire preferential treatment: all that was asked was equality—and that is only justice. Britain is still master of her own house, and it should not be a task beyond the acumen of her statesmen to devise a method, by which this could be assured. It is an anomaly which should not be allowed to continue that a British company should be called upon to pay £B2 18s out of £IOO of profit's into the Exchequer while a foreign concern in the same line and with a greater turnover can escape without contributing at all. British methods and American are diametrically opposed, for while Britain seeks to foster the foreigner at the expense of her own people, the American policy is to assist her traders tp exploit foreign markets by offering them special inducements. Some days ago we published a resume of the Webb-Pomercnc Act, the design of which is to promote American trade. In speaking of this Act Mr Attorney Montague, the reputed framer, said: ‘The Act entitles the Export Commission to fix markets, to fix prices, to give rebates in return for exclusive service, to refuse supplies to recalcitrant traders, to advance money, to sell below cost by means of a fund created for the purpose, to make contracts foi‘ shipping by the year on a total tonnage basis, to pool railroad costs to the port of shipment, And to do a hundred things abroad that if contemplated and discussed on American soil would send each and all looking for hail. Not only have we restored the personal and commercial freedom that is so necessary to push American trade abroad, but we have provided the machinery by which the whole of the energy, the wealth an,| the brains of each American industry will co-operate to crush down foreign opposition in foreign markets, and secure those markets in their entirety for American manufacturers.” The Act goes further even than that, for it forbids competition between Americans in foreign markets, and thus its object plainly is to drive out and kill competition by any and every means, and when that is accomplished to exploit the position to the utmost possible limit. Moral qualms would, we Ihink, preclude British business men seeking to obtain trade advantages by the methods above described, for they show a lack of business rectitude that is simply appalling; but the British go to the other extreme, and in place of attempting to combat (he designs of (he enemy they seek to assist him. To again quote Sir William Vestey; “One of the most, shameful tilings is that the American Beef Trust is allowed to open freezing works in Australia (a British possession), sell the whole of the beef from those works to the British Government and not pay one farthing of taxation in Englan I either for income-tax, super-tax or excess profits duty; while, upon any profits which might be derived from our Australian works, were we domiciled in England, we should have to pay £32 i 3s per cent, in taxation.’*

Further comment is needless, beyond remarking that the action of the Vestey Meat Company in forsaking England to become domiciled in the Argentine is quite explicable under the circumstances.