Supplying Britain's Meat. By George E. Putnam. (Harrap. 5s. net.)
Mr. Putnam's highly interesting book describes the meat trade and shows how frozen mutton from New Zealand, chilled beef from the River Plate, and hams from Chicago find their way without fail to the Englishman's table. Mr. Putnam adds what we must call a convincing defence of the great Chicago " packers" and meat traders against the charges of conspiracy and extortion so freely levelled against them. He assures us that they compete with one another and that "their profits from year to year have averaged scarcely more than a farthing per pound on the products they have sold." He declares that the American Federal Trade Commission, which inquired into the meat trade in 1917, was admittedly anxious to establish a case against the " packers " rather than to elicit the facts. It is noteworthy that when New Zealand, acting on the Commission's Report, refused an export licence to one of the American " packers," the American State Department made a vigorous protest on the ground that "the Federal Trade Commission's investigation was not a judicial trial" and that, in short, its pronouncements could be disregarded. The truth is that the great Chicago firms, by trading on a vast scale and by utilizing all the by-products so that nothing is wasted, have benefited both producers and consumers as well as themselves.
Previous page
