MEAT.
N., rise in the price of meat of which housekeepers are begin- _L ning to complain so bitterly, though exaggerated by popular annoyance, appears to be real, and promises to become Worse. So far as we can ascertain, the general rise has been about fifty per cent., an average leg of mutton, which ten years ago cost seven- pence a pound, now costing tenpence halfpenny, while the special rise, that Upon meat exclusively purchased by the rich, is a little more severe. Lamb now costs in West London from seventeen to eighteenpence a pound, and the best bits of beef from fourteen to sitteenpence, an advance of at least seventy per cent. upon What experienced housekeepers regret as the old and "proper" rates. The rise is naturally much more discussed than any similar increase in shy Other attiele—butter, for example, has risen more—for it presses With special severity upon the talking class, men with moderate incomes, households ranging froth 2001. to 7001. a year. While the artisan can give up meat altogether, Or confine himself to pork and bacon, Which from a cause we shall speedily. Mention never rise in proportion, and while the rich do not mind the price, the average income-taxpayer can neither' buy not abstain from buying. He can reduce his own consumption very easily till the difference is Made tip, and his Wife will help him in doing it, but then his domestics Will not, and he does not see his way towards dis- pensing with bis- domestics. We have always resisted the cry against the class, as arising fterh annoyance at an inevitable social change, but if there is a point upon which English servants are blindly unreasonable it is this of food. They will on this point put Up with no inconvenience however temporary, assist in no economy however slight, condemn no waste however profuse or absurd. They do not openly say, as Indian servants, for example, do, "I serve fot my belly's sake," but men who at home never buy meat turn up their noses at a cut joint, and women who have been brought up on potatoes declare that cold meat must of necessity be unwholesome. Accustomed to easy lives, and with none but bodily pleasures, they do not consider even money a substitute for good dinners, and the householder who thinks he can reform the kitchen as well as the parlour soon 6 acts himself the mark for ever recurring complaint. In dozens of houses the servants, for example, entirely refused to assist their master's experiments on the value of charqui, declaring that if it was bad he ought to be hanged for poisoning them, and if it was good he ought to be ashamed of his meanness. If meat rose to fivefold its price the London employer would have to provide the same quantity for the kitchen, and he feels every penny his butcher puts on as directly as if Mr. Gladstone had added it on to his income-tax. He feels it all the more because he hears on every side that he has not seen the end of the rise, that he will yet have to pay another twenty or thirty per cent., and even then be far from secure that the process will not continue. The general rise in prices which is now in progress throughout the world, and will in twenty years more halve the value of all fixed incomes, has in the matter of meat been accelerated by accidental causes. There are more people to buy it, if not for themselves then for their servants, and there is leas to be bought. Stock- keeping was not till 1861 a Very profitable occupation, and since that year we have had such short crops of green food and turnips that the heavy profit on wool has been seriously diminished. This year there was in some counties no grass to speak of at all, and the lambs and calves were recklessly killed to avoid the expense of their keep. Mr. Mechi says he has sold lambs at a shilling a pound as they stand, and of course if that is the case we are not very likely next year to get very cheap mutton. Beef is sure to be dearer still, a bullock yielding no wool and taking more time, and it is not impossible that the predictien so constantly hazarded atound us may prove tree, and fourteenpence be soon the minimum pride for decently good flesh meat.
If it is, the working population will be compelled to give it up altogether. Thirty shillings a week is still a good average wage for a skilled artisan, and out of thirty shillings a week it is quite impossible to spend fourteen upon one article, and he could not feed an average household upon less than twelve pounds' weight a week. He must fall back upon flour, or at best restrict himself to meat for the Sunday dinner, and even that moderate luxury will, if he has less than the average we have quoted, be purchas- able only by sacrifices he will, if an unselfish man, be most un- willing to make. The loss is not of much consequence to his health, meat giving only one thing which bread and meal will not supply, and many classes, such as factory hands, will probably be the better for its absence. The mass of mankind eat no me,at, and some of the finest races in the world, like the Scotch Highlanders, never see it except when walking about in the fields, and bearing, as Scott said, a Saxon instead of a Norman name. Meat is not half so essential as milk, which Londoners unfortunately do not get in any sufficient quantity, and the unprecedented plenty of bread will keep the mass of people from suffering greatly from the loss. But though the deprivation may not injure their health it will seriously injure their comfort, and probably lead to an im- mense and dangerous increase in the practice of dram-drinking. Gin is the poor man's substitute for animal fat, and if he could take it in moderation it would not be altogether a bad one, but the faculty of moderation in dram-drinking is given only to High- landers, Dutchmen, and Danes.
Abstinence, however, as we have shown, IA impossible to the middle-clnes householder, and there ought somewhere to be some hope for him. It is not very visible nevertheless. The popular theory that if nobody will eat lamb or veal mutton and beef will be cheaper is popular rubbish simply. In the first place, the classes which buy lamb and veal will not abstain for anybody, will tether increase the demand to show that they can afford it. In the second place, if they did, one great temptation to the breeder, the high price he gets for his young stock, without waiting, and without running the risk of death, would be removed, and we should have lees mutton and beef than ever, instead of more. Nor have we quite complete confidence in the law of supply and demand when, as in the agriculture of England, supply is limited by natural causes. It is all very well to say that if sheep pay sheep will be kept, but the conversion of arable into grass is not done in a year. There are leases to modify, and labourers to dismiss, and buildings to render useless, and a great risk to be run, for grass-farming in England, even when it pays, is nearly as uncertain as wheat-growing in Ireland, the drought being just as likely here
as an overplus of moisture there. The country is still Covered with small farms, and cultivated by tenants, and a dry year to a small grass fanner with rent to pay is neither more nor less than destruc- tion. There will be an increase of supply in Ireland, where the process has already begun, and some slight increase in England, but it is not yet proved that either or both will be sufficient to meet an ever growing demand. They may and probably will keep prices from rising permanently to an excessive height, but they will not reduce them soon, nor bring them back to their old level at all. Wealth increases too fast for that, even if the purchas- ing power of the sovereign were not declining under Professor Jevons's eyes.
We look for improvement rather to that general levelling in price all over the world which since we abolished the corn laws has taken place in corn. There were places in the world where corn grew cheaply, and as soon as the duty on grain was removed the price of bread changed from the English to an international level. At present a moderate harvest in England makes very little difference, provided the harvest elsewhere is good, and so, granted certain conditions, it would be with meat. The conditions are only three—the existence of cheap meat somewhere, peace, and the possibility of transporting it without injury to its nourishing qualities. Of these we have the first two, it being quite certain that a large sale at 4d. a pound would enrich the South American stockholder and the Australian shepherd-lord to an unheard-of extent. Freight would not add a halfpenny a pound to the cost, and for good meat at sixpence a pound there is a prac- tically unlimited demand. The single difficulty is transport, nature, which did not perhaps contemplate the existence of " provinces covered with houses," and, to judge from the death-rate, is slow to reconcile herself to them, having ruled that meat kept for many days should not be eaten by man. At the same time she has certainly provided antiseptics which are not available, and therefore probably also others which are. Frost, for example, will keep meat fresh and edible for any length of time, bite of a mammoth which died say about the year One having been eaten in Siberia without indigestion or other harm. If any- thing can be discovered which will perform the work of frost, and keep meat sweet say for six months, the price of meat will at once be reduced to an international standard, and certain unpeopled plains be very rapidly covered with flocks and herds. One Society, we believe, thinks it has found out a plan, and gives people meat to eat which has been kept for months, and which is very good, but its plan is not yet mature. The idea is to keep flesh in cylinders to which air cannot penetrate, but the primary difficulty, the sub- stance to be employed, has not yet been solved. Wood will not do, or metal, and glass, which will do, is not well adapted for stowage as cargo, though it answers excellently for an experi- ment which proves nothing, except that meat in an airtight vessel will keep. The Company may, however, hit upon some device, such as glass as strong as steel, and at all events the diffi- culty cannot be wholly beyond the resources of science, and once removed the necessity for any change of diet will be soon averted. Only we warn any speculator who tries the experiment not to make mistakes at first, and not if he can help it to give his meat when he gets it a foreign name. Two blunders of the kind have ruined the chances of charqui, which seemed at first most promis- ing. Servants were not going to approve of beef with a name like that, and when some iota were condemned as unfit for human food even their less fastidious masters recoiled in disgust and appre- hension. There are races which feed on blabber, and races which love rotten fish, folk who can enjoy stinking venison or rotting game, and people who will not eat cheese till it trots about their plates, but the man has yet to be found who eats with cordial appre- ciation a putrid round of beef.
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