THE PRICE OF BACON
[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In connexion with the note in your issue of March 16th concerning the price of bacon and the reduction of profits of certain chain-store retailers' companies, may I be per- mated to suggest certain considerations which occur to me ?
In the first place, without the slightest intention to impute unworthy motives or to suggest wrong interpretations, I say that it is not desirable that we should accept without proof statements affecting matters of Government policy and general economic procedure which arc made by chairmen of limited companies to their shareholders for purposes obviously quite distinct from those of general public welfare.
Secondly, I suggest that you are not entitled to assume that the customers of the chain-stores under discussion are " poorer " than agricultural labourers, whose wages depend to some extent upon the price of bacon. It must be to some extent in fact the case that the " poorer " customers and the agricultural labourers comprise the same class.
Thirdly, I would like to protest that it is unreasonable to object to an increase in the price of .bacon (when that ncrease is the object of Mr. Elliot's endeavours for the past two years) now that it has been obtained. The objection should have been made long ago, when the pig marketing scheme was first mooted and undertaken, and you should then have maintained clearly that you preferred the agri- cultural labourer in this country to starve rather than that the Danish farmer should suffer any diminution of profits, or the chain stores' customers pay any higher price for Constitutional Club, Northumberland Avenue, W.C. 2.
[There appears to be no reason to challenge the statement of the Chairman of Home and Colonial Stores, who was only mentioning a .fact already notorious. The poor of the towns who have been compelled to give up bacon must outnumber by something like a hundredfold the agricultural labourers who have benefited by the rise in prices. The number of agricultural labourers employed primarily in pig-breeding is extremely small.—En. The Spectator.]
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