Report on the trade in refrigerated beef, mutton and lamb

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1800540760

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-185131

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report on the trade in refrigerated beef, mutton and lamb

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: vi, 65 Seiten; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. Historical

Collection:: Economics Books

gerated beef naturally followed. At first, however, cattle on the hoof were exported—the first, it would appear, by Nelson Morris, in 1868, to London and Glasgow. Then, after an interval of five years, further live cattle were shipped to Glasgow, while shippings seem to have been fairly heavy between 1876 and 1885. In 1874, frozen beef ‘‘ as hard as stone” was shipped to Smithfield in boxes, but only in small quantities, and not, so far as price was concerned, very successfully. The first chilled shipment was made from New York on October 1st, 1875, by Timothy C. Eastman and arrived in good condition—a sample was sent to Queen Victoria—and it is with this shipment that the trade in chilled beef begins. Eastman, in the early days, had the business in his own hands, and two years after his initial shipment, was sending about 4,000 quarters per week. His success encouraged others. By 1880, all the steamship lines sailing between the two countries were fitted for carrying chilled beef. The refrigerating equipment in common use consisted of an ice box and fans to keep the cold air circulating. In other cases, a freezing mixture—salt and ice—was pumped along pipes between the hanging beef. The rapid increase of the trade can oe judged from the fact that the weight of chilled beef exported in the year 1887 was nearly 700,000 cwt. At first the beef was shipped to commission salesmen on Smithfield and other markets, but soon the packers began to acquire their own stalls and depots throughout the country, They complained that the commission men did not give them a “square deal”; it would appear, however, as though the urge to acquire their own depots came from two causes inde- pendent of the services of commission agents. In the first place, it is always difficult for an agent selling perishable goods to give satisfaction to a distant consignor, for decisions must be quickly made, and are easy to criticise when viewed in retrospect with a full knowledge of subsequent developments. The salesman, it should be remembered, has to decide upon one page of the book of marketing, the critic after the whole chapter is written. Secondly, the packers had already acquired experience of similar marketing problems in their own country, where they were building up a distributive organisation of their own, and naturally sought to apply the same solution elsewhere. The trade grew from its beginning in 1874 to its peak between 1900 and 1904, when the average export totalled nearly 22 million cwt. The big days of the trade were, however, already passing; the increasing population pushing further west involved close settlement of much land hitherto given to cattle raising or to the production of animal foodstuffs; the domestic demand mounted steadily, but supplies steadily declined. Meanwhile, competing beef-surplus countries were supplying a cheaper product to overseas markets*; in addition, the output from the * See ‘‘ Marketing of American Meat Products in Export Trade.” [J.S. Dept. of Commerce. April 1925.

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