wr 
prices to be paid to the producer and as to quantities to be 
shipped, their ownership both of works and means of distribu- 
tion would place them in an unassailable position in the chilled 
beef trade. Their potential power in this respect has recently 
been the subject of investigation by the Royal Commission on 
Food Prices, which recommended that future developments 
should be closely watched by the proposed Food Council. 
Lastly, control can be attempted through the ownership of 
retail shops. This is a most difficult form of control to exercise— 
unless it is accompanied by control of supplies—as owing to 
the smaller capital needed for retail trading, competition more 
sasily arises. Butchering is a highly skilled trade, and its 
success largely depends upon the individual who works at the 
block. To operate the business in a large way, administrative 
abilities of a high order are essential; but, even given these, 
experience shows that multiple meat-shops not infrequently pay 
less than similar shops independently owned.* 
To sum up, it cannot be said that the British consumer, so 
far, has suffered from the growth of “ big business” in the 
imported meat trade. In the Australian and New Zealand trade, 
no company dwarfing the others has yet arisen or is likely to 
arise. There are grounds for uneasiness regarding chilled meat 
supplies, but, in this case, there are limiting factors, for though 
the American companies constituting the South American group 
are powerful, and two important firms, namely, Armour and 
Morris, have recently amalgamated, they are not sole operators 
on the market: there is a parallel British combination, namely, 
the Union Cold Storage Company, in addition to two smaller 
independent firms, one of which, the Smithfield and Argentine 
Meat Company, is British, and the other, the Sansinena Company, 
is South American. The high degree of perishableness of chilled 
meat, and the ‘ waywardness” of the market, impose limits 
to any price-fixing policy, which is again affected by the com- 
petition of fresh-killed supplies and by Dominion supplies of 
frozen meat. In the case of fresh-killed meat, for example, a 
telegram fetches supplies from, say, Liverpool, or as far away 
as Aberdeen for the next morning's trade. 
© wer © mort Af 7? val Commission on Food Prices.” Cmd. 2390. 
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