OCR Text |
Show THE MEAT COMBINE. That was a good move in Congress to ask for an explanation of the difference in the price of meats to the stock-raiser and to the consumer. It is a clear case that either the one or the other is being be-ing robbed. When an animal is worth only two or three cents on foot, with about half that taken off for waste, and a beef steak is held at 25 cents per pound, somebody who neither supplies the beei nor eats it, is doing well. If it is due to a combine then the combine should be put on trial with only hungry men on the jury. As it is were a man to steal an ox he would only be guilty of petty ar. ceny; should he steal a quarter of beef he would be liable to go to the penitentiary for a term o( years. There is a question of mathematics in this beef business. How is it that every time the price of cattle is reduced we get a notice in the morn ing papers that the retail price of beef has been marked up a point or two? Is it to make all man kind vegetarians? A contemporary wants the evil cured by strik ing down the tariff laid against the importation o cattle from Canada and Mexico. We cannot see how that would help, because cattle on foot are worth almost as much in Mexico and more in Canada than in the United States. The direct remedy, it seems to us, would be to arraign the individuals who dictate the prices to be paid for cattle and the prices to be chargbd for beef; ar raign them as conspirators engaged in robbing producers and consumers alike and cite them to show cause why they should not be held as quasi legalized robbers and public enemies, or at least engaged in a business intended to defraud the en tire public. It seems to us that a bright lawpr ought to explode a mine of dynamite under that combine within fifteen days. |