The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 2, 1918, Page 10

Sheep at the Kansas City stockyards. Railroads bringing them into the market must pay toll to the terminal company, which is owned by the packers. Then the yards company, owned by the packers, charges the stockman a fee for each head of stock using one of its pens or going over its scales. 2 S is needed, it must be bought from the packer-owned yards company at an out- rageous price. Then the packing ‘monopoly sets the price which it will give for the sheep, and the farmer has to accept it. The federal trade commission has advised the government to take over all the marketing func- tions now controlled by the monopoly. It would confine the trust to the task of killing and skinning. " BY THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION HE most satisfactory single index of the proportion of the meat industry controlled by the Big Five is the fact that they kill, in round figures, 70 per cent of the livestock slaughtered by all packers and butchers engaged in interstate commerce. In 1916 the Big Five’s percentage ..of the interstate slaughter, including subsidiary and affiliated companies, was as follows: C... 86.4 Illustrative of how completely effective competi- tion has been eliminated from the meat industry is the fact that there is only one independent packer, Kingan & Co., who slaughters as much as 1 per cent of the interstate total of cattle, and only nine independents who slaughter as much as 1 per cent of the interstate total of hogs. The big packers, in presenting theéir case to the < public, have given great emphasis to certain figures purporting to prove that the Big Five handle “not to exceed one-third of the total meat production of the United States.” This result can be obtained _only by juggling figures; for example, by ‘omitting from the Big Five total the animals slaughtered by their affiliated companies. Their statement is further deceptive, because under “total meat pro- duction of the United States” are included all the animals killed on the farm for home consumption. On this theory, monopoly could not be considered to exist in the meat industry, even if every pound of meat consumed in towns and cities were handled by a single company, so long as farmers continued to kill their own hogs and cows. CONTROL MORE THAN 100 PRODUCTS Control of the meat industry carries with it not only control of all kinds of fresh and preserved meats, but in addition a very great competitive ad- vantage in more than 100 products and by- products arising in con- nection with their prep- aration and manufac- ture, ranging . in im- portance from hides and oleomargarine to Sandpaper and curled hair. In all these lines the Big Five percent- age of control, as eom- pared with other slaughterers, is greater even than the percent- age of animals killed, because of the fact that many. of the small packers are not equip- ped or have been un- able to utilize their by- products. The investigation of the foreign interests of the American packers is not yet complete. A list of 88 companies from Germany and Italy to South America and Aus- tralia thus far has been identified as subsidiary to or affiliated with the Big Five and is indicative of the extent of their activities abroad. Their present and prospective positions in the commonwealths of the Pacific are well described by- If any feed " the following extract from a communication from the American consul general, Auckland, New Zea- land, to the secretary of state, dated April 26, 1918: “I have the honor to advise that the Hon. W. D. S. MacDonald, minister of agriculture, industries and commerce of New Zealand, has asked me to secure for him and the use of the New Zealand government all the information possible relative to the investigation made by the United States federal trade commission into the American meat trust; and I should very greatly appreciate it if I might be furnished with at least two or three copies of this information® for the honorable minister, ‘who indicated that he would like at least that many. FEARED. BY 2 FARMERS ABROAD “In this connection I wish to explain that the operations of the American meat trust are of very great interest to New Zealand stock raisers, since ‘they are very greatly alarmed over their actions in this part of the world, fearing that they propose to get control of the meat business in this Dominion. Armour & Co. already have an office at Christchurch, and have employed one of the most expert stock- men in this Dominion. : “This question-is being discussed extensively in and out of government circles, and I believe it will be wise to make it clear that-the Amer- ican government is in no wise connected with or fostering the methods used by what is known as the American meat trust.” - The business of the packing companies originally was limited to the slaughter of livestock and the distribution of meat and animal products and by-<. products. Now, however, they are rapidly extend- ing their ‘control over all possible substitutes for EAD what President Wilson’s investigators discovered about the packers. 0 ! has been found to be world-wide. Foreign nations have watched their inroads with the greatest uneasi- ness. In their letter to the president, the federal trade commissioners stated that there was that the unfair commercial methods would make other nations fear and diagram on the adjoining page shows what numerous and varied American industries are controlled by the pack- ers. It is to be noted that the packing trust i products, and paying the least. For instance, it is showr ‘when A 1r | to han - up 65 per cent. Watch for another section of the report of the federal trade commission in -~ Leader. Youwillnot find itin any other ma; ' e § not efficient in any sense except getting the shown that when Armour began to handle rice, the price went By-Products meat—fish, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, cheese and all kinds of vegetable-oil products—and have se-: cured strategic points of collection, preparation and distribution of these products. SWIFT & CO. IS THE GREATEST BUTTER DISTRIBUTOR IN THE UNITED STATES, HANDLING IN 1916, IN ROUND FIGURES, 50,- 000,000 POUNDS, OR NEARLY AS MUCH AS THE COMBINED SALES OF THE TWO LARG- EST NONPACKER ORGANIZATIONS. Judged conservatively by trade estimates, the Big Five packers handle at least half of the inter- state commerce in poultry and eggs and in cheese. The packers aie also important factors in ' the preparation and distribution of condensed and evap- orated milk, and are rapidly increasing their pro- portion. WISCONSIN, THE LEADING STATE IN“ TYHE PRODUCTION OF BUTTER AND CHEESE, IS COVERED BY THEIR CREAM- ERIES, CONDENSARIES AND BUYING STA- TIONS, and a similar process of concentration and control is already evident in the other principal dairy states. Vegetable-oil products are becoming increasingly important as - substitutes for animal fats. The most abundant and widely used of the vegetable oils in the United States is cottonseed oil, of which 31.8 per cent was refined by the five big packers in 1916. The most important- by-product of the cottonseed oil industry is cottonseed cake, which is in great demand by livestock producers. PROJECT A MONOPOLY OF : CANNED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES Fruit and vegetable canning and’ preserving are remote from slaughtering and meat packing, but the big packers, through ownership of refrigerator car lines and their branch house system of distribu- - tion, possess special advantage for control of this field of industry. The Big Five’s advantage in this field rests not so miuch on their ownership of can- ning factories, although IN SOME BRANCHES THEIR OUTPUT AMOUNTS TO MORE THAN A QUARTER OF THE TOTAL FOR THE UNIT- ED STATES, as upon their rapidly growing CON- TROL OF THE WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION of canned goods. Indicative of the size and rapid expansion of the packers’ canned goods business is the fact that Armour & Co. increased their canned goods sales about $6,500,000 in 1916 to about $16,000,000 in 1917, whereas the combined sales of these products by Austin Nichols Co:. and Sprague, Warner & Co., two of the largest inde- pendent wholesalers, amounted to only a little more than $6,000,000 in 1917, - Recently the big packers began’ dealing in vari- ous staple groceries and vegetables, such as rice, - sugar, potatoes, beans and coffee; and increased their sales at such a.great rate that in certain of - ‘these lines they have become dominant factors.. Here again the immense selling organization of the - packers, built up in connection with their meat business, assures them almost certain supremacy in any line of food handling which they may wish to enter. ; Armour’s drive into the rice market'in a sin- = gle year is-perhaps the most striking instance of the potentialities in this direction.. Early in 1917 Armour & Co. first undertook the hand- ling of ‘rice, and in that one year sold ‘more The monopoly of the Big Five grave danger hate the United States. The highest price for its .thepex‘(g_issug of th Big Packers Have the World by the Tail Al D ' ' Federal Trade Commission Traces the International Ramifications of the Big Five—Greed Controls All Food- stuffs and Hundreds of