The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-10-31 00:00:00

CYMMENTS ON CURRENT TOPICS.

BUTCHERS' profits have of late formed a
sore subject for the contemplation of cattle
farmers. The prolt cer of food stock gets a
price which bar,* ays him for the rearing,
yet he finds that beef and mutton, by the
time they reach the consumer, have increased
in value enormonsly, in some cases almost
cent. by cent. Middlemen secure the inter-
vening profits at the cost of the farmer and
public, and those profits are undeniably ex-
orbitant. The English grower of our staple
meats is heavily handicapped by this monstr-
ous middleman's toll in his keen competition
with foreign contributors to our food supply,
and we may well groan at having to pay a
shilling a pound for our legs of mutton, and
more for our beefsteaks, when sheep and
beasts brought the farmer hardly half that
price. People should enter into a combina-
tion for the total repression of unnecessary,
middlem3n. We note that in several dis-
tricts the farmers have been wisely putting
their heads together to bring about mutual
benefit to themselves and the public They
are retailing prime meat at as much as two-
pence per pound less than butcher's tariff
to the consumers, and yet securing a greater
margin of profit for themselves than they
would if they drove in their beasts to the
the nearest market. The plunder goes to
powerful rings of meat salesmen, wholesale
butchers, meat mercuants, and cattle aue,-
tioneers, who all act together to grind down
the real workers in food supply, they them-
selves doing nothing in the way of produc-
tive labour. Let farmers unite and show
that they can do without these costly go-
between wholesale hucksters. The public
will gladly support them in so doing. In
the old ante-Smithfield days the cattle-
raisers sold to the butchers who supply
families direct. Why not now?

HERE is another matter concerning an
artificial added value of produce which th
consumer is compelled to pay. You may
purchase Tasmanian hops in England to-day
at about fifty shillings per hundredweight,
their transportifrom "underneath the world"
having only cost eighteenpence. To bring
into the London market hops from the
gardens of Kentish growers ope and nine-
pence per hundred would, in many instances,
have to be paid. These respective charges
are hard to reconcile, the inference being
that the English hop—grower, and through
him the user, is called upon to pay a tax
called a railway rate which certainly seems
excessive. Commenting hereon, the Globe
facetiously suggests that East Londoners
should go to Tasmania for their autumnal
" hopping." Rather the carrying companies
should revise their rates, and
_remove the
anomaly.

at the
Holbeck end of Leeds, a hive of industry
which erst employed three thousand :hands
in spinning flax. The employees have
dwindled down to one-third of that number,
and a few weeks hence the concern is to be
closed altogether. A disastrous outlook for
the great Yorkshire town, truly. Whence
the cause of this threatened calamity ? Dull
trade, keen competition, small profits, and
the middleman again. They can spin flax
as cheaply and well in Leeds as anywhere
else in the world—nay, better—and the de-
mand for the manufactured article is not
materially decreased. But Holbeck spun
flax does not reach the user at nearly as low
a price as the foreign manufactured article,
and so the home mills must close. One's
sympathies are deeply roused for the thou-
sand families who will thereby find their
occupation gone ; but it is not so easy to
commiserate the teeming army of mer -
chandising middlemen whose lucrative em-
ployment must simultaneously cease. They
toil not, neither do they spin, consequently
they have no right to wax wealthy by the
sweat of other peoples' brows. When will
the middlemen see that by exacting en-
ormous profits they are surely killing the
goose which lays the golden eggs? If the
Royal Commission on Trade Depression
accomplishes anything in the way of reliev-
ing distress it will have to grapple seriously
with the middleman and his grasping greed.
A legitimate merchant, as agent from manu-
facturer to consumer, ha i his mission of con-
venience and usefulness, for which he may
claim a fair remuneration; but when in his
place there springs up a countless gang of
commission men, brokers, wholesale mer-

chants, retailers, auctioneers, and whatnot,
swelling the cost of the manufactured article
to a shameful extent, industry is strangled
out of existence. There could be no more
strikinc, example of this than the now mori-
bund Marshall's mill at Leeds Here as
elsewhere, the middleman ha a sucked out
the life-blood of productive toil.

WHEN will London provide itself with a
housing place for the dispensation of criminal
justice worthy of the wealthiest community
in the world? The Old Bailey has long
vexed the souls of judges, jurymen, and
witnesses by its disgracefully uncomfortable
condition. Mr. Justice Lopes, trying the
Armstrong case the other. day, joined in the
complaint of the jury concerning the court,
which he rightly characterised as miserable.
The judge instanced Manchester and Liver-
pool as having far better courts than London;
but he might have gone further and said
that it would be difficult to find such shame-
fully unsuitable accommodation for the ad-
ministration of criminal law in any Assize
town in England. It is simply a matter of
money to erect a proper court upon some
appropriate central site, and yet every effort
to remove the scandal has hitherto stopped
short of success. The Board of Works has
investigated, the City fathers have consulted,
--et the reproach remains. Yet the
anti
worst man; of these bodies would hesitate
to prefer against either a charge of parsi-
mony in dispensing the public funds upon
any wild undertaking originated at Guild-
hall or approved in Spring-gardens. Yet
here we have a matter of public convenience,
which has cried out for attention for years
past, altogether ignored and neglected.
Public opinion will have to do the work
which public officials persist in holdirir in
abeyance.

THE members of the Metropolitan Board
of Works are just now seized with a burning
desire to improve upon nature. They are
seeking to convert "wild Blackheath " into
a gigantic shrubbery and flower garden, at
nobody knows what cost to the already over-
burdened ratepayers. The chief charm of
this playground of South-east Loudon lies
in its having been allowed to remain hitherto
a stretch of breezy virgin upland; and we
trust that the dwellers thereabout will be
saccessful in the vigorous efforts which they
are putting forth to prevent the heath being
spoiled by gardening experiments. Carpet
flower-bed formulation and tree planting
may well be confined to the adjoining Green-
wich-park,

ANOTHER remnant of pre-urban days
Dartmoor is threatened with a raid of
diggers, drainers, and enclosers. We have
little enough of the God-created (;ountry
left. Bricks and mortar have well-nigh
smothered the verdant sod (rat of sight; the
factory and mill have metamorphosed the