The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1919-06-14
MEAT PRICES

The price for cattle and hogs rules high and stock rairrs
are receiving the benefit. If the industry is thereby encouraged
inc pubic will ultimately benefit. The great packers are insistent
IN their claims that their profits are only the fraction of a cent
the pound. One thing cannot be disputed-the ultimate con-
sumner is getting it where Katie wore the beads. When a
hg sells on the hoot for 70 or Il cents a pound, the fact is her
aided tar and wide as a top price, and when the consumer buys a
pound OF this same meat from the butcher he pays 6S cents for it.
Someone is getting an immense profit, and if the packer is
not he is letting something get away from him, which is not his
custom, Other meats are proportionately high. So far as the
consumer is concerned, the war is still going on, and it requires
no Mr.. Hoover to make him economic. His purse is all Suff-
ceht for this purpose.
A good frying sized chicken costs from so cents to a dollar.
In the halcyon hitherto one could buy a dozen healthy chickens
Tor $l.25, Those were the days Of heaping platters of fried chicken
that people sat down to and ate like cormorants. Those happy
days OF plenty are far away and belong to the good old times OF
happy memory, No more platers of fried chicken with brown
gravy. Fried chicken is no longer a staple food, but an ornament
or an appetizer, like pickles,
In bygone> days fat dressed turkeys sold for from 50 cents to
$lN. On the regular turkey days in the future like T~hanksgiv-
ing and Christmas no one need be surprised to see turkey selling
for SlOO the pound. Think of paying $50 for a big, fat gobbler!
This is more. than a beef steer used to bring No wonder the
fathers were contented and happy and that they lived to a ripe
old age. Who would think of dying with chickens at $l2S a
dozen and fresh eggs at half a cent apiece?
Those glorious, golden times are gone never to return. Food
may be plentiful, but never cheap again, as compared to times
past. Fifty years ago throughout the Southwest a beefsteak cost
10 cents. This was the fixed standard price. from which there
was no, variation. The butchers had not then developed the
science of anatomy and dissection, The porterhouse steak was
not then born and nothing was considered a steak unless it was
a round steak cut thin, but as broad as a saddle blanket. In time
the knowing ones learned to look for a T-bone steak. This was
their undoing. Then came the tenderloin and the ~porterhouse and
other fancy cuts that are going out OF common knowledge because
OF the %prohibitive prices. In those days we had round steaks
which were fried or broiled. What was not round steak was cut
into chunks and thrown into the pot and boiled until it was ten
der, and eaten, fat and lean, in quantities that would aStonisf
people of the present day.
The butcher had no saw in those days and the animal wa.
separated at the joints, A joint of beef was baked or roasted O
boiled and set on the table, and great rashers of it would be Gu
off by pater famlias with a keen knife that looked like a Filipino
machete and handed around the table to the voracous brood.
The bones were picked and then gathered up and husbande'
IS coap making or thrown to the wistiuly waiting dogs as thei
part OF the feast. Grand old days, thosel Days OF innocence
when the drumstick was considered the best part OF the chicken
1t had a handle to 1t which enabled the diner to tear the SAVIOR
flesh from it with his teeth. We see no joints of meat in thes
degenerate days, Our roasts are cut and chiseled and sand
papered and sliced into patches for a boot before being served.
The feelings of the past still linger, although latent or do
mant, and show themselves now and then when people are obsesse
offer up half carcasses of animals as holoeausts to some forgotte
deity, which they call a barbecue, but which is really a satisfyin
OF their hereditary voracity, Here the meat is lointed or dr
jointed after being thoroughly cooked and taken from the glow
ing Goals OF the pit. Such a feast is a Walt Whitman prote
against finicky modern conventonaism. 1t is the ~primordial ma
asserting himself and throwing off the fimsy fretwork OF an owe
refined civilization. The barbecue is passing and will pass, II
present price OF meat makes carcasses so expensive that the
cannot be cooked whole, but must be ratoned and doled o,
among many, widely scattered.
The world may never 60 to an exclusive vegetarian diet, b,
we may not look for such meat eating as once was common b
the days when the turkey or the beef roast reared its awful for
like a Chimborazo above everything else on the table will lor
remain pleasant memories. There were giants in those days al
we cannot expect them in these days of scraps and skimping
Somebody is holding the price Of meats very high. The he
and cattle rasers are not wearing many diamonds, while the pac
ers seem to be quite as prosperous as they ever were.
The government had an immense quantity Of leftover mea
which the people of the country needed for food, but for fear
lower prices these foods were turned back to the packers so tn
they can control the market and keep up prices. Verify, the vi
mate consumer is the goat on all occasions.
The farmers may 60 to work soon" in the morning, b