280 CATTLE AND DAIRY FARMING. 



the butchers, to whom they sell the same cattle on a credit of seven or eleven days; 

 they, besides, are merchants, buying and selling for their own account, and then, 

 being holders of nearly all the cattle intended for the supply of our city's market, 

 they can, owing to their small number, maintain the prices at a high figure. I have 

 contended, and the fact is verified by two members of the municipal council who 

 raise and sell cattle, that the commissioners of Bordeaux pay for cattle a lower price 

 than that paid by the commissioners who supply the markets of Paris, while it is a 

 well-known fact that beef is cheaper in Paris than in Bordeaux, 



Consulting the records of the municipal council I read in the report of 

 the sitting of November 12, 1880, the following statements' corroborat- 

 ing the preceding one : 



Correspondents and at the same time bankers of producers and of the butchers, 

 and being, besides, merchants, they centralize the cattle, deliver to the market only the 

 number required to maintain the highest prices, and by the influence which they ex- 

 ercise on the butchers by advancing them money they paralyze the spring of compe- 

 tition, which is necessary to reduce prices to their real level. 



At the sitting of the municipal council of February 12, 1880, one of 

 the members, M. Min-Barabraham, read reliable documents showing 

 that the commissioners paid their own price for the live cattle, and that, 

 owing to their then scarcity of forage, the owners were obliged to get 

 rid of their cattle at nnremunerative prices, and after having quoted 

 the report of a special commission named by the municipality to inves- 

 tigate the matter, the report showed that meat in the city of Bordeaux 

 was dearer than in Paris or any other large city of France. He found 

 that the price of meat was always increasing, " even in the years when 

 the price of cattle had obviously gone down on account of bad forage 

 harvests." M. Min-Barabraham mentioned that as far back as 1870 

 he called the attention of the council to the high price of beef; that a 

 commission was then ordered to inquire into the causes of such dear- 

 ness and try to remedy it ; that in 1874 attention was directed to the 

 constant and unreasonable increase of prices, when the mayor appointed 

 a new special commission to investigate the former, and also to find 

 the means of admitting free competition. This commission, however, 

 did not prevent the continual increase of prices. The honorable coun- 

 cilor then said : 



When one of the branches of trade, that which serves the public alimentation, is in 

 the hands of eight or ten commissioners, who are at the same time speculators and 

 merchants, who can at their will cause a rise by allowing on the market only the cat- 

 tle that they wish ; who hold in their power a majority of the butchers by the weekly 

 credits which they (the commissioners} grant them, I say that this is no longer liberty, 

 it is monopoly. 



The last word seems to be the alarm-cry uttered by everybody in Bor- 

 deaux for the last twelve years. 



On the 12th of November, 1880, Mr. Olagnier, a municipal councilor, 

 presented a petition by which 4,500 inhabitants, in presence of the exces- 

 sive prices reached by the butchers' meat in town, claimed the re-estab- 

 ment of taxed prices ; and another member of the council mentioned 

 that for the last twenty years the price of meat had more than doubled. 



The consequences to be drawn from all the preceding is that the com- 

 missioners monopolize the cattle trade at Bordeaux ; that they admit 

 to the market only the small number of animals required to maintain 

 the highest prices; that the cattle-raisers, merchants, and butchers are 

 at their mercy ; that the municipality have for years been constantly 

 in search of the means of checking the monopoly; that the public is 

 deprived of the most necessary article of food on account of the small 

 quantity of meat sent to the stalls, and especially of high prices de- 

 manded for it. 



