"SQUARE EATERS"
"By Heaven, square eaters, more meat I say!"
—Beaumont and Fletcher.
A delegate to one of the millers' national conventions said, "We want cheaper wheat and dearer flour."
The Canadian Parliament reports that "the Biscuit Association," which had been in existence six years, had kept up the prices of its products, "although the prices of the ingredients used have in that time very materially decreased."
An Associated Press despatch from Chicago announced that at "a joint meeting of all the cracker bakers between Pittsburg and the Rocky Mountains, held this morning, it was unanimously agreed to advance the price of crackers."
A "Bread Union" has been formed in London for the amalgamation of concerns controlling hundreds of shops. Its chairman instructed the stockholders that by concentrating a large number of shops under one management in any district it could "quickly stifle the opposition of any small unprincipled trader bent on reducing prices for competition purposes." The Dominion Parliament, in condemning the Grocers' Guild as "obnoxious to the public interest in limiting competition, in enhancing prices," pointed out that "no reasonable excuse exists for many of its arbitrary acts and agreements. The wholesale grocery trade had been for many years in a flourishing condition; failures were almost unknown."
But though prosperous the grocers formed this guild, admitting some, proscribing others, and established by private legislation the profits they desired. The profits were "afterwards increased, and in no instance lowered, though values generally had fallen."