JUDICIARY: Packer’s Plea

Kept ten years behind the times by governmental shackles, Armour and Swift, biggest U. S. meatpackers. last week again attempted to catch up with the current procession of food merchandising. With Frank J. Hogan, “million-dollar” Washington attorney, as their chief counsel, they reopened one of the most famed Government v. Business suits when they pleaded before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia for the right to sell other things than meat.

Long is this case’s legal history. In 1919 the U. S. moved to sue Armour, Swift, Wilson, Cudahy and Morris (since absorbed by Armour), great packers all, for violating the Anti-Trust Law. The Government’s charge: they were attempting to create a food monopoly by handling 114 food products other than meat (canned fruits, canned vegetables, dairy goods, cereals), by retailing their own products, by buying heavily into cold storage, stockyard and terminal railroad companies. The packers settled the suit by consenting to drop all production unrelated to the meat industry, to abandon the retail field. In 1920 a Federal Court ratified this consent decree, which the U. S. Supreme Court upheld in 1928.

Great have been the changes in food distribution within the decade. Chain grocery stores have increased from 20,000 to 65,000, with some 3,000 systems now in the field. Small packers, not bound by the consent decree, have gone into the retail trade, done the very things the large packers were prohibited from doing. Chain store systems have invaded the meat packing industry. Armour and Swift have naturally felt handicapped. They are doing a food business on a 1920 basis while their competitors operate with 1930 methods.

In their suit last week they asked Justice Jennings Bailey to allow them to: 1) own and operate retail markets; 2) deal in the 114 food products now prohibited; 3) own interests in stockyard companies and terminal railroads. They were ready to show that their refrigerator cars, from the roofs of which they hang their meat, have large unoccupied spaces below in which canned goods could be economically transported. New, quick processes for freezing meat have opened up new retailing possibilities. Lawyer Hogan’s chief argument: times have changed, and nobody could possibly monopolize the country’s $24,000,000,000 annual food business.

Vigorously the Government in the person of Harold Benson Teagarden, special assistant to the Attorney General, opposed the packers’ plea. Mr. Teagarden who has worked for five years on the case argued that the consent decree was in the public interest, that the Government could not be swayed by the ill effects of the Anti-Trust Law on individual businesses. The National and the American Wholesale Grocers Associations have joined the Government in trying to keep Armour and Swift from becoming retailers.