FROM THE ARCHIVES:An editorial about the choice and cost of food in Dublin in 1881 struck such a chord with readers that The Irish Times took another bite of the subject with this leader.
THE DISCUSSION carried on in our columns on the food question in Dublin has caused many to turn their attention to the matter who before had not conceived it to be of the importance that they are now convinced it possesses. Our statement, upon which the communications freely addressed to us rest, was that the people of the City pay quite as high prices for many articles of food as the people of other towns in the [United] Kingdom not more favourably circumstanced, and get less for their money –less choice, less variety, less too often in matter of quality. The observation applies not only to butchers’ meat, but to fish, vegetables and fruit.
A splendid agricultural country surrounds us on every side, and we might as well almost have a lodging in the Sahara for the benefit it is to us. Our produce finds its way in a constant stream across Channel to England and Scotland. Although good prices can be had at home, the volume and tendency of trade are such that we are denied the chance of a morsel except at prices beyond what the Lancashire and Yorkshire people pay for the meat and roots raised and grown in Meath or Kildare.
In the matter of fish, Dublin admittedly is badly served, and the only apology that can be offered is that fish have left our coasts. It is most surprising that the fish should have done so, as they are safer here from attempts to net them than on any other coast we know of.
It has not been our purpose to suggest the remedy. We have proposed to ourselves only to give voice to a complaint which is heard at every table, in the hope that those who best know what should be done will offer suitable suggestions. So far as the subject has been handled in relation to supply of vegetables, the representation is that the population suffer from the want of a free market. If the producers could be sure to get something like the fair value of their crops in a more direct dealing with the retailers, both grower and consumer would be benefited.
It certainly is a surprising statement which we have published on the authority of a gentleman of experience, that vegetables which he could hardly get sufficient for to pay for harvesting and bringing to market, before reaching the table of the Dublin citizen were sold at enormous advance on value, every head of cabbage being almost of the cost of a pine-apple and a bunch of turnips equal nearly to one of grapes.
There is something wrong here, and in a city where money, enterprise, and talent are abundant, it ought not to be so. Injury is done not only to the consumer, but to the agriculturist, who cannot nowadays afford to give away the produce of the soil for less than its value, or to have his market curtailed by extravagant prices demanded from the buyer.