The Daily Dispatch: October 10, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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The price of meat — correspondence between the butchers and the State Commissaries.

--The fact that a correspondence is going on between the Commissary of the State and the butchers of this city, with a view to lowering the price of meat, has awakened a deep concern among our citizens, especially the poorer classes, to whom meat at 40 cents a pound would be indeed a mercy. Having published the first proposition of the butchers to the Commissary for the State, we now give the remainder of the correspondence. Since the last letter of the Commissary, proposing a personal interview, nothing further has been done in the matter.

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Office of Chief Commissary,

--I am in due receipt of your communication of the 25th inst., and carefully note your several propositions having in view a reduction in the price of beef in this market.

I raise no objection to your first and second propositions, but cannot assent to the third, which allows you to pay as high as 35 cents per pound for cattle in this market, when the Government is limited to the schedule price of from 16 to 20 cents; for the effect of such arrangement would be to deprive our armies in Virginia, and people out of the city in a degree, of the ability to procure beef adequate to their wants, by depriving the Government of the power to impress, and authorizing you to pay on each bullock weighing 1,000 pounds gross $150 per head more than the Government can pay under the present schedule.

Twenty-five cents here is, I believe, a liberal discrimination in your favor, and ought amply to cover the expense of driftage and driving; for it would authorize you to pay on each bullock weighing 1,000 pounds gross $50 more than the Government can pay, and gives you the "fifth quarter," which is considered to be worth from $50 to $75. So, on reducing your price to 50 cents per pound of your stalls, you would receive a liberal compensation, and you would be enabled to keep up your supplies for the increased demand for beef in the community throughout the fall and winter months, and do a much larger business than hitherto.

But in your fourth proposition you would invest me with more than legislative power, and require me to reduce in the same ratio the price of all other necessary and indispensable articles.

The Subsistence Department is limited in its operations, as its title imports, to the purchase of articles of subsistence; and whilst I shall use every effort to keep down the price of articles with which I have to deal to the standard established by the Commissioners of this State, I have no sort of control over, or business with, other articles of necessity — less at all events than your selves, and your influence to effect your end would surely be greater than mine.

You simply ask me to do that which I cannot, and when you would require me to enforce it by the 1st of November, "otherwise your obligations would be null and void," you close the door effectually whereby the important object I had in view could be obtained. If, therefore, the propositions you have submitted to me embody your ultimatum, the whole thing falls to the ground.

I would not if I would comply with them, for you exact of me the performance of an impossibility.

I have nevertheless to thank you for the courtesy with which you have met me, and have only to regret that we could not so unite as to have promoted the interest of our Government, our community, and yourselves — the objects I had in view when I invited a conference with you.

As you have published your communication, I suggest the propriety of your giving equal publicity to this response to it.

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Richmond, Va., Sept. 29, 1863.
Major W. H. Smith: Sir:

Yours of the 28th is at hand, and contents particularly noticed. We are perfectly satisfied and convinced of the soundness of your reasoning, and in view of the limited power you are authorized to exercise, whilst we regard the maximum schedule price as an insufficient range for the better quality of beef, yet we freely and cordially adopt your suggestion, and amend the third proposition so as to read as follows:

"That our profits will be principally regulated by the value of the fifth quarter; yet, in view of the times, we propose twenty-five cents gross as the maximum price for our purchases of beef cattle in this market, and obligate ourselves to retail the same from our stalls at from 40 to 60 cents net, which will barely refund to us the first cots."

We willingly withdraw the 4th and 5th propositions. We merely intended them as a request, and not as a demand. We ask an extension of the time in the 6th, to the 15th October.

We thank you for your consideration, and we assure you that we will cordially cooperate with you in your efforts to accomplish a general good.

Most respectfully yours,
Wm. Sledd, J. Lindsay & Son, William Wayne, Sr., Wm. Wayne, Jr., S. Schwartz, S Levys, Thos. M. Hiltzhlmer, Jno. C. Knauff, Henry Lambert, Jos. G. Metterd.

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Office of Chief Commissary,

I have the plesure to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 29th ult., and shall be pleased to see you in person, in the hopes of perfecting an arrangement with regard to cattle that will be mutually satisfactory.