of this problem, rather than to abolish the storage of butter during June and July for consumption in the winter months. This is a matter of great moment to the butter producers of Wisconsin. Without cold storage our dairy industry would have to be reorganized. With the present system of storing the surplus, the price of butter as shown in Figure 4, holds steady at a fair price during June and July. Without cold

Figure 5. Cold storage of butter, by months, by one Chicago firm, in percentages of total annual storage.

storage the supply would have to be reduced during that period, or the bottom would go out of the market.

Any influence which retards the storing of butter during the natural season of surplus production will increase the price of butter during the winter months and give greater advantage to the manufacture of butter substitutes. Some of the raw material for the manufacture of butter substitutes are more abundant in the winter than in the summer months. Butter substitutes are made of farm products. To discriminate against them is to damage one class of farmers for the benefit of another class. The substitute, however, should

never be sold for butter. This much the dairyman has every right to insist upon. The butter substitute should be sold for exactly what it is with its constituents marked on the label. The butter substitute will continue to be a strong competitor of the inferior grades of butter and may result in a wider range in prices between first-class and the inferior grades of butter than would otherwise exist. There is little competition between first-grade butter and the substitute. The re

Figure 6. Milk brought to the Wisconsin University creamery, by months, in percentages of total annual quantity, three-year average.

sult may be that the producers of low-grade butter will have to improve their methods or change their occupation. In the long run this will be a good thing both for the producer and the consumer.

The supply and price of cheese. The price of cheese shows but little variation during the different seasons of the year. The supply, however, is produced in the summer months, and the bulk of it reaches the market during the summer and fall. Figure 4 shows the receipts and the price of cheese on the New York market for two years. One character

istic of cheese is that it improves with age and hence the price of the stored product is higher than that of the fresh supply. This is illustrated in the chart where there are two sets of price dots, in April, 1910, the upper being quotations for old cheese, the lower for new. Contrast this with the situation on the egg market where the reverse is true.

2.).

(Figure

MARKETING OF FARM PRODUCTS

[THERE is here reprinted the greater part of a paper on "Methods and Costs of Marketing," by Frank Andrews, in the Yearbook of Department of Agriculture (U. S.) for 1909, pp. 161-172.]

Finding a market; selling in transit. One of the primitive ways of finding a market is for the farmer to go with his wares from house to house, or from store to store, making inquiry until a purchaser is found. An application of this simple plan is made on a large scale in the marketing of live stock. A car of cattle consigned from a Kansas shipping point to Chicago may be unloaded and placed on sale at Omaha or Kansas City. In case no sale is made at one of these stopping places the stock is forwarded to Chicago. This practice is common on most of the important live-stock routes of the United States.

Grain also frequently changes hands at an intermediate market through which it passes, and the cars thus sold may be forwarded to destinations selected by the new owners. Regular quotations of prices are made at Chicago and other cities for grain in cars billed through to eastern markets from shipping points in the Middle West. Wheat raised in the Canadian northwest and shipped to the seaboard through North Dakota and Minnesota, for reëntry into Canada by way of the Great Lakes, often changes hands at Duluth.

Diversion of shipments. Another method of searching for a market is that of diverting a consignment to a destination other than the one first named in the shipping papers. An illustration of this is the practice common in the grain exporting business of the Pacific Coast. It is usual for a cargo of wheat or barley sent from this coast to Europe to be con

signed "for orders" to some port in the British Isles, as Queenstown, Falmouth, or Plymouth. After the vessel starts, the exporter tries to have a purchaser ready to bargain. for the cargo when it reaches the port of call. The voyage around Cape Horn takes three or four months and this time is allowed the exporter for finding a suitable market. On its arrival at the port of call, the vessel receives orders as to the port at which the grain is to be discharged.

A similar plan is followed in shipping fruit by rail from California to the East. Two of the diversion points on these routes are Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Minnesota Transfer, a freight yard between St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Other important instances of this practice of diverting a consignment en route are afforded in the movement of fruits and vegetables from Southern States. A commission firm, whose head office is in Pittsburg, distributes its marketings in this way. On receipt of a telegram, say, from a Georgia shipper, announcing that he has a car ready to move, the head office of this firm decides at once the general direction for the car to go. If the West promises the best markets for the next several days, the shipper may be notified to consign to Cincinnati, or if the car is to go to an Eastern city, the consignment may be made to Potomac Yard, a freight transfer point on the Potomac River opposite Washington, D. C. At each of these diversion points a representative of the commission firm opens the cars, inspects the contents, and reports the results by telegraph or telephone to the Pittsburg office, which is kept informed of market conditions in different cities. The agent at the diversion point will then receive orders as to the final destination of the car. Among the diversion points. used for shipments of produce from the Southwest are Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago.

Public city markets. Public market places are established in a number of cities and towns and in these places consumers may buy such articles as fruit, vegetables, dairy products, poultry, and eggs direct from farmers as well as from dealers.