DAIRY AXD SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 329 



(2) With the corner grocery stores and markets furnishing 

 these facihties, the consumer has become more and more accus- 

 tomed to want a variety of products and only a small amount of 

 each kind. For instance, the average consumer does not wish 

 to buy a barrel of apples even if he has a chance. The con- 

 sumer generally buys half a peck of Baldwins for cooking pur- 

 poses, and half a peck of Gravensteins or Mcintosh Reds for 

 eating. Some members of the family like this kind, and request 

 that their wants be filled, while in the country towns it is cus- 

 tomar}- to buy a couple barrels of Baldwins and a couple bar- 

 rels of Greenings, and if members of the family do not like 

 them, they go without. 



(3) The consumer is constantly looking for products which 

 require less cooking preparation and consequently less work, 

 even if this is more costly. 



C. Changes in Transportation Facilities. 

 The large food producing centers are now directly connected 

 with the large consuming centers. This change has only been 

 brought about in the last few years. We are now receiving 

 butter in Boston from Siberia, New Zealand, AustraHa, South 

 America and our Middle West, while three or four years ago 

 it would have been considered practically impossible to bring 

 butter across the Equator, but refrigerator ships and refrig- 

 erator cars have already changed this. Ten years ago it would 

 have been considered an impossibility to bring whole milk or 

 cream more than lOO miles; now it is brought anywhere from 

 TOO to 400 miles, the majority coming from 250 to 400 miles 

 away. The same is true of eggs. We are receiving large 

 amounts of eggs from China that have been broken before 

 shipment, and the whites and the yolks have been separated and 

 put in hogsheads or cans, and shipped for consumption with 

 our large bakers, hotels, etc. Vegetable products are also being 

 shipped from all parts of the world. There is in the market at 

 the present time, cauliflower coming from California and Bel- 

 gium. The transportation facilities have so improved and the 

 charge per unit on the articles sold is so small, especially on 

 ocean carriage, that the product of any large producing center 

 is now going to the consuming center that will pay the most 

 money for it, so that this article that is sold on the general 

 market has, so to speak, competition with the world's producing 



