.152 Report of Farmers' Institutes 



words of its secretary, they use all the bad eggs themselves. In 

 both cases the matter of standardization comes in. Some of the 

 large western producers' organizations, as well as the Florida 

 Citrus Exchange, are, however, not in any sense organizations of 

 farmers, but selling organizations which hire out their ability to 

 market the various products, with certain restrictions as to the 

 grading of the material to be sold. They are in this respect 

 equivalent to the Keen Kutter tool organization. So far as I 

 know there is no Keen Kutter factory, but the advertising and 

 selling organization allows the branding of the products of various 

 factories with its trade name, and these products are marketed as 

 being up to what is known as the Keen Kutter standard. 



Where the product is diversified, the difficulties of cooperative 

 organization among producers are proportionately increased, and 

 the chance of keeping the channels clear between the producer and 

 consumer are equally decreased. It is here that the organized sell- 

 ing agencies which have grown up between producer and con- 

 sumer will get in their heaviest work. According to the ISTew 

 York State Food Investigating Commission, there are five to 

 thirteen separate profits attached to a chicken, or a head of 

 lettuce, on their roundabout journey from farm to kitchen, with 

 the consequence that both chicken and lettuce get to the house- 

 wife's kitchen higher in price and lower in quality. 



These clogged channels make very devious courses. I think it 

 was at last year's meeting of the State Vegetable Growers' Asso- 

 ciation that one man told of lettuce shipped from Batavia, New 

 York, to Boston, Massachusetts, and back to Batavia, and there 

 sold in the market at a price lower than the home producer thought 

 he ought to have for getting his lettuce into the Batavia home 

 market. 



The New York Commission's report stated that 40 cents of 

 the consumer's dollar went to the producer, and the rest went into 

 various hands. Take another example : An egg produced a mile 

 from a certain city may travel several hundred miles, repose on 

 the shelves of jobbers, in the cellars of commission men, in cold 

 storage houses, on railroad trains, and in freight stations, only to 

 get back near the original point of production much advanced in 

 age and in price. 



