BUREAU OF MARKETS. 479 



Last spring when it was apparent that much difficulty would be 

 encountered in finding plenty of good seed corn, weekly seed-corn 

 reports were issued from the Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City 

 offices for the territory surrounding them. 



CITY MARKET SERVICE. 



The City Market Service, which is under the supervision of Mr. 

 G. V. Branch, was started in Providence, R. I., shortly before the 

 beginning of the last fiscal year, where it has developed into a most 

 useful service. As a result of this successful experiment, this work 

 was broadened by the use of emergency funds and agents were placed 

 in 15 additional cities. The 16 cities in which the service has been 

 installed are Providence, R. I.; Boston, Springfield, Worcester, and 

 La^vTence, Mass.; New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford, Conn.; 

 Albany, N. Y,; Cleveland, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Chicago, lU.; 

 St. Paul, Minn.; St. Louis, Mo.; Denver, Colo., and Washington, D. C. 

 In all of the cities except Grand Rapids and Albany it is now in opera- 

 tion and has proved to be of value both to producers and consumers. 

 In practically all cases cooperating agencies pay a portion of the 

 expenses of the service, which consists largely of reports on local 

 market conditions based on daily observation. These are issued 

 primarily for the benefit of growers and consumers, though the 

 special reports for growers are very useful to dealers also. 



Consumers' reports are made public through the local newspapers. 

 Care is taken to avoid all technical expressions, and constant endeavor 

 is made to see that the reports are interesting and constitute helpful 

 guides for the housewife in buying fresh fruits and vegetables. The 

 reports classify the products each day under the headings, "abund- 

 ant," "normal," and "scarce"; discuss any market matters of interest 

 to consumers, including the best times for canning, preserving, etc., 

 and furnish a list of prices showing what retail dealers are paying for 

 various products. Quotations are made on the units by which house- 

 wives buy so that they furnish a valuable check to consumers regard- 

 ing the prices charged by retailers. In a few cities, through coopera- 

 tion with the Federal or local food administrators, a fair-price list is 

 published in connection with these reports. 



The growers' reports, as prepared in most of the cities, are dis- 

 tributed to growers each day at the farmers' markets or mailed to 

 their farms. After a brief discussion of market features, changes, 

 developments, etc., the reports give tables showing prices received by 

 growers for various products and prices received by wholesale and 

 commission dealers. The latter prices are given separately for both 

 local and shipped-in produce. These reports also show car-lot arrivals 

 of certain products on the day of issue and the total number of 

 unbroken and broken cars on local tracks. The growers' reports give 

 farmers their first reliable market information and enable them to 

 adapt their marketing procedure to actual conditions. Basing their 

 judgment on the recorded conditions of the day before and their own 

 observation of the current day, they are able to make an intelligent 

 estimate of fair prices much more quickly than when no market 

 reports are available. Growei-s not going to market daily are kept 

 in touch with market conditions and thus learn when it is advan- 

 tageous to market certain products. Farmers marketing their 



