THE EGG TRADE AND CO-OPERATION 



40 roubles a thousand. A comparison with the prices of French eggs gives 

 similar results : in 1900 Russian eggs cost 31 roubles and French eggs 40 

 roubles a thousand. 



Poultry-farming is treated in Russia as a separate branch of the man- 

 agement of a farm only in rare and exceptional cases. 



The great mass of exported eggs are small. Most of the Rusian farmers 

 who go in for poultry are small peasant landowners who usually possess 

 only some dozens of hens, pay little attention to them and allow them to 

 breed as chance dictates. Therefore both Russian hens and Russian eggs 

 are small. 



The Russian peasant neither selects fowls for his poultry-yard nor 

 takes care of his eggs. The eggs are long on the road and their freshness 

 suffers. Moreover the methods of trading in eggs are defective. It is 

 impossible to secure that the Russian dealers despatch them as promptly 

 nor that the railways transport them as rapidly as is required. There is 

 no organization adapted to this kind of trade, of which the material belongs 

 to the category of perishable merchandise. 



Only recently, after years of this export trade, attention has been direc- 

 ted to it. There has been a desire to provide for the collection, classifica- 

 tion and packing of eggs. Refrigerators have been constructed with im- 

 portant results. 



Russian eggs now arrive in better condition. Their price has risen since 

 1912, and it is to be hoped that the Russian peasant will, as a report of the 

 Popular Bank of ^Moscow states, develop his poultry-farming with the help 

 of co-operative societies and himself become busy over the egg trade. Until 

 recently all this trade was in the hands of small middlemen, who collected 

 the eggs in the villages and gave for them such low prices that the producers 

 are estimated to have lost as much as 27,000,000 roubles a year. 



The immense area of Russia, the great distance at which she is situated 

 from foreign markets, the lack of organized centres which would bring the 

 small farmer into direct relation with the foreign market — all these are 

 obstacles to the solution of the problem. The zemstvos and the exporting 

 department have worked hard to create a co-operative trade in eggs. Nu- 

 merous' and interesting attempts in this direction might be cited. Then the 

 Popular Bank of Moscow intervened, its director making a series of in- 

 teresting investigations in the matter. 



Unfortunately all this work did not lead to the formation of a single 

 co-operative society for trading in eggs, and it was found equally impossible 

 to form an agency which could act as middleman between the societies and 

 the market to be supplied. 



Occasionally but without method a series of societies was formed, but 

 these could not trade on a large scale so as realh' to secure profits. 



The first steps towards building up this co-operative trade on a large scale 

 were taken before the war, in 1914, by the Popular Bank of Moscow which 

 was willing to undertake the management of a central organization. 



With this object this bank concluded on 22 June 1914 a special agree- 



