248 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
These evils do not appear to be so serious in any other seaboard city 
of the East as at Newark. This place has a population of 110,000, 
the majority of whom are artisans and laborers, who earn about four 
dollars a day. The great metropolis, ten miles away, draws everything, 
and gives its citizens the first cuts of beeves, the fattest of the chops, 
and the largest peaches. The farms on one side of Newark may be able 
to supply the cabbages and beets, the lettuce and tomatoes required, 
but in the weightier items of family expense, as bread and flesh, our 
cOPeR HONEA who gives a chapter of Newark grievances, enlarges as 
ollows: 
A hundred-weight of the best flour ever baked costs, at the mills along the Central 
Railroad of New Jersey, $3 50. This is the retail price, either by the hundred-weight 
or by a 25-pound bag. The average freight from any wheat-producing district in the 
State, including cartage from the depot, does not exceed 20 cents per hundred. Com- 
mission men say they receive about 5 per cent., and sell to storekeepers for $4. But 
what becomes of the miller’s deduction for wholesale rates? The storekeeper sells 
nine-tenths of his flour in small bags, weighing 25 pounds each, at the rate of 5 to 6 
cents per pound. Thus the difference in the price of flour in Newark and places 25 
miles distant is $1 50 to $2 50 per hundred-weight; that is, from $3 to $5 by the bar- 
rel. But very excellent flour can be bonght of some dealers for $8 per barrel, while an 
inferior quality sells for $6 50. Unfortunately, mechanics and laborers do not always 
have the money to pay for a whole barrel of flour, and mist divide their week’s wages 
among the different articles needed. A class of dealers buy flour by the barrel, and 
put it up in paper bags, on which is printed “ Best Family Flour.” The unsuspecting 
housekeeper purchases this. Sometimes the commonest sort of low-priced stuff has 
been palmed upon her. This abuse has grown so common, that purchasing one of 
these bags is like buying a “pig in a poke.” A flour dealer in Elizabeth, a village of 
10,000 people, says that, when he wasin the grocery business in Newark,de bagged 
$3 50 flour and sold it for $5, but in his present locality and business he dare not do it. 
A man who had lived in Warren County stepped into a Newark grocery store to buy 
some buckwheat. The price was $4; at the next store, it was $5; at the next, $6. 
Dairymen receive four cents per quart for milk shipped per rail to Newark. It is re- 
tailed for ten cents per quart; freight, one ccat per quart. 
Farmers sell potatoes by the bushel or by the quantity at $1 per bushel, while gro- 
cers sell them at $1 40. Last spring, while they were carted around the streets of 
Rahway, njne miles distant, for 45 cents, we paid at stores $1, and often got the mean- 
est kind at that. Tomatoes, sold by farmers for 50 and 75 cents per basket, cost con- 
sumers, at some stores, $1 to $1 20. Peaches are sold by middlemen at whatever they 
will bring, large quantities being retailed at the rate of $3 per basket, for which the 
farmer received about $1 25. Of butter there is no general complaint, the price being 
reasonable and the quality good, yet at country stores within an hour's ride of New- 
ark it has been ten cents per pound lower than here, and of superior quality. Eggs 
bring from 5 to 10 cents more per dozen than in the surrounding villages; but, on the 
principle that old wine is better than new, they are worth more, especially with an 
occasional spring-chicken in the shells. 
Our meat trouble commenced with .the war. The supply comes chiefly from the 
Communipaw cattle-yards, the whole number of cattle and sheep fitted for market in 
New Jersey in a year not being sufficient to supply the city of Newark for a month. 
During the war some operators bought up all the cattle they could lay their hands on, 
shipped them to Albany, and dribbled them out at their own prices. Afterward they 
were taken to New York and sold at auction to jobbers, who sold them to slaughterers, 
who sold them to middlemen, who sold them to consumers at a precious price. 
_ This illustrates the way in which beef has reached consumers in our market ever 
since, though of late the increasing supply of cattle has a tendency to break up this 
business. The difference in price between beef and mutton has narrowed down to a 
nominal sum, beef having slightly declined and mutton reached unwarrantable fig- 
ures; while, no matter what the charges at the drove-yards, there is little or no varia- 
tion in the price charged customers. Butchers, who are believed to sell the best beef, 
Say they buy no low-priced stock; that they pay from 13 to 16 cents per pound net 
weight for cattle ou the hoof, kill and sell the carcass to middlemen for the same, or 
less, per pound than they give, taking the hide and tallow as profit. Beeves aro 
scaled at from 50 to 57 pounds per hundred-weight; that is, for every 100 pounds live 
weight, 50 or 57 pounds of meat are counted. They say that of a carcass not more than 
30 pounds per hundred-weight can be sold at an advance. Yet there is no part sold, 
except a very small portion of the neck and shins, for less than 15 cents per pound, and 
