176 OLEOMAEGAKINE. 



over." I said to them, "My dear sir, go and study the statistics for 

 last year and you will find there was no surplus. The year before 

 you made no surplus. The year before that you made no surplus; and 

 the year before that I think there was a surplus on account of the 

 depression in this country, which all of us have been through. I will 

 proceed with this report: 



"Not until June did the arrivals begin to run ahead, and the gain 

 was less than 10 per cent during the summer months. From Septem- 

 ber on, however, the increase was marked, and during December the 

 gain was a little over 30 per cent. This was due in large measure to 

 the rapid unloading of western refrigerators, the butter coming this 

 way because of the strength of our market. 



" There has been a marked falling off in exports of butter from all 

 the ports of this country. New York shipped 9,723,397 pounds, only 

 a little more than one-half the amount that was cleared through this 

 port during 1899. Of these shipments 81,786 packages, or, say, 

 4,089,300 pounds, went to the markets of Great Britain, Germany, 

 Denmark, and Scandinavia, and about 5,633,097 pounds were sent to 

 the tropical countries, mainly South America and the West Indies. 

 This shows a falling off in the latter business of nearly 1,000,000 

 pounds, which was lost to us during the early part of the year when 

 packing stock was so scarce and high. We have found it impracticable 

 to attempt to compete much with other countries for the English trade, 

 except in certain grades of which we had a sufficient surplus here to 

 undersell other points. Most of the year the table grades of butter 

 have been relatively higher on this side of the ocean than in Great 

 Britain. 



"After the little flurry just at the opening of the year when prices 

 momentarily touched so dizzy a height 30 cents." 



That was for old goods, held goods, goods bought in June and put 

 away and sold in the fall at 30 cents a pound and costing from 16 to 17 

 cents. 



Mr. HOARD. Sold where? 



Mr. LESTRADE. That is in the creamery. 



Mr. HOARD. Sold at 30 cents a pound; cold-storage butter? 



Mr. LESTRADE. That is, according to Mr. Kracke. 



Mr. HOARD. Sold in the United States? 



Mr. LESTRADE. Sold in New York City. 



Mr. HOARD. Do you know of any cold-storage butter selling last 

 year at 30 cents ? 



Mr. LESTRADE. Yes; I sold them at 30 cents. I sold June goods a 

 year ago in September at 30 cents a year ago this fall. 



Mr. KNIGHT. What was the market for fancy creameries at that time 

 in New York? 



Mr. LESTRADE. For fresh goods? 



Mr. KNIGHT. Yes. 



Mr. LESTRADE. Very close. They ran right along together, because 

 the fresh goods were very scarce, and that is the reason old goods went 

 up. We could not get the fresh goods, because they were not being 

 made. 



"The market got down to a fairly conservative basis until the 

 storage season opened, when the competition set in keen because of the 

 large profits realized on the 1899 crop, and speculative operations 

 largely controlled values during the summer. The average price of 



