266 h'URAL AIICHIGAN 



an outside market, he refuses the hids and passes 

 on to the railway station. This method of marketing 



Michigan grapes contrasts with the sales through the 

 local associations, and it is questionable which yields 

 the higher return to the producers, although in the 

 opinion of the investigators already quoted, the re- 

 turns to those using the associations seem, in the end, 

 to be larijer. 



Michigan grapes are of excellent quality and are 

 favored in the markets. Table stock is usually put 

 up in four-quart baskets. Baskets are packed in the 

 field directly from the vines. These grapes enter into 

 competition with those from Xew York, and, since 

 they are said to be packed with less attention to the 

 appearances, sell slightly under the New York prod- 

 uct, although quite equal to it in quality. The 

 Concord is the principal market variety. The distri- 

 bution of the Michigan crop is very extensive: east 

 to Massachusetts and New Jersey, south to Florida 

 and Texas, west to Idaho and Wyoming, and in 1918 

 shipments are said to have been made to thirty-one 

 states and one hundred sixty-nine cities. The great 

 Chicago market is close at hand with convenient 

 water transportation from the southern Lake Michi- 

 gan ports. Much of the output goes west and south. ^ 

 The Michigan Potato Growers Exchange, organ- 

 ized in the summer of 1918, was one of the most 

 ambitious enterprises as yet undertaken in the State. 

 It constituted a central selling and purchasing 

 agency for a large number of local cooperative asso- 



'lUd., 40. 



