4 Oi] PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF BUTTER MARKET iyy 



views of dealers who have entered into contracts with pro- 

 ducers to pay for their butter at high premiums. If the 

 market reporters perform their duties properly " they give 

 no consideration whatever to opinions of policy — to any 

 judgment as to what quotations should be in order to ac- 

 complish some supposed result in the future. They en- 

 deavor simply to dig out the fact of current values as gov- 

 erned by immediate conditions of supply and demand, and 

 they give expression to these facts regardless of any opin- 

 ion that they or others may have as to the effect upon future 

 conditions. They believe that such an expression of actual 

 trading values is the only logical regulation of normal 

 market conditions, and the only judgment they use at all is 

 in the interpretation of the evidence to determine the actual 

 fact of current value. The quotations printed by them and 

 furnished to other publications are not official in any sense; 

 they are not arbitrary judgments as to what ought to be; 

 they are to the best of their judgment and belief expres- 

 sions of what is the current actual value as determined by 

 passing conditions of supply and demand. The reporters 

 do not stand at the throttle — they are simply acting as the 

 steam gauge ". 1 



COLD STORAGE 



Since 1890 cold-storage warehouses have become an im- 

 portant part of the machinery of the butter market. Cold 

 storage is to the butter trade what the grain elevator is to 

 the grain trade. Like wheat, butter in large quantities is 

 stored in the summer during the season of plenty for con- 

 sumption during the winter when production has decreased. 

 The movement of butter into and out of cold storage is 

 shown by the following diagram : 2 



1 New York Produce Review and American Creamery, March 3, 1915. 

 * From United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statis- 

 tics, Bulletin 93. 



