54 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



warehouses in and about New York. They control 

 the bulk of the city's perishable food supply, in- 

 cluding fish and meat. There are forty-eight such 

 plants in Chicago, the food centre of the country. 

 Many of these cold-storage warehouses work in 

 co-operation with or are owned by the refrigerator- 

 car companies, which are owned in turn by the big 

 packers of Chicago and the West. Here again is 

 the combination of transportation, terminals, banks, 

 and food exchanges, which fix the price to the pro- 

 ducer at one season of the year and to the consumer 

 all the year around. 



The food exchanges speculate in prices of perish- 

 able food just as they do in wheat. The egg supply 

 of the countiy, for instance, is controlled by the 

 Elgin Board of Trade, the Butter and Egg board, 

 and the Board of Trade of Chicago, which are price- 

 fixing agencies. They estabhsh prices day by day 

 for eggs, butter, poultry, and other produce by sales 

 between the members. They use the same methods 

 described in previous chapters as to wheat and 

 cattle. The price of eggs for April delivery is fixed 

 by the speculators the previous November. Having 

 fixed the price, the agents of the speculators travel 

 about and make contracts all over the country for 

 deliveiy by the farmer in Chicago the following 

 spring. Having purchased and stored the eggs, 

 they control the available supply. Day by day the 

 speculators make the market quotation just as they 



