62 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



the express man, for the "supervising" of milk 

 shipments to New York from the districts in the 

 northern part of the State, and, two, that a car-load of 

 Indiana eggs, sold by the Decatur Produce Com- 

 pany the preceding June (that is, June, 1916) to a 

 New York wholesaler at 24| cents a dozen, was re- 

 sold nine or ten times without leaving the cold- 

 storage warehouse, until the St. Regis Hotel paid 

 43 cents a dozen for part of the lot on November 

 18, 1917. 



While the price of sugar was mounting in 1916 

 great quantities of this commodity were held in 

 storage warehouses. On October 4, 1916, there were 

 427,185,758 pounds so held in raw sugar in New 

 York alone. The stock was held in the government 

 warehouses under bond. Refined sugar jumped 

 from $6.75 to $7 per hundred pounds, in spite of the 

 fact that Great Britain was no longer so large a 

 consumer as in the preceding year. The 1916 sugar 

 crop in the United States was the largest in its his- 

 tory. The Porto Rico crop was also larger by 137,- 

 000 tons than ever before. This more than made 

 up for the loss of the German and Austrian supply. 

 In spite of the unprecedentedly large crops, the 1916 

 range of prices in the United States was from $4.51 

 to $6.52 for 96 per cent, centrifugal. In 1915, when 

 England bought up great quantities, the range was 

 only from $3.64 to $5.20. Speculation alone is the 

 cause for the prevailing prices. 



