16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



product should bring? We do not recognize the law of supply 

 and demand in its particular relation with the guesswork or 

 with the information of the Boston market which is received 

 indirectl}^ through the local retailer of the smaller city; in that 

 way we establish our prices, and that is entirely a false method 

 or false system. 



The information which the government furnishes comes to 

 you under franked envelope daily, telling what the prices were 

 in Boston. You can secure reports telling what the prices were 

 in Chicago or in any other part of the United States, but you 

 can get the prices, if you are in the surrounding territory to 

 Boston, telling what every item and every commodity brought 

 on the market that particular morning. 



It is having a tendency in that regard to stabilize conditions 

 throughout the United States. It is having a tendency to sta- 

 bilize that condition, as I illustrated, between the Providence 

 market on spinach and the market of Albany, New York, be- 

 cause there will be an equalization of those prices brought about 

 by the dissemination of this information. The housewives, as 

 I have stated, have increased their demands because they have 

 read of those commodities which are in the height of their 

 season. As the reporting service was started there in Provi- 

 dence and spread in the other sections, it has literally adver- 

 tised every item that has been brought in from the farms to the 

 markets; and instead of the housewife going to the market or 

 her local retailer, and thinking in terms of two or three com- 

 modities which she knows ought to be at the height of their 

 season, she has the newspaper information which tells her that 

 that retailer should have 30 different kinds of vegetables, and 

 enumerates what thej^ are, as well as enumerates what price he 

 has paid for them and at how reasonable a figure she should be 

 able to secure them. The whole system of the market reporting 

 service is simply one of enabling that law of supply and demand 

 to operate more freely and to operate over a wider territory, 

 equalizing our business from the standpoint of distribution and 

 from the standpoint, in large measure, of the prices. 



Now you say, "We have difficulties sometimes in regard to 

 those prices because we find this morning that the market in 



