THE MARKETING OF FARM PRODUCTS 873 



Most of these prices are the prices from an agent to a whole- 

 saler. The retailers have to pay higher prices than these. 



This exchange also has an arbitration board which has pre- 

 vented thousands of pounds being squandered in lawsuits. This 

 board, like the committee on quotations, is composed of members 

 of the exchange chosen in rotation. When a dispute arises the 

 secretary appoints three men of the board who are likely to 

 know most about the case, to arbitrate between the disputants. 

 Although a great deal of responsibility is put on the secretary, 

 the system seems to have worked admirably. 



Let us now trace a shipment of butter from Denmark to 

 the London consumer through the maximum number of steps. 

 The butter is sold by the creamery to the Tooley Street house 

 or agent in London. As we have seen, this agent deals only 

 with wholesalers and is a true middleman. His working ex- 

 penses are very light, as he seldom handles the produce himself 

 but stores it at the wharf at which it is landed until it is deliv- 

 ered to the buyer. The agent sells the butter at the produce 

 exchange to the wholesaler. The agent's expenses are generally 

 as follows: freight from the Danish creamery 2s. 6d. a cask 

 (112 lb.), storage (if the agent has no warehouse of his own) 

 6d. to IS. a cask, cartage 3d. a cask or less. 



The wholesaler who buys the butter has more expenses than 

 the agent. He does the carting and storing himself, and often 

 splits a cask or two if the grocer is a small one. The whole- 

 saler sells at an advance of 3 s. 5 d. to 5 s. per cask. 



As we have said before, some of these wholesalers import 

 some of their butter themselves. There is one firm (named 

 Lovell and Christmas) that imports all of its butter and sells 

 to other wholesalers as well as to retailers. This firm has an 

 establishment in Copenhagen which buys the Danish butter. 

 When selling to the grocer Lovell and Christmas often sell 

 in large quantities and store the butter at lod. a month per 

 cask. The grocers can call for it as they need it. 



The retail prices on Danish butter are generally fairly well 

 fixed. Nearly all of the London grocers that handled it charged 

 I s. 4d. a pound (32 cents). If they sell 1 12 pounds for this price 



