78 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 169. 



Local country buyers buy from the farmers in carload lots or assemble 

 smaller lots, and ship to the best available markets, selling on orders or 

 through the usual market channels for whatever margin they can secure. 

 They pay cash at the shipping point at the time of sale or delivery, and 

 often sell on ten to thirty days' credit. They usually buy for immediate 

 resale, but if market conditions are not satisfactory they rent storage for 

 a short period only. These country buyers are permanently located in 

 the community and have reputations to uphold in order to obtain busi- 

 ness. In addition to buying onions many of them also sell fertilizers. 



Local Dealers and Storage Men. 



These are easily the most important distributing specialists for Connect- 

 icut Valley onions; eight of them handle at present no less than 75 per 

 cent, of the entire output of the valley. They differ from the so-called 

 country buyer in that they are at the same time growers, dealers and 

 storage men. Being residents of the community, they know and are 

 known by the farmers. They pay taxes, initiate community projects and 

 in every way share in the life and well-being of the community. 



As a class, they generally stand back of their contracts, and are re- 

 spected and admired for their businesslike methods of facilitating onion 

 distribution. Whatever may be said of some individual dealers, it is 

 quite certain that farmers have received better prices over a period of 

 years because of the presence of these primary distributing agents. They 

 follow the market, standardize the product and push the Connecticut 

 Valley onion into all the principal markets of the Atlantic seaboard States. 

 This class of middlemen clearly can perform a very real service to the 

 growers; knowing the requirements and the needs of the market, their 

 advice should help materially in producing more and better onions, in 

 putting up for market a standardized, well-graded product, and in pre- 

 paring an honest, attractive, uniform pack that will top the market and 

 stimulate the demand for valley onions. 



They have a good reputation with the commission men and wholesale 

 dealers, most of whom prefer to buy from them rather than directly from 

 the farmers. Unless the present sj^stem of distribution is radically reorgan- 

 ized efficiency in distributing Connecticut Valley onions will continue to 

 rest very largely with this class of men. 



Abuses by Local Dealers and Storage Men. 

 One charge made against dealers of this type is that they sometimes 

 misrepresent the actual condition of the market in order to buy at better 

 prices — they make the farmer a victim of sharp practice. Another 

 is that they effect a combination in such a manner as to remove actual 

 competition in buying from the growers. In other words, there is a feeling 

 that prices are fixed by a few who gain a monopoly. This, of course, 

 would result in the producer not getting his rightful share of a profit 

 which the condition of the market warrants. 



