218 CONSUMPTION 



knowledge, a change has lately arisen in the poultry industry, 

 especially in Western Europe. Two great markets have appeared 

 that seem able to absorb the whole of the surplus from the rest 

 of the world; and since the transport costs for eggs are high, the 

 tendency has been to aim at quality. Poultry-raising and egg- 

 production are now conducted on intensive lines for the export 

 trade in various countries of the elaborating -commercial type, 

 notably in Denmark, Holland, Northern France and Ireland. In 

 the most advanced of these countries the organisation of the in- 

 dustry under co-operative methods has become very high and the 

 amount of technical, scientific and business knowledge accumulated 

 concerning the industry immense. In Eastern Europe, in Hungary, 

 Galicia and Russia, the industry seems still to be carried on under 

 the old, haphazard methods, though Russia and Austria-Hungary 

 easily led, up to 1914, in the world's egg and poultry export trade. 

 Among Mediterranean countries Italy is the only important exporter, 

 the products coming chiefly from the Northern Plain and travel- 

 ling overland by rail to Germany and England. 1 



In North America, where cereals are abundant, poultry-raising 

 is, as has been noted, already a great industry. With the spread 

 of more systematic and intensive methods among American and 

 Canadian fanner?, it is probable that the industry will make further 

 great advances in the future in response to the demands of a grow- 

 ing population whose per capita consumption of meat tends to 

 fall distinctly. 2 In view of this increasing demand and of the fact 

 that labour is costly, it is doubtful whether there will be any marked 

 increase in the present relatively small exports of poultry and 

 eggs from the North American Continent. 



The demand for eggs is highly elastic. Wherever meat is fairly 

 plentiful, eggs in more than certain limited quantities become some- 

 thing of a luxury article in the dietary, whatever their cost. It is 

 true that eggs are almost a necessity for young children and others 

 such as invalids, but the quantities so consumed are small in 

 proportion to the total. It follows, therefore, that consumers in 

 general are willing to pay up to a certain price for eggs, but that 

 beyond that price they prefer to do without them, or at least to 

 reduce their consumption to the smallest limits. This limiting 

 price has a definite relation, first to the general purchasing power, 

 and second, to the comparative prices of other foodstuffs capable 

 of providing the same elements of nourishment in a concentrated 

 form, especially, therefore, of meats, fats and fish. 3 



1 See U.S. Dept. Agric., Bureau of Animal Industry, Bulletin 65, for fairly 

 complete, though not now very recent information concerning the Poultry 

 and Egg Industry in the leading European countries. 



2 " The development of the (poultry) industry to an incredibly larger extent 

 than it is at present, is among easy possibilities." J. Russell Smith, Industry 

 and Commerce, p. 73. 



3 The ordinary consumer in making his choice of purchases of different 

 foodstuffs is guided much more by taste than by any exact conception of the 

 comparative food values of the articles available. Taste, however, serves 



