^08 



This necessitates quick action. All sales are therefore made by wire, 

 quotations being issued for acceptance on day of date only and each day 

 constituting a separate selling campaign. The Postal and the Western 

 Union Telegraph Company each maintains an office, used exclusively for 

 Exchange business, on the upper floor of the association's general office 

 building. Incidentally it may be mentioned, as affording some idea of 

 the volume of this telegraphic correspondence, that in spite of the constant 

 use of a comprehensive private code-book, of which a copy is placed in 

 the hands of every customer and through which some three thousand 

 of the phrases and sentences in most frequent use may be expressed by 

 single words, the association's expenditures this year for telegrams will 

 exceed twenty thousand dollars. From a telephone switchboard in the 

 general office, centrally located at the village of Onley, five private trunk 

 lines radiate to all parts of the peninsula, giving constant communication 

 with the local agency at each of the forty-five loading points. Early in 

 the morning of the typical day in the selling season, in the large office 

 room where the general manager and his four immediate assistants are 

 gathered to begin the day's work, reports are received by 'phone from each 

 local agency of its prospective loading for the day — the number of cars 

 and the quality and grade of each. In the meanwhile, information is 

 being received by telegraph from connections of the Exchange in the big 

 eastern markets of the exact state of those markets. From the associa- 

 tion's representatives in all the other important market centers of the 

 country, constant telegraphic information is also available as to local 

 conditions and prices; and by friendly associations or dealers in other 

 producing sections, we are also kept informed as to the loading and move- 

 ment of the commodity in question in those sections. Being thus in 

 possession of rather complete information covering the two essential factors 

 of supply and demand, the general manager is able, with something at 

 least akin to scientific accuracy, to determine the potential market value 

 of his goods; and by eight or nine o'clock a range of prices is determined 

 upon and the day's selling <5ampaign is begun with a fusillade of telegraphic 

 quotations, reinforced with whatever selling arguments the occasion may 

 offer, to the Exchange's customers and brokers all over the country and 

 to its outside salesmen stationed upon the various large markets: a fusil- 

 lade, of course, to be met and followed throughout the entire course of 

 the day by acceptances and counter-offers, confirmations, refusals and 

 all the other incidents of wholesale selling, with the ultimate and ever- 

 present purpose on the part of the Exchange of selling out so nearly as 

 possible the entire day's loading at the best range of prices obtainable under 

 the given set of general market conditions that may then happen to pre- 

 vail. As fast as orders are booked, particular cars are appropriated to 

 them, with the double purpose in view of moving about an equal propor- 

 tion of every station's goods and of supplying each customer with the 

 grade of stock his trade demands; and shipping directions are given hy 



