72 CO-OPEEATIOX TX DANISH AGEICULTUKE 



while it almost ceases during winter, the price of eggs shows 

 great fluctuations, increasing from week to week during autumn 

 and winter and falling rapidly in the beginning of the year. 

 The temptation to hold back eggs in autunm before selling 

 and shipping them was therefore very great, and to this tempta- 

 tion many of those who handled the eggs in Denmark in the 

 eighties and early nineties succumbed. There were many 

 middlemen between the hen and the EngUsh consumer. The 

 farmers,.or rather the farmers' wives, gradually learnt to increase 

 their profits by holding back the eggs one or more weeks during 

 the latter half of the year. The hucksters who collected eggs 

 from the farmers were equally clever, and the merchants who 

 bought from the hucksters or had their own collectors, likewise 

 tried to improve their position by the same short-sighted policy. 

 The result was that more and more Danish eggs arrived in 

 England in a bad condition, and often even quite useless. 

 The means of examining eggs whereby it is now fairly easy to 

 detect stale eggs, were less developed in those days or not made 

 sufficient use of. Serious complaints from large Enghsh 

 importers were received by the Eoyal Agricultural Society of 

 Denmark in 1889, and proved to be only too well founded. 

 The Society tried to influence the farmers and local buyers 

 of eggs by means of reports in the agricultural and local daily 

 papers, explaining how dishonest it was to sell stale and kept 

 eggs as fresh ; eggs should be disposed of once a week, the 

 nests should be kept clean, etc. But all this had next to no 

 effect. The merchants and shippers were, or believed them- 

 selves to be, in this difficulty, that if they refused to pay farmers 

 for eggs manifestly kept or even partly spoiled, farmers would 

 sell to competitors, and they would not receive any eggs them- 

 selves, neither fresh nor bad ; the price for eggs, as dehvered 

 by the farmers, had therefore to be fixed so as to allow for 

 losses by spoiled eggs, which losses, as in all similar cases, 

 ultimately fell on the producer. Fresh eggs were, therefore, 

 during about one-half of the year quoted considerably below 

 their real value. 



It was natural enough, when this unsatisfactory state of 

 affairs began to be reahsed, that attempts should be made by 

 the farmers to remedy it, especially as no help seemed likely 



