MARKETING HAY THROUGH TERMINAL, MARKETS. 33 



Cars loaded with two or more kinds of hay, or with hay varying in 

 quality, can not be marketed satisfactorily by the car-door method. 

 Naturally if hay of more than one grade is shipped in one car, the bet- 

 ter grade is placed in the doorway. Buyers, therefore, unless they 

 know the shipper personally or by reputation and know his cars are all 

 of uniform quality and invoiced correctly, usually offer a price suffi- 

 ciently below the market to protect themselves against any inferior 

 hay. If the full market price is paid for the hay a differential is 

 agreed upon for any lower grade hay which may be found. 



The fact that only a very small portion of the hay may be inspected 

 at the time of sale has led to unfair practices on the part of both the 

 country shipper and the buyer. The unscrupulous shipper, knowing 

 the manner in which the hay is sold, frequently loads a certain 

 amount of poor hay in the car where it can not readily be detected. 

 It is possible to load all but about 50 bales with poor hay and still 

 make the car appear as if it were loaded with good quality hay. If 

 such a car is sold to a shipper in the terminal market and is recon- 

 signed, the poor hay is frequently not detected, and the country 

 shipper receives the price of good hay. If the car is unloaded in 

 the terminal market, however, his dishonesty is discovered, and he 

 probably receives less than the hay is really worth. 



Some buyers engage in the unfair practice of claiming that the hay 

 is partly off grade when it is not. The claim is always made after 

 the car has been partly unloaded. This practice is carried on some- 

 what as follows : The buyer having purchased the car at the sales 

 tracks orders it switched to his warehouse for unloading. After two 

 or three tons have been unloaded the buyer pretends that the hay 

 back from the door is of poorer quality than that at the door, which 

 w T as the basis of the purchase. He therefore calls up the receiver or 

 commission merchant and informs him that the hay in the ends of 

 the car is of inferior quality and that he will reject the remainder 

 of the car. Under the present methods of inspection and marketing 

 the seller can do little else" than accept whatever terms the buyer is 

 willing to offer for the remainder of the hay. It has been noted that 

 such rejections occur more frequently on a declining market than on 

 an advancing market, and that the discounts demanded bear a close 

 relation to the amount of the decline in the market. 



When hay is hauled direct from the sales tracks, as is frequently 

 the case where the sales tracks are also the unloading tracks, a part 

 of a car can be rejected if the buyer chooses to do so. The remainder 

 of the hay must then be resold. At Chicago a special yard is pro- 

 vided to which these rejected cars can be switched for resale. The 

 expense of switching, etc., is so great that it is a better policy to 

 allow a liberal discount to the original buyer than to attempt to 



