20 



BULLETIN 639, U 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



plants. The small circles indicate the location of the different dealers 

 in the city. The number of radii within the circle represents the 

 number of delivery routes operated by each dealer. When a dealer 

 purchased his supply from a pasteurizing and bottling plant, a broken 

 line shows his connection with the plant from which the supply was 

 obtained. A comparison of the map with figure 6, which presents 

 conditions on May 1, 1915, shows that the number of city milk plants 

 was reduced on August 1. but that the number of milk dealers had 

 not decreased greatly. 



In addition to the dealers referred to in figure 7 there were twq 

 dealers who operated plants in the country where milk was pasteur- 

 ized, bottled, and shipped to Detroit. By selling to hotels, restau- 

 rants, and factories it was possible for one of the suburban plants to 

 sell practically its entire supply at wholesale. The other plant bot- 

 tled a considerable portion of its supply in the country, and either 

 shipped the remainder in bulk to the city or manufactured it into 

 cheese. This plant used fiber containers instead of glass bottles for 

 goods sold in retail quantities. Instead of delivering direct to con- 

 sumers, which would have required an investment in retail delivery 

 equipment and the maintenance of a city sales organization, arrange- 

 ments were made with grocery stores to retail the milk. There were 

 some objections to the use of fiber containers, but storekeepers gen- 

 erally accepted them, because no losses were incurred by the failure 

 of customers to return the empty bottles. The use of these containers 

 was very successful for that class of trade. 



Table XV shows the proportion of retail and wholesale trade of 

 dealers handling different quantities of milk. 



Table XV. — Relation of retail to wholesale business. 





Average 

 number 



Quarts sold daily. 



Per cent sold. 



Number of wagons. 



of wag- 

 ons per 

 dealer. 



Retail. 



Whole- 

 sale. 



Retail. 



Whole- 

 sale. 



ltoo 



1.5 



11.4 



17.5 



117.5 



34, 752 

 20,700 

 12,900 

 45,600 



25,964 

 12,660 

 11,300 

 26,400 



57.2 

 62.0 

 53.3 

 63.3 



42.8 



6 to 15 



38.0 



16 to 30 



46.7 



31 to 150 



36.7 









Different dealers had various proportions of wholesale and retail 

 business, and there was no definite relation between the quantity of 

 milk handled and the proportion of wholesale to retail sales. 



The relation of the size of a dealer's business to the daily variation 

 in quantities of market milk sold at wholesale and retail is shown in 

 figure 8. "While the records of both the larger and smaller dealers 

 showed considerable variation in their total dailv sales, the sales of 



