330 POULTRY CULTURE 



selling their produce at wholesale, not even dressing their poultry. 

 As a matter of historical fact the men buying and shipping the 

 poultry of a district are the most important factors in the develop- 

 ment of the poultry interests of that district.^ 



Collection and distribution of poultry products. The trade in 

 poultry products proceeds along lines generally parallel to and 

 sometimes coincident with the movement of other provisions. 



Eggs. A poultry keeper producing more eggs than his family 

 can consume naturally looks in his vicinity first for an outlet for 

 his surplus. If he is in a community where a considerable propor- 

 tion of families do not keep poultry, he may easily sell all that he 

 has direct to consumers, perhaps getting a premium for his eggs 

 as strictly fresh. If the eggs are sold at the door, or if the producer 

 can deliver them without devoting an appreciable amount of time 

 especially to it, the cost of delivery need not be considered. The 

 quantity of eggs which can be disposed of to consumers in this 

 way is usually very limited. Larger quantities may be disposed of 

 direct to retailers, or to hotel, restaurant, and soda-fountain trade, at 

 correspondingly high prices and with little expense for delivery, 

 though the trade of this class is not as large as is usually supposed, 

 these places generally using much larger quantities of candled than 

 of strictly fresh eggs. 



When a community produces a surplus of eggs, only those 

 poultry keepers producing in such quantities that they can make 



' This is true both as to the industry at large and as to special branches in 

 limited districts. Poultry packers throughout the West have for years worked 

 systematically to induce and help farmers to improve their poultry. They have 

 made it a practice to select the finest market-type cockerels from the poultry 

 brought to them and to sell these to persons bringing them poor poultry. They 

 have even bought thoroughbred cockerels of good utility types and exchanged 

 with farmers on the basis of prices paid them for ordinary stock. For years some 

 large packing plants made a practice of advertising, a week in advance, the prices 

 that they would pay for poultry, thus insuring the seller against a fall in prices while 

 his stock was en route. On a smaller scale the same thing was done by buyers in 

 the South Shore district of Massachusetts. The buyers there not only distributed 

 good breeding males but in every way endeavored to aid the producers to make a 

 first-class product and to dispose of it to the best advantage, paying at their doors 

 the highest price that they could give for poultry, not the lowest that the producer 

 could be persuaded or forced to take. Under such circumstances the producer 

 could give all his attention to making the product, knowing that as fast as it was 

 ready for market, the buyer would take it off his hands, and his final profits would 

 be much larger than if he had sold to consumers direct. 



