PRICES AND QUALITY OF CREAMERY BUTTER. 9 
large quantities to Chicago each year during the storage season. 
They have found that on account of the demand for storage opera- 
ticns, the requirements of the Chicago market at that season of 
the year are equally as discriminative as those of New York. Since 
at this time the prevailing prices of butter are determined largely by 
-the demands of those buying for storage purposes, the quality of 
butter demanded for storage becomes the basis of the current quo- 
tations, and thus the standards for surplus butter in Chicago and 
New York tend to coincide during the season when a large portion of 
current market receipts are bought for storage purposes. 
RELATION OF WHOLESALE PRICES TO JOBBING AND RETAIL 
PRICES. 
Buyers who are expert judges of differences in the quality of 
butter will pay varying prices for different lots which they have 
personally inspected, but the market reporters who collect the in- 
formation upon which the various wholesale price quotations are 
based do not have general access to the records of private business: 
transactions between the first-hand market receivers and jobbers or 
retailers. This situation has naturally raised a question as to the © 
complete reliability of market reports or price quotations as issued 
under present conditions. The open sales “on exchange,” which 
serve aS a convenient basis for determining current quotations, gen- 
erally amount to less than 5 per cent of the daily market transactions; 
and they are therefore considered insufficient to serve as a fair index 
of prevailing market values. 
To check the relationship of quality to wholesale and retail prices, 
it was originally planned to compare the quality of certain repre- 
_ sentative lots of butter from known shippers with the prices paid by 
receiver, jobber, retailer, and consumer. It was found practically 
impossible, however, to arrange such cooperation on the part of the 
wholesale dealers as would permit the obtaining of reliable data on 
both the quality of butter and the prices at which it was sold in nor- 
mal business transactions. During one week when this was at- 
tempted practically every lot from the creameries cooperating in this 
investigation was reshipped immediately upon its arrival in Chicago 
to jobbers in distant cities. Furthermore, receivers were reluctant 
to give names of buyers and the terms of sale on some lots because 
they feared that to do so might jeopardize their trade relations with 
some desirable customers. 
It was deemed necessary, therefore, to reverse the method of inves- 
tigation by observing the goods sold to retailers under normal market 
conditions. By this method it was possible also to study the quality of 
butter in relation to prices at which it was sold by various representa- 
tive retail dealers located in different parts of the city which catered 
53153°—18—Bull. 682-2 
