PRICES AND QUALITY OF CREAMERY BUTTER. 3 
boring cities which are not being adequately supplied by creameries 
situated in the same sections. Creameries thus situated are obliged 
to ship their product to large centers of population in the Eastern 
States or to some important storage and distributing center. New 
York, Chicago, and San Francisco are the most important market 
centers of this kind. Even those creameries which sell a large por- 
tion of their output in the cities in which they are located are obliged 
to find other market outlets where the local production is insufficient 
for the current trade demands. Boston is such an outlet for some 
of the large centralizing creameries of the Middle West. The accom- 
panying map, figure 1, shows the location of the most important 
wholesale butter markets in relation to the general geographical 
location of a total of more than 4,000 creameries in the United States. 
IMPORTANT BASIC WHOLESALE BUTTER MARKETS. 
In the beginning of the creamery-butter industry of this country, 
the town of Elgin, Ill., was the center of the butter-producing region 
of the Middle West; and it was the place where representatives of 
butter merchants in eastern markets made offers for the product of 
the creameries in that section of the country. The prices at which 
goods were sold on the Elgin Board of Trade were published, and 
the quot@tions thus issued came to be regarded as the basic whole- 
sale price of the American butter market. This was because most 
of the creameries in this region did not have local market outlets 
and therefore the major portion of “ Elgin butter” was available 
for distribution in every city that had satisfactory transportation 
service and market connections with these creameries. As trans- 
portation and refrigeration facilities were improved, the creameries 
in the Elgin territory were able to compete for the markets of every 
important city in the country; and creameries in every part of the 
country sold butter at prices which were in line with the Elgin 
quotations. 
Until recently? the custom of basing the buying and selling prices 
of creamery butter on the Elgin quotations still prevailed in many 
sections of the country, though the demands for market milk in Chi- 
cago and other neighboring centers of urban population had reduced 
the butter production in the “ Elgin District” so that comparatively 
small quantities of butter were sold on the Elgin (butter) Board. 
Chicago has become the leading market center for creamery but- 
ter produced in the Middle Western States, because, besides being 
a large consuming center, it has exceptionally good shipping and 
storage facilities. Many creameries and jobbers in that market 
1 By action of the United States Food Administration the Elgin Board of Trade on 
October 31, 1917, suspended the issuance of butter quotations. 
