30 BULLETIN 1266, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
and other foreign markets. This quotation serves as the price basis 
for that week's butter delivery and for price settlement between the 
local creameries and the export associations and all other butter 
merchants. 
EFFECT OF WAR CONDITIONS. 
The first period of this century witnessed the development of a 
rather unique form of trade with Great Britain in Danish butter. 
The last years prior to the World War, a large part of the Danish 
butter for Great Britain was sold and shipped by the Danish shipper 
( either the cooperative export associations or the Danish butter 
merchant) direct to hundreds of British retailers and small whole- 
salers. This system had practically eliminated the British butter- 
import merchant, and was rapidly going around the large whole- 
saler. This regular retail customer bought from six to a dozen 
casks of Danish butter each week. Contracts existed, usually for a 
period of one year, between the British retailer and the Danish 
shipper, for regular shipments of butter each week at a price subject 
to the Copenhagen butter quotation. That is, the beginning of each 
week, the day the butter left the creamery en route to the Danish 
shipping port, the greater portion of the butter was sold to the 
British buyers at a price subject to the coming Thursday's Copen- 
hagen butter quotation. The pre-war trade form with its direct 
trade connection with the smaller dealers, which facilitated regular 
weekly orders to supply the actual demands for consumption, and 
Denmark's great importance in the British butter trade, aided the 
stability of the Danish butter quotations. 
World War conditions altered this trade-form to a certain degree. 
Immediately on the termination of the war. with the importation of 
grains and concentrated feeds. Denmark began to rebuild its agri- 
cultural production. It began at once to reclaim its old markets 
for butter. Here it encountered new and embarrassing obstacles. 
Great Britain's political policy, developed during the war,favored 
and stimulated the importation of butter from her colonies. It was not 
until April, 1921, that Great Britain granted again free importation 
of Danish butter. After the abolition of British Government import 
control and war-time restrictions, the Danish producers found the 
Danish butter trade in new hands in Great Britain. They had lost 
direct connection with the British retailers. The Danish butter 
trade had crept into the hands of the British butter-import merchants. 
The bulk of Danish butter now went direct from the Danish shipper 
to the British import merchants, some went direct to wholesalers, 
bin only a small part was sold direct to retailers. 
New market conditions greatly increased imports of colonial but- 
ter: industrial depression and increased use of .margarine were 
factor- on the world's butter market which made it difficult for 
Denmark to pick up and unravel the tangled threads of her old 
trade form. However. Danish butter will always have a prominent 
place with British consumers, because of its consistent quality and 
regular supply in Largo quantities. 
Denmark's butter production was practically back to normal in 
L921, but the quantity of Danish butter that British markets would 
handle satisfactorily has been limited at times. Reco<rnizin<i this 
