APPLE MARKET INVESTIGATIONS, 1914-15. _ 9 
MARKET PREFERENCES FOR VARIETIES. 
It can be truly said that most markets can always find use for a 
good quality apple, no matter what its shape or the color of its skin 
may be. It is probably unreasonable to say that one market will 
take only certain varieties while another will take other varieties. 
Conditions are always changing preferences. For instance, due to low 
prices, there was a noticeably increased demand in some cities, known 
as barreled-apple markets, for box-packed fruit. The certainty of 
securing uniformly sized, highly finished fruit at eeiomely low prices 
was ae only reason given for this condition. 
To illustrate how a market takes a new apple, it may be stated that 
on October 27 two cars of extra fancy northwestern boxed fruit of 
little-known variety sold to the retail trade at 75 to 85 cents in 
one of the markets. Three days later apples of the same grade, pack, 
and variety were selling well at $1.25 because they had become better 
known. It must be said, however, that markets do not usually ex- 
hibit such quick action in taking up new varieties of fruit. A new 
variety must have exceptional merit to cause a market to act as 
quickly as in the above case. 
GRADES—BOXED, BARRELED, BULK. 
As has been mentioned previously in this publication under ‘‘ Mar- 
ket preferences,” some cities are known as boxed-apple markets and 
some as barreled-apple markets. Other cities or sections are known 
as good markets in which to dispose of bulk apples. 
Every community, be it known as a boxed, barreled, or bulk pill 
market, has different classes of consumers who arene different 
classes oH fruit. In New York City, for instance, there were received 
from various apple-producing sections from October 19 to November 
21, 1914, 1,882 carloads of barreled apples, 383 carloads of boxed 
apples, and 443 carloads of bulk apples, or a total of 2,708 carloads of 
apples for a period of 28 business days. It can not be stated, how- 
ever, that this proportion would apply in New York City throughout 
similar apple seasons. 
Table 3 gives the number of carloads of barreled, boxed, and bulk 
apples received in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and St. Paul for the 
periods shown, and also the percentages of each class of fruit used by 
each market. It shows, in addition, the totals for all four markets, 
and the average percentage of barreled, boxed, and bulk fruit han- 
dled jointly by all four markets. Thus it will be noted that the 
barrel-packed fruit predominates by over 50 per cent. 
4534°—Bull. 302—15——2 
