EXPENSE FACTORS IN CITY DISTRIBUTION OF PERISHABLES 13 
dollar's worth of goods, expressed in number of retail sales, is the 
reciprocal of the value of the retail sale. It requires only four 
individual sales to dispose of a dollar's worth of goods if the value 
of each sale is 25 cents, whereas five sales would be required if the 
value of the sale were reduced to 20 cents. Thus, because of the 
prevailing uniformity in distribution expense for each sale, regardless 
of its size, the amount of money required to sell a dollar's worth of 
goods varies directly with the number of sales which the retailer 
must make to receive $1. As the number increases the distribution 
SPREAD PER RETAIL SALE AND SIZE 
OF RETAIL SALE 
FOURTEEN LEADING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 
NEWYORK METROPOLITAN D ISTRICT, 1923-1924 
SPREAD PER RETAIL SALE IN 
CENTS 
15 10 5 
MEAN NUMBER OF POUNDS 
PER SALE 
I 2 3 4 5 6 7 
YELLOW ONIONS 
CANTALOUPES 
S. POTATOES 
N. CABBAGE 
N. POTATOES 
H" 
K 
yh+ea 
Mear 
r i 
r i 
tzr ; 
r 
: ; 
J We 
j 
p— £ ; ----- 
:~ ; i! 
i: 
■~ ! ii 
ii 
I^^^I^M^^^^^^l 
Fig. 5. — Commodities differ widely in the prevailing size of retail sale, but the difference between 
wholesale cost and retail value per sale is nearly uniform 
expense per dollar increases likewise. Hence the greater the number 
of sales per dollar the greater is the proportion of the dollar which 
is required in distributing the goods; that is to say, the greater is 
the percentage margin. Differences in margins are thus found to be 
directly due to differences in size of the retail sale. 
The practice of marking retail prices so that they will yield for 
different articles a fairly constant money spread per sale, regardless 
of the size of sale, thus explains the differences in percentage margins 
so adequately that the influence of other factors which might appear 
to be effective is obscured by this one. Such characteristics as total 
