44 BULLETIN 1242, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The early crop quickly finds its way into the retailers' hands and 
the market can take only enough to satisfy its immediate demands. 
When arrivals are heavy, all the marketing agencies that can possibly 
assist are called upon to speed up the movement. Commission 
men, car-lot buyers, jobbers, brokers, and the whole retail organi- 
zation except the small independent grocers are likely to feature 
cabbage sales. Cabbage consumption, however, can be increased 
very little in a short campaign. Consequently, heavy receipts of 
early stock are usually followed by severe drops in prices. 
The late-crop shipments frequently can be held back for longer or 
shorter periods either in the country or in city storage. The price 
movement, while usually less fluctuating, may respond with emphasis 
in cases of extreme shortage or great volume of supply. 
These facts explain the violent price changes from year to year 
and from one part of the season to another. Since the demand is 
fairly constant, anything that affects the supply reacts quickly on 
the price. Another fact tending to wide variation in price is the 
usually ungraded condition of the product. 
The chart (fig. 29), showing the price movement of New York 
cabbage both on the New York jobbing market and at shipping 
points near Rochester, gives some idea of the speculative nature 
of the product. In 1919-20 a comparatively light crop in the com- 
mercial late-cabbage States, especially in New York, followed a 
short southern crop. Prices began to rise from the first of the shipping 
season and during the winter reached previously unheard-of heights. 
Cabbage out of country storage sold for SI 00 or more per ton. The 
spread or margin between high and low prices on the same variety 
was excessive, due in part to poor grading and packing. A similar 
price movement occurred in the late winter and spring of 1922, 
owing chiefly to light production and light shipments from Florida 
and Texas, and there was another price uplift in the spring of 1923 
and also of 1924. In 1920, when the production was above normal, 
prices ran very low indeed, and much lower on the Chicago market 
than in New York. 
The spread between country buyer and city jobber is rather 
difficult to calculate. It is by no means uniform. Generally the 
country high price does not reach the cit}^ low price for the variety. 
In times of rapid price fluctuation sharp rises or declines may occur 
during the week or two required for shipments to reach the distrib- 
uting markets. 
Prices of the early crop show wide fluctuations and are hard to 
classify because of the great variation in quality and condition of the 
supply. The price chart (fig. 30) permits comparison of the market 
ranges of late and early cabbage. During the three months of 
competition, the price of old cabbage, or the previous late crop, 
tends to decline as new or early cabbage becomes abundant. For 
the rest of the season its price changes are by no means so extreme 
as for early cabbage. The frequent sharp variations in the price 
line of the early crop are followed only sluggishly by the price trend 
of the late crop. In each of the three seasons the early cabbage 
market shows four or five fairly well-marked general movements. 
It begins high in January, declines with increasing supplj . and tends 
to recover when storage stock becomes scarce and poor in March. 
Usually there is a fresh decline in April because of the rapidly in- 
