1913. 
THE) RURAt NEW-YORKER 
305 
MARKETS 
THE BOSTON MARKETS. 
The large supply of Southern produce 
which is shipped to Boston market of late 
years has tended to discount the demand 
for local produce to quite an extent, as 
people use the Southern-grown, and when 
the native season arrives they are not so 
hungry for green stuff, and a slight in¬ 
crease in the supply causes a big drop in 
the market. This Winter this has been 
true to a large extent in regard to local 
hothouse produce, especially lettuce, and 
growers about Boston are complaining of 
poor returns and many losses in the busi¬ 
ness. One grower started in the season 
with $12,000 in the bank, and at present 
time has about $1,000 there. He will proba- 
ably never be able to get this back unless 
he is extra fortunate in having several 
extra good seasons follow, in which case 
he might make it up, but this is very 
doubtful. This may be an extreme case, 
but many others are in the same box to a 
greater or lesser extent, according to capi¬ 
tal invested. 
Southern tomatoes are coming in quite 
heavily at present, and are also cutting 
into local growers’ profits by reducing 
prices and overloading the market. In 
fact nearly all native vegetables when 
stored and fresh grown are selling slowly 
and at low prices, partly from this cause, 
but of course other causes have tended to 
help; even the weather has been against 
stored stuff keeping well, and the over¬ 
large production, as in case of apples, 
onions, cabbage and several other crops, 
have all helped to make a general de¬ 
pression. Southern strawberries are plenti¬ 
ful at present and cheap,, partly because 
of the generally poor quality; best ones 
sell at about 30 cents per box, others, 10 
to 20 cents. 
Oranges bring fair prices, from $2.50 to 
$5 per box; lemons, $5.50 to $9 per box; 
bananas, $1 to $3.50 a bunch ; tomatoes, 
Southern, $2.50 to $3 per carrier; native, 
40 cents per pound; Southern spinach, 
$1.50 per barrel; kale, $1 per barrel; hot¬ 
house dandelions, $1.50 per bushel; beet 
greens, 75; cucumbers, $3.50 to $9 per box. 
Celery, native, around $3 per dozen 
bunches, California grown, $1.75. String 
beans, $3 to $4 per basket. 
Cranberries higher, $11 per barrel, $1 
per crate. Apples, best Baldwins, $4 per 
barrel: other grades, $2 to $3.50; Green¬ 
ings, $2 to $3 ; King and Spy, $3 to $4.50 ; 
box fruit, $1 to $1.50; Western fancy box 
fruit. $2 to $4. 
Potatoes a little higher, $1.45 per bag 
for Maine stock; Southern sweets, $1.40 
per basket. Onions, stored stock, 85 cents 
per bag; foreign stock. $2.50 to $3 per 
crate. Squash, 1% to 2% cents per pound 
for Hubbard; Southern Summer, $1.75 per 
crate. Native cabbage, 50 cents to $1 per 
barrel. Carrots, 60 cents per box; beets, 
75; parsnips. 60; turnips, White Egg and 
Purple-top, 35 to 50: rutabaga, $1 per 
barrel; lettuce, 25 to 40 per box, rhubarb, 
six to eight cents per pound. 
Butter in limited supply; best Western, 
35 ; Northern, 36 per pound in tubs. Cheese, 
17 to 19 ; sage, 20 to 21, light supply. Eggs 
are slumping, as supply of storage is much 
larger than usual, and fresh are coming 
in quite heavily and selling at 25 or 26 
cents per dozen; Western, 22; storage, 15 
to 18. 
Live hens, 16 cents per pound; dressed 
fowls, 19 to 20; roasting chickens. 22 to 
25; broilers, 30. Dressed beef, best, 12 Va 
per pound, good, 10 to 11; beef oni hoof, 
$7.50 to $8.50 per 100 pounds for good; 
other grades, three to six cents per pound. 
Average veal calves, live weight, about 
nine cents per pound, dressed, fancy, 15 
to 17 ; good, about 12; lamb, fancy, 13 to 
15; good, about 12; live hogs, 814 to 
nine cents per pound; best dressed, 11. 
Average price all over New England is 
about 10 cents with supply light in most 
cases. 
Ilay prices will hold the attention of 
the farmers from now until the grass 
grows, as some will have to buy more or 
less; however, prices are more in their 
favor than was the case for the last year 
or two. Best horse hay, $22.50 per ton; 
good. $18 to $20; other grades, $13 to $15 
for baled stock. Local loose hay has not 
been moved much yet; farmers all holding 
for about $20 per ton for best and $17 
for fine cow hay. Grain prices are favora¬ 
ble. Cornineal at wholesale, about $1.15 
per bag, retails in local stores at $1.20 
to $1.30 according to grade. Oats, about 
40 cents per bushel wholesale: bran, $23 
and $24 per ton; mixed feed, $25 to $27 ; 
cotton-seed meal, $31 per ton; linseed meal, 
$31 ; gluten, about $30 per ton. A. E. F. 
BUFFALO MARKETS. 
The loose-hay market is much affected 
by weather. Some days in early February 
were so cold and windy that scarcely a 
load came in. Prices are rather weak, as 
the supply is good and feeding early was 
not heavy. To consumers by the load best 
Timothy is quoted at $17 to $17.50 and 
best clover at $13 to $14. This is lowest 
it has been in a long time. There is no 
Alfalfa offered in the market. Straight 
rye straw at $10 a ton ought to be a 
pretty good crop. All fruits and vegetables 
are plenty. The apple trade is in better 
condition than it has been for sometime. 
It is true that our best home stock seems 
to be held back and even windfalls are 
offering at low prices. They sell, though, 
and have cut down the price of the hand¬ 
some Pacific coast apples very much of 
late. Not many Winters ago a rather 
small-sized Jonathan sold as high as three 
cents at retail or even higher, but now 
it is possible to get a large, perfect coast 
Newtown Pippin at about a cent in com¬ 
petition with home apples. 
There is little showing of California 
oranges, but we must depend on Floridas 
mostly this season. Floridas are coming 
very rusty and the flavor is called above 
the average. Prices are ordinary, from 12 
cents a dozen up. The grape fruit is still 
in excellent supply and flavor at moderate 
prices, but lemons are small and scarce. 
I wonder how they figure the fish trade. 
A local store advertises yellow pike at 12 
cents and lake whitefish at 14, while the 
price paid for blue pike, a fish inferior 
to either, is 12 cents to the fishermen as 
they come off the lake. The absence of ice 
till February has cut down the fishing 
through the ice on the lake, but it took 
but few real cold days to start the men 
out. A catch of say 200 pounds in a 
single trip with a dog sled for transpor¬ 
tation, pays well for the savage winds that 
the anglers have to face. Not many years 
since seven cents a pound was the top price. 
As usual this fish is reguarly sold to eastern 
dealers, so that if Buffalo gets anything 
but frozen fish to eat some special arrange¬ 
ment has to bo made. This is in line with 
canned strawberries in Florida. I have a 
letter from Nassau, Bahamas, stating that 
oranges are five for a cent there. Oh, the 
problem of getting the producer and con¬ 
sumer closer together! 
The city store that sells a brand of 
“creamery” butter for 35 cents, a cent less 
than I can get it of a farmer, has caught 
me the last time. My last purchase, made 
when the farmer was away, was too near 
to the renovated brand, in both price and 
appearance, to suit my taste. They are 
now selling oleo on the side at about five 
cents less than butter. The rule appears 
to say nothing about it unless the cus¬ 
tomer asks and then it is represented as 
“so near like that butter you could not 
tell the difference.” 
JOHN W. CHAMBERLIN, 
THE RETAIL PRICE OF ONIONS. 
Among the varied crops which are pro¬ 
duced on the fertile farms of northern 
Wayne County, N. Y., the onion crop is not 
unimportant.' Last season the onion farm¬ 
ers were rewarded with a bumper crop for 
which however there is no market at pres¬ 
ent. About a year ago they were selling 
for $2 a bushel. We are curious to know 
what the difference is to the consumer. 
What are onions retailing for in New York 
now, and how much did the consumer pay 
a year ago? A week or so ago a neighbor 
sold his for 45 cents a hundred pounds. 
New York. e. f. 
Last year’s onion crop was large, and 
shipments to New Y'ork have been so heavy 
as to depress wholesale prices severely. 
Some onions have sold during the past week 
as low as 25 cents per 100 pounds. Con¬ 
sumers buying from grocers who deliver 
their goods do not get much benefit from a 
cut in wholesale prices. It costs the grocer 
as much to handle and deliver two quarts 
of onions that cost him 25 cents per bushel, 
as though they cost $1. But there are 
thousands of consumers, especially among 
the poorer classes, who get the full benefit 
of these low prices. Hundreds of peddlers, 
known as “wagon boys,” load up daily in 
the commission house districts and peddle 
their wares in various parts of the city. 
They buy the odd lots and left over stuff 
from the regular trade and are always on 
the lookout for a glut in any fruit or 
vegetable. Their expenses are light and 
they sell at a small profit. While at pres¬ 
ent the grocery trade charges 10 to 20 cents 
per quart for onions, depending on location 
and quality, consumers buying from these 
wagon men pay from 50 to 75 per cent 
less. 
There is another class of grocers which 
make no deliveries, and sell at moderate 
prices, giving their customers the benefit 
of low wholesale prices. They are mainly 
foreigners, many German and Italian, and 
want to do lots of business even though 
the profits are not so great. There is a 
current idea, which sometimes gets into 
the newspapers, that this low-priced trade 
does not amount to much in volume, but 
that the great majority of retail sales of 
fruits and vegetables are at high prices, 
regardless of whether the supply is large 
or small. This is a fallacy quickly dis¬ 
proved by a little accurate investigation. 
“ The Waste of Retailing.” 
Under the above heading a writer in a 
recent issue of “The Outlook” points out 
some of the wasteful practices which pre¬ 
vail in certain large retail establishments 
where she served as saleswoman. The fol¬ 
lowing conversation with the manager of 
the fruit and vegetable department of one 
of the large stores will interest truck grow¬ 
ers who have met this type of buyer, 
but who have never before had the privi¬ 
lege of listening to his own estimate of his 
shrewdness. Such incidents add to the 
constantly accumulating evidence that the 
one great need of producers is not the 
ability to make two blades of grass grow 
where one grew before, or even the ability 
to produce two blades at the former ex¬ 
pense of one; but it is, rather, the oppor¬ 
tunity to meet the buyer on even ground, 
and get for that which he produces its 
cost to him, plus fair compensation for his 
investment, labor and skill. 
Harris, who had charge of the fruit and 
vegetable departments, in which 20 men 
worked, told me gleefully of the profits he 
had made one morning. “We have been 
buying 50 to 60 boxes of lettuce a day at 
30 cents a box of 18 heads,” said he. "That 
price just about pays a farmer for washing 
it and bringing it to the city. Fifty cents 
is the regular price this time of the year. 
Well, I have been buying all my lettuce 
from Joues—50 boxes a day. To-day I 
passed Jones without giving him my order. 
I bought a little elsewhere at 40 cents to 
fill my early orders, and then, about nine 
o'clock. I went down to the square to see 
how Jones was selling out. He had nearly 
50 boxes on his wagon which he had not 
sold, so I bid him 10 cents a box to clean 
him up and he took it, as he said he must 
get his team back to the farm.” 
“What did you sell the lettuce for?” I 
asked. 
•'Oh. the regular price—five, eight and 
10 cents a head. It averaged me $1.40 a 
box.” 
"Can you work that very often?” I in¬ 
quired. 
"Sure, if there is plenty of stuff growing. 
Why, I caught a strawberry grower that 
way this Spring and took his two-horse load 
of berries at four cents a quart. The 
chump had been selling me all his berries 
in one lot day after day, and had refused 
small bidders, holding his stock for me. 
Gee. I didn’t do a thing to him! Good 
berries they were, too. I sold them for 
from 10 to 20 cents a quart.” M. b. d. 
E. M. S. 
ROOFING 
Why Practical Men 
Demand Amatite 
R oofing that 
needs paint ev¬ 
ery two years can't 
hold the market a- 
gainst A m a t i t e— 
■which needs no 
paint whatever. 
Practical men 
know the great ad¬ 
vantage ofa roof that 
needs no painting. 
They know what a 
nuisance the paint¬ 
ing is. They know 
how much it costs. 
They know how lia¬ 
ble they are to neg¬ 
lect to paint their roofs at the prop¬ 
er time. 
Painted roofings are waterproof 
only where the paint is. Amatite is 
waterproof all the way through. 
Amatite is sold in the usual con¬ 
venient rolls of 110 square feet with 
a smooth lap where the mineral sur¬ 
face is omitted, so as to secure a 
tight joint. Nails and cement are 
packed in the center of each roll. 
Free sample and booklet on re¬ 
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