224 
February 9, 1924 
Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
A Discussion of Market Prices 
TROUBLES OF TIIE MARKET TROPHETS ; 
MANY FORCES ACT ON PRICES ; GET THE 
FACTS ; EARLY AND FANCY STUFF WELL 
BOUGHT ; POTATO OF HIGH REPUTE. 
Prices are as hard to predict as the 
weather, although experts are doing bet¬ 
ter than they used to. The trouble with 
both kinds of prediction is that while 
they work smoothly sometimes, there are 
still many occasions when the prophet 
has a hard line to explain why the rules 
didn’t apply. 
In general, it may be said that inflation 
or deflation, that is, boom times or hard 
times, may account chiefly for the gen¬ 
eral comparative level of the season s 
prices. The size of the crop may explain 
the character of the whole market sea¬ 
son and determine whether the trend will 
be up or down. The shorter moves, the 
ups and downs lasting days or weeks as 
the case may be, will depend much on 
local supplies, although influenced also by 
other causes noted. 
Prices, then, may be moving according 
to several sets of forces acting togcthei , 
tlie long range causes showing in general 
inflation or deflation and sometimes last¬ 
ing through a number of seasons; the an¬ 
nual causes depending chiefly on quantity 
produced and the short term causes in¬ 
cluding temporary and local rate of sup¬ 
ply and a large number of other variable 
conditions. Hence, in considering the re¬ 
lation of market supply with prices, the 
influence of the other conditions acting at 
the same time must be taken into account, 
and no unvarying correspondence is to be 
expected. 
GET THE FACTS 
What is a farmer to do about it? First, 
keep the facts in mind. Nobody can ever 
follow out good advice unless he knows 
something himself. r I he government, and 
State weekly market reviews are a help. 
They report the week s prices, shipments 
and market conditions. Growers seem to 
value the shipment reports as much as 
any one line of facts. It shows them 
what they will have to compete with. 
Crop estimate reports help in the same 
Wtiy but, of course, are not so exact. The 
large grower who doesn t keep these facts 
and the prices in mind doesn’t have his 
feet on firm ground. Without them lie 
cannot judge of what people tell him. 
Nowadays there is much good market in¬ 
formation in the real farm papers. That 
in the newspapers is often twisted by ig¬ 
norant reporters or prejudiced dealers. 
EARLY STUFF WELL PAID FOR 
With crops easily kept in storage, es- 
peciallv main crop potatoes and onions, 
the Spring and early Summer price level 
does not correspond fully with the volume 
of general receipts. In most great cities, 
earlot receipts of potatoes are actually 
heavier in June and July than in Octobei, 
the height of the main crop movement, 
yet prices are much higher in Summer. A 
reason is found in the popularity of “new 
potatoes” and the absence of any compe¬ 
tition from home-growns at that season. 
In the Fall, stock tends to accumulate. 
Much of the very heavy Fall earlot move¬ 
ment goes into storage in large and small 
lots outside the great city markets. Home¬ 
grown supplies, also, in small but nuinei- 
ous lots, tend to keep down earlot receipts 
after the local crop is ready for market. 
Much the same is true of cabbage, 
onions and celery. Heaviest earlot. re¬ 
ceipts often occur during the early part of 
the season while appetites are keen for 
fresh, attractive produce, and while the 
local supply is light. Trices are often 
highest during this period, when the old 
crop is almost used up and the new is 
taking its place. Thus in such products 
there are two sets of prices, one for the 
early Southern and one for the Northern 
crop. Besides these there is fancy stuff 
that is in a class by itself. 
ROOM FOR FANCY TRADE 
Even for potatoes there is room for 
fancy trade. Enterprising growers in 
Idaho are putting up bags of carefully 
graded Burbank potatoes and shipping 
them under trademark to_ California mar¬ 
kets. In January they were netting $1.40 
per 100 lbs., while the rest of Idaho pota¬ 
toes were selling at SOc. Just about the 
same premium is commanded by the best 
Long Island Green Mountain stock in 
New York City, as compared with the 
usual run from the western part of the 
State. Philadelphia and Boston have 
their potato favorites, and so have most 
cities of the Middle West. Sometimes it’s 
a color, sometimes a brand, and often a 
general reputation that makes a large 
part of the difference. Sometimes repu¬ 
tation works the other way. as in a West¬ 
ern city where nobody will pay the full 
price for red potatoes in a certain kind 
of bag because 20 years ago a tricky 
dealer used that size to get rid of large 
quantities of very coarse poor stock. The 
instance shows how a great deal that can¬ 
not be seen often goes with the goods. 
G. B. F. 
Coming Farmers’ Meetings 
Nov. 7-Feb. 24—Short Winter courses 
in floriculture and ornamental horticul¬ 
ture, New York State College of Agricul¬ 
ture, Ithaca, N. Y. 
Jan. 22-26—Pennsylvania State Farm 
Products Show, Harrisburg, Pa. 
Jan. 23-27 — Poultry Show, Madison 
Square Garden, New York. 
Feb. 4-6.—Ohio State Horticultural 
Society, Winter meeting, Columbus, O. 
Feb. 7—Maple Producers’ Co-operative 
Association, annual meeting, Syracuse, 
N. Y. 
Feb. 27-29 — Eastern meeting, New 
York State Horticultural Society, Pough¬ 
keepsie, N. Y. Roy P. McPherson, sec¬ 
retary, Le Roy, N. Y. 
July 2S-Aug. 1.—Summer Farmers’ 
Week. Connecticut Agricultural College, 
Storrs, Conn. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK 
DOMESTIC—A verdict of not guilty 
by direction of Judge Groner was re¬ 
turned by a jury January 24 in Federal 
Court, Parkersburg, W. Va., in the har¬ 
ness conspiracy case against E. C. Morse, 
formerly Director of Sales in the Surplus 
vicinity is believed to have caused the 
collapse. 
Fifteen persons were killed when escap¬ 
ing gas flooded a two-family cottage at 
Cumberland Hill, Manville, R. I., Janu¬ 
ary 28, and an explosion and fire which 
followed wrecked the building. The vic¬ 
tims were Michael Conway, who lived in 
one side of the house ; Adelard Hamel, his 
wife, six sons and five daughters, and 
Miss Apoline Dancour. a boarder with 
the Hamel family. So far as the au¬ 
thorities could learn the Conway boys, 
after smelling escaping gas, opened the 
cellar door and a light in the hallway 
ignited the gas. The explosion which fol¬ 
lowed is believed to have detonated some 
dynamite which Ilamel, who was a wood 
chopper, had stored in the cellar. Hun¬ 
dreds of windows within a radius of half 
a mile were shattered by the combined 
gas and dynamite explosion and the de¬ 
tonation was heard twenty miles away. 
Four former International Railway 
Company employees, convicted of con¬ 
spiracy to restrict interstate commerce 
in connection with the dynamiting of the 
Niagara Falls high speed line at Ell- 
wood in Aug., 1922. received the maxi¬ 
mum prison sentence under the E cd- 
eral law from United States Judge George 
F. Morris at Buffalo. N. Y.. January 28. 
The sentences were: Francis Reilly.^Buf¬ 
falo. one year imprisonment and $5,000 
fine: lleal.v Breeze. Buffalo, one year im¬ 
prisonment, and $5,000 fine; William 11. 
Smith, Loekport, one year imprisonment 
and $3,000 fine; William L. Vandell, 
Loekport, one year imprisonment and 
$2,000 fine. 
S. E. .1. Cox. oil promoter, was sen¬ 
tenced .at Houston. Tex., January 29, to 
ticable measures to put the Panama 
Canal in a state of defense, agreed upon 
at Colon, January 24, will be forwarded 
to the Win and Navy Departments by 
Admiral Coontz and Major-Gen. Hines, 
backed by the definite demonstration of 
the facts upon which the conclusions are 
based. The recommendations will in¬ 
volve the immediate expenditure of about 
$15,000,000, and an increase of $10,000.- 
000 annually of funds available for 
Panama. 
The Lehigh Valley Railroad filed with 
This picture was taken in a petrified forest near Canfields, Arizona. Pieces of old 
tree trunks are scattered about. What ages of history these stones could reveal . 
They talk to the geologist, but to most of us only imagination can bring out their story. 
Property Division of the War Depart¬ 
ment, and four officers of the United 
States Harness Company. The other de¬ 
fendants were George B. Goetz. Joseph 
C. Byron, Azel F. Cochran and Henry W. 
Benke, all former army officers. 
Two verdicts for injuries were awarded 
January 24 in the Supreme Court. New 
York, in different trials, one for $75,000 
and another for $12,500. The larger 
award went to Louis Schumer of 127 E. 
117th Street, a window cleaner, who was 
crippled for life in a fall from the fifth 
story sill of a building at 149 Spring 
Street. The recipient of the other verdict 
was Dominick di Primo, a bricklayer, 
who was struck by an automobile owned 
by Louis Harkavy, hotel proprietor of 
Hunter, N. Y. Di Primo, according to 
the testimony, was permanently disabled. 
A verdict for $25,000 was returned by 
a jury before Supreme Court Justice 
Thompson in Brooklyn January 25 in 
favor of Miss Pearl L. Guerin, 17, of 
670 President Street, who was burned 
when her clothing came into contact with 
a bonfire a street sweeper had made in a 
vacant lot in May, 1914. The suit was 
directed against the city of New York. 
Fire which for four hours threatened 
the business district of Bridgeton. N. J., 
was stopped at daybreak January 26. 
Seven stores, the Bridgeton National 
Bank’s temporary home and a half dozen 
offices and shops were destroyed. The 
loss will reach $225,000. and officials 
promise drastic building restrictions. 
January 26 forty-five coal miners were 
trapped in Mine 8 of the Barnes & Tucker 
Co., at Shanktown, Pa., by a gas ex¬ 
plosion. The day shift had just com¬ 
pleted its labors for the week and was 
preparing to leave the workings when 
a terrific explosion occurred, bringing 
tons of debris crashing to the floor and 
blocking all but one of the headings. 
Fourteen men made their escape.^ but the 
others were cut off. January 2 1 thirty- 
one bodies were recovered. 
Damage estimated at $65,000 was 
caused at Jersey City January 27 when 
a section of land and docking in the 
South Cove section of the city along the 
Morris Canal basin caved in. carrying 
with it a drydoek, power plant and por¬ 
tions of a lumber yard. No one was in¬ 
jured. The section which caved in was 
about 600 feet lone and 60 feet wide. It 
settled about 20 feet when the founda¬ 
tions were undermined. Dredging in the 
serve five years in the Federal peniten¬ 
tiary and pay a fine of $15,000 by Fed¬ 
eral Judge Hutcheson, following his con¬ 
viction on a charge of using the mails to 
defraud. The sentence is to run con¬ 
currently with one of eight years recently 
assessed against him at Fort Worth after 
his joint trial with Dr. Frederick A. 
Cook' on a charge of using the mails to 
defraud. The charges were brought in 
connection with the use of the mails in 
the sale of stock in the Blue Bird Oil 
Corporation. 
WASHINGTON.—January 24, in the 
investigation of the Teapot Dome oil 
scandal Edward L. Dolieny. the enor¬ 
mously wealthy president of the Pan- 
American Petroleum and Transport t o., 
said it was he who personally lent to 
former Secretary of the Interior, Albert. 
B. Fall, $100,000 on a note of hand 
four months before lie obtained a contract 
for the lease of highly valuable oil lands 
in California. January 28 the House 
passed a resolution authorizing President 
Coolidge to spend $100,000 to conduct 
criminal prosecutions against any guilty 
persons and civil proceedings to annul the 
leases. The President appointed. Janu¬ 
ary 29, under executive power. Thomas 
W. Gregory of Texas and Silas H. 
St raw n of Illinois to conduct the ei\ il 
and criminal investigation of oil and 
other Government delinquencies he plans. 
Mr Gregory is a Democrat and was the 
last Attorney-General in the Cabinet of 
Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Strawn is a 
Republican. Both men are considered 
to represent the loftiest standards in the 
legal profession. 
Theodore Swann, chemical manufac¬ 
turer of Birmingham. Ala., was in con¬ 
ference here at Washington, January 1-4. 
with officials of Southern power com¬ 
panies and is understood to have agreed, 
in conjunction with the power companies, 
to submit an offer to the Government 
for the manufacture of fertilizers, ni¬ 
trates and other chemical products at the 
Muscle Shoals project. 
The output of motor vehicles m the 
United States in 1923 was placed, in a 
Commerce Department announcement on 
January 24. at 3.636.599 passenger auto¬ 
mobiles'. and 376.257 trucks, as compared 
with 2.339,760 and 246.281. respectively, 
in 1922. For December, the returns 
showed manufacture of 275,260 passenger 
cars and 27.$75 trucks. 
Recommendations for immediate prac- 
xuiii ca[mui3uju in nrw Jersey uu 
July 30, 1916, was caused by emissaries 
of the German Government acting under 
direct orders from Berlin. According to 
the brief filed on behalf of the road the 
company has within the last 60 days ob¬ 
tained evidence that proves the explosion 
was the work of German agents who were 
conspiring to demoralize the American 
transportation system. The filing of the 
brief was a sequel to a claim already on 
file with the commission because of losses 
incurred through damage by German sub¬ 
marines to barges of the Lehigh Valley 
Railroad. The road now seeks to amend 
its first brief with a claim of $9,000,000 
on account of the losses caused by the 
explosion. It is contended that the com¬ 
pany paid several million dollars in 
claims for damages after the disaster and 
that these damages and the losses in¬ 
curred by the road are chargeable to the 
American bill against the German Gov¬ 
ernment. 
A tax reduction of 25 per cent to every 
income taxpayer in the country on the 
first $5,000 of taxable income received 
was affirmed by a vote of the Ways and 
Means Committee of the House January 
28. The committee decided to consider 
the first $5,000 of all taxable income as 
earned income, which, would take a tax 
rate of 25 per cent less than the normal 
rate. This action was taken to meet the 
recommendation of Secretary Mellon for 
a differentiation between earned and un¬ 
earned incomes. 
FARM AND GARDEN.-—The Long 
Island Duck Growers Co-operative Asso¬ 
ciation announced January 24 the election 
of the following officers: Charles T. 
Gordon, Eastport, president; M. P. Davis, 
Riverliead, vice-president; II. R. Lukert, 
Moriches, treasurer, and B. A. Ahrens, 
Farmingdale, secretary.. In addition to 
the officers (lie following are directors: 
A. J. Halloek, Speonk; J. A. Titmus, 
Mastic; George Frey, Eastport, and C. H. 
Wilcox, Moriches. With an annual out¬ 
put of more than 2,000,000 ducks the as¬ 
sociation is planning a campaign to im¬ 
press the advantages of the duck from a 
culinary and economic standpoint. 
On January 19 the Federal Horti¬ 
cultural Board promulgated an amend¬ 
ment to Quarantine 56. dealing with raw 
fruits and vegetables, whereby it pro¬ 
hibits the importation of Malaga grapes 
from Spain. The order, taking effect im¬ 
mediately, will prevent the arrival of 
about one-third of the year’s intended im¬ 
ports which would have amounted in all 
to about 350.000 barrels. The fact that 
shipments of these grapes had been dis¬ 
covered to be infested by the Mediterra¬ 
nean fruit fly. against which the quaran¬ 
tine is especially aimed, was given as the 
reason for the action. 
Features of the annual Farmers’ Week, 
to be held at the New York State Col¬ 
lege of Agriculture at Ithaca, February 
11 to 16, are meetings of the New York 
Seed Improvement Co-operative Associa¬ 
tion and the State Vegetable Growers’ 
Association, respectively. The former will 
take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, 
February 12 and 13, and will include 
talks on potato prices, the present grain 
certification system, and potato tuber dis¬ 
eases. The latter will give most atten¬ 
tion to problems of growing and market¬ 
ing vegetable crops. 
On January 15, H.. F. Tompson gave 
up his positions as professor of vege¬ 
table gardening in the Massachusetts 
Agricultural College, and Amherst direc¬ 
tor of the Market Garden Field Station 
at Lexington, to return to his farm at 
Seekonk. Mass. Prof. Tompson’s work 
has been taken over by R. M. Koon. 
C. IT. Nissley. formerly secretary of 
the Vegetable Growers’ Association of 
America, is extension specialist in vege¬ 
table gardening at the New Jersey State 
Agricultural College, New Brunswick, 
N. J. His work is with the vegetable 
growers of the State, giving advice 
through personal contact and by means 
of lectures and demonstrations. Special 
stress is placed on the more economical 
production of vegetable crops by follow¬ 
ing better cultural methods, proper gr id¬ 
ing for market, employing labor-saving 
machinery. Mr. Nissley is experimenting 
with new machinery, such as tractors, 
spraying implements and other labor 
saving devices for bettering the condi¬ 
tion of the growers in general. In April 
Mr. Nissley will go through the different 
counties of the State to give lectures and 
demonstrations of better class machinery. 
The date of the Eastern meeting of the 
New York State Horticultural _Soeiety 
has been changed to February 2< to 29. 
Things have reached the point where 
nothing discourages a farmer more than 
to pick np a paper and see that the Gov¬ 
ernment is going to do something for 
him.—Yates Center (Kan.) News. 
