As far as the quality of product and advantage to the farmer is concerned, the fourth style of huckster is preferable.  This style exists chiefly in Indiana and Michigan, and the better settled regions of Kentucky and Tennessee.  The writer found hucksters in southern Michigan working on a profit of one-half a cent per dozen, while in the mountains of Tennessee he found a huckster paying ten cents for eggs that were worth eighteen cents in Chattanooga, and twenty-three cents in New York.

The huckster scheme of gathering eggs would seemingly be a means of obtaining good eggs because of the advantage of regularity of collection, but in reality it does not always work out that way.  While it must be admitted that in the isolated regions of the Middle and Southern States the presence of the huckster is the only factor that makes egg selling possible, it is also true that the peddling huckster of those regions usually disregards the first principles of handling perishable products.  He makes a week’s trip in sun and rain with his load of produce, with the result that the quality of his summer eggs is about as low as can be found.

In the more densely populated region with a twice or thrice a week, or even daily service, the huckster egg becomes the finest farm grown egg in the market.

The second step in the usual scheme of egg marketing is the sale of eggs collected by the small storekeeper to the produce man or shipper.

The Produce Buyer.

Throughout the Mississippi Valley there are wholesale produce houses at all important railroad junctions.  A typical house will ship the produce of one to three counties.  These houses, once a week or oftener, send out postal card quotations.  These quotations read so much per case, and are usually case count, with a reservation, however, of the privilege to reject or charge loss on goods that are utterly bad.  Each grocery receives quotations from one to a dozen such houses, and perhaps also from commission firms in the nearest city.  The highest of these quotations gets the shipment.

The buyer repacks the eggs and usually candles them, the strictness of the grading depending upon the intended destination.  The loss in candling is generally kept account of, but is seldom charged back to the shipper.  The egg man wants volume of business, and if he antagonizes a shipper by charging up his loss, the usual result will be the loss of trade.  So the buyer estimates his probable loss and lowers his price enough to cover it.

By loss off, or “rots out,” is meant the subtraction of the bad eggs from the number to be paid for.  Buying on a candled or graded basis, usually not only means rots cut, but that a variation of the price is made for two or more grades of merchantable eggs.

Much discussion prevails among the western egg buyers as to whether eggs should be bought loss off or case count.  Loss off buying seems to be more desirable and just, but in practice is fraught with difficulties.