The Retailing of Eggs by the Producer.

In poultry papers the poultryman has been commonly advised to get near a large city and retail his own eggs at a fancy price.  This sounds all right on paper but in practice it works out differently.  A man cannot be in two places or do two things at the same time.  The poultryman’s time is valuable on his plant, and the question is whether he can handle city sales as well as a man who made it his business.  If the poultryman tries to retail his own goods he will be working on too small a scale to advertise his goods or to make deliveries economically.  The man making a specialty of the city end can sell ten to a hundred times as much produce as one poultryman can produce.

With a group of poultry farmers working co-operatively, or a large corporation having contracts with producers, the producing and selling end can be brought under the same management advantageously.  The isolated poultryman, unless he find a market at his very door, will do better to permit at least one middleman to slip in between himself and the consumer.  But there is no reason why he should not know this middleman personally and insist upon a method of buying that will pay him upon the merits of his goods.

Consigning eggs or any other produce to commission men, without a definite understanding, will always be, as it always has been, a source of dissatisfaction and loss.  There is a great opportunity here for the man who can organize a system that shall do away with commission houses, other intermediate steps, and form the single step from producer to consumer.  Some people say that farmers cannot be dealt with in this manner.  Such people would probably have said as much about general merchandising before the days of the mail order houses.

It is all a matter of efficient organization.  A system of business fitted to deal in carload lots will, of course, fail when dealing with half cases.  It is more difficult to deal in little things than in big ones because the margin is closer, but it can and will be done.

The Price of Eggs.

We will consider the price of all eggs from the quotation of Western firsts in the New York market.  The reason for this is evident.  Every egg raised east of Colorado is in line for shipment to New York.  If other towns get eggs they must pay sufficiently to keep them from going to New York.

In pricing eggs we have first to consider the price of Western firsts in New York and secondly the quality relation of the particular grade to Western firsts and the consequent relation in price.

The price of eggs varies with the price of other commodities as the periods of prosperity and adversity follow one another through the years.

As is well known, all prices in the ’90’s passed through a period of depression.  For eggs this reached a base in 1897.  Since then there has been a gradual climb till this realized a high point in 1904, remained high till 1907.  In the spring of 1908 egg prices dropped again, but the fall prices of 1908 were exceptionally high.  As this work goes to press (May, 1909) eggs are going into storage at the highest May price on record.