Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-08-29
CANNED GOODS FOR POOR
An Expert Tells Interesting Facts About One of Our Industries.
It's Enormous Development Cans Made in United States To-Day Would Form Pile 100000 Times Height
 of Washington Monument.
ICopyrigh.1 1Sa71

| canned goods between the canner and the wholesale grocer. Because this is the season of fresh vegetables, no doubt you think that what is served to you in hotels or restaurants is of this years crop. Don't be too sure of that When the first spring vegetables appear in the markets there is not dminution but an increase of the demand for canned goods of the same kind. The early vegetables are expensive; the canned goods are cheap; and when peas appear in the market, people who want to eat peas and cannot afford to eat fresh ones get the canned kind. An other peeuliarity of the canned goods trade which has developed in recent years is the great demand for canned fish in the summer, when fresh fish are the cheapest. That is probably because people do no more cooking than is nee- essary in hot weather; and canned fish is already cooked, andis palatable when cold.
 In fact, the largest consumers of canned goods to-day are the poor. That is because the price is ridiculously low A can of salmon at ten cents and can of tomatoes at five cents will furnish meal for five people-not a luxurious meal but one which will furnish the nerve force and the muscle to enable them to work. At three cents a head for a meal, canned goods are cheaper than any fresh food of a like nutritive value that the world knows"
 Are not prices now exceptionally low?" 1 asked.
 Yes. Your grocer will tell you that. Prices have always fluctuated greatly, but few years ago retail dealers knew very little of this because the profit on a can of vegetables was so great that the dealer could afford to stand the difference which an advance in price by the iobber would make To-day, however, the prices of canned goods at retail are as sensitive as the price of sugar Canned goods are sold on very slight margin; in fact they are sold at times below the actual cost of produc- ton. This has been practically true in the last five years. Jobbers who had large stock of canned stuff on hand and who lacked money have had to let it go at what it would fbring. The de- moralization which followed affected prices all along the line, and the effects were felt even in the little corner gro eeries.
 "Of course, the changes n price have not been all one way. There have been sudden rises in price from time to time. Last year the price of canned toma- toes went up 40 per cent. in a very short time on the report of a scarcity The report proved incorrect, and the price sank to point only ten per cent. above the old figures. These seares are not uncommon, because there is no way of keeping the run of the canning business. Business is so localized that only unofficial reports come to the job bers in any large center as to the facts about a 'short-pack' in this state or an unusually large pack in another"
 When you say the business is ocal- ized, do you mean that the eanner has solved the home market problems, and that each section supplies it's own needs?"
 ''No, that is too broad" said the deal- CT. Some sections have specialties which sell all over the country. Cali fornia is the great fruit canning coun- try, and California fruits are sold all through the east Of course, oysters in cans, which are still put up in large quantity in Baltimore, sell in the in terior, and not in the neighborhood of the canneries. The shrimp, which is canned in New Orleans, is in demand all over the country. There is salmon, in which great industry has grown up on the Pacific coast. The fisheries from the Sacramento river to Alaska are made profitable by the canning trade; and the greater part of the product of the salmon canneries comes east. Salmon and lobster are about the only canned articles which we ship across the water, with the exception of meats. Meats are canned in Kansas City, Omaha and Chicago principally; and as the business is carried on by few men, it is more concentrated even than the salmon canning.
 Lobster is one cannery product which grows more expensive yearly. Lobster canning is done now in Can ada. There were a great many lobster canneries on the New England coast few years ago; but the lobster has been fished so assiduously that he is grow ing scarcer every year, and some day may be as much of a curiosity as the buffalo. Laws have been passed to pre- vent the taking of the small Holsters, and large lobsters are very few now along the New England coast. Besides, the small lobster is not so good for canning as the large one. So the indus try has found it's way north to the Canadian provinces whose waters are better supplied and our Holsters in cans come to us from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. A peculiar ity of the lobster canning trade is that there are no large eanneries. The lob sters are canned where they are caught"