The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1907-05-23
SHIPPING EGGS by MILLIONS.
From All Over the Country They
Go to New York.

The four million residents of this
city would be helpless If the produce
and provision dealers did not ram
sack the continent and the railroads
did not bring flesh, fish and fowl and
the products of the grain field and
the orchard
At breakfast at an uptown hotel
a wholesale grocer of Pittsburg, who
understood something of the prob.
lens of food supply, said to his com.
panion that he wondered where all
the eggs that are eaten in New York
come from. Here is the answer:
When the December chill leaves
the hens of Kentucky and Tennessee,
Arkansas and Texas get busy, their
industry continuing throughout Janu-
airy and February. The spring, trav.
cling north in March and April, stirs
the hens in Southern Illinois, Iowa
and Nebraska, and in July and Au.
gust Wisconsin,, Minnesota and the
Dakotas send us eggs. Every day or
perhaps two or three days a week
the farm and the hennery send bas.
kets OF eggs to the country store.
keeper, who pays for them in money
or merchandise, packs them in cases
and sells them to the shipper in one
or another of the large receiving mar.
kets.
Here the cases are loaded compact
ly in refrigerator cars, in which by
carload and often by trainload they
move to the great industrial and COM
mercial centres. They do not all
come to New York. Even Chicago
has to have eggs, to say nothing of
other places, but from this interior
and Western region, from Texas on
the south to the Dakotas on the
north, there came to New York in
1906 4,0S6,151 cases, containing
about 126, ,670,6S1 dozens, or $780,
O4S,172 eggs. Eggs come to New
York from Jersey, from upstate
farms and from Long Island, but in
quantities that are negligible when
compared with those from the in
| terror.
Every housekeeper knows what she
pays the grocer for eggs, but she
does not know that the price she
pays dozen during the season of
shipment seldom exceeds by more
than five cents the price received by
the Western farmer who takes them
to the country store. During times
of scarcity the price may run up to
ten or twenty cents a dozen higher
than the farmer receives. The rate
of transportation does not change.
The railroads receive thirty cents a
case for bringing eggs in refrigerator
cars from Indiana and Illinois and
sixty cents case from Texas and
Minnesota. That is, the railroads
bring eggs a thousand miles to New
| York for cent or a cent and q half
a dozen and 1000 miles or so for
about two cents and a half dozen.
| The transportation charge that is
paid the railroads has no bearing
whatever on the retail price in New
York. If the railroads performed
their service gratis the consumer in
all probability would pay just as
much for his eggs. The average
price at wholesale in 1906 was nine
teen cents a dozen, and the total val
uation of the eggs received in Greater
New York, both for domestic con-
sumption and for export, was $24,-
| 067 ,439.
From May to July the season dur
ing which the greatest number of
hens are Industrious, vastly more
eggs come to New York than the pop
ulation consumes. The surplus is
placed in cold storage for use in the
late autumn and the early winter
| New York Sun.