Lower coast gazette., 1909-09-11
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER II, 1909.
Prices of Corn.

bushels, instead of 20, is creating quite an in
quiry as to the probable prices for. corn and as
to the best methods of securing what would be
fair prices, anIthings considered. It is reported
that New Orleans buyers are now offer
ing 81 cents per bushels for shelled corn, de-
sh1efed in. New Iberia. We get this informa-
ton from the New Iberia ENTERPRISE and it
fxes the present value for the Sc pounds of
shelled corn at slightly over one cent per pound.
This is doubtless a reasonable price, all things
considered at this time Of the year On the
other hand, the prices of corn in Louisiana are
ordinarily determined by the price in Chicago,
the transportation to New Orleans and thence
to the country and including the cost of bag
ging.
To realize the whole value of corr in the
community it will be necessary for any surplus
Offering on the market to be first exhausted and
then for those having corn to sell to await the
local demand and supply it just as the corn is
needed. Any effort to force corn upon the
market in advance of a positive demand for it
must necessarily result in unduly low prices.
Apart from this, however, there is a degree
of vagueness in dealing in corn in Louisiana
that ought to be removed as far as possible by
more definite terms. By common usage in
this state seventy pounds of ear corn constitute
a.bushel, which is based upon the assumption of
western conditions, where the cobs Of corn are
smaller than here. Seventy pounds of corn in
the cob in the fall Of the year being sold as the
equivalent of a bushel of ~ffty-six pounds of
shslled corn, indicates an expected shrinkage of
!; fourteen pounds, Or twenty per cent. We have
been told that in the West, after more or less
Of this shrinkage had occurred, corn was sold at
sixty pounds to the bushel, the equivalent of
fifty-six pounds OF shelled corn, the intervening
season between the autumn and spring making
the difference Of two pounds on seventy.
We now note the ENTERPRISE states that
from actual experiment a hundred and fifty
pound barrel of corn will shell out about ninety
one pounds of corn, or 1.62 bushels. This would
be q yield Of slightly over 60 per cent. of the
weight Of the ear corn in shelled corn, and
hence we presume that this means that the
hundred and fifty pound barrel of corn will be
corn in the slip shuck. Corn in Louisiana,
within our personal experience, has been stored
more generally in the slip shuck, which is pre-
sumed to serve as a preventative to injury by
the weevil. We understand that large quaint
ties are also sold after the shuck is taken off,
or as ordinary corn is sold in the West. An
other trouble incident to this is the fact that
the term barrel itself is a very uncertain one,
sugar barrels having 19-inch heads, flour bar
rels l7-inch heads and produce barrels 16-inch
heads. Flour barrels, with 17-inch heads, are
the commonly accepted standard and in the
good old days, when fiat boats brought large
quantities of ear corn down the river, it was
customary to fill a flour barrel with what SEEM
Cd to be the general average of the corn on the
boat and to then shell it out and then ascertain
in this way the number of pounds, which would
vary according to the size of the barrel from
ninety to one hundred and ten pounds Of shelled
corn, the sellers Of the corn generally endeavor-
iinaf to select a large barrel when the weighing
was done and the smaller barrels after the sale
was made and the deliveries began in these
selected barrels.
Another point in corn is the fact that small
ears, nubbins and such, will yield a far less per-
Eeut1kc vi cOrH 10 tne HOUR DdrTel 1ull anQ
slightly rounded, than will be the yield from
.Rpod. large ears Of corn. In fact, we have
tQurd, five recall the figures correctly, that
excellent soerrn in the slip shuck when measured
ip -four barrels will weigh seventy to eighty
pounds of shelled corn, while We have had act
ual determinations made in which the yield from
poor corn made in barrels of the same size went
g low as thirty pounds, all shuck and cob and
no corn.
These suggestions are to indicate that there
10 no proper way to sell corn, the general value
Of which is to be determined by measurement,
excepting to take some given measure and a
fsir ample of the corn and to shell out the
measure 40 TO thus determine by it what the
astaaal percentage of yield is, or the actual
peaA1D Of yield for the given measure. In some
see6e1D d TIE state it has been the custom for
decades to call a barrel of slip shuck corn level
full a bushel. That is equivalent to a yield in
shelled corn of 6fty-six pounds, the barrel to
be Of the flour barre. size. THIS is a good,