Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1915-05-06
FROM PRODUCER TO CONSUMER.

The editor of the Pierre Capital-Jounal has bought a box of
apples for $l85. He found therein a note asking him to communi
cate with the grower, stating the price paid for the fruit. The
grower, it develops, got eighty-hve cents, and the Capital-Journal
man is wondering what became of the dollar.
Well, the Saturday News can tell him in a general way. First
however, let us say that the ratio between what the editor paid and
what the producer received does not vary greatly from that which
attaches to other farm products. Statisticians have ascertained
with reasonable certainty, that the producer gets only about forty
per cent of what the consumer pays, taking the whole range Of food
stufs. And, with the CapitalJournal man, people are wondering
what becomes OF the sixty per cent and into whose pockets it goes
A fruit selling agency in the west, owned and controlled by the
growers, a year or so ago placed travelling men in the field to sell
direct to the retailer. Another association established retail houses
in some Of the metropolitan centers to sell direct to the consumer.
But these and other experiments have shown that the cost Of getting
the goods INTO the hands OF the consumer is about as great through
these methods as through the recognized channels OF trade-the
commission men, the jobbers, the wholesalers and the retailers.
This wide margin of seeming profit between the price paidtb by
the consumer and that received BY the producer is one Of the great
unsolved problems Of the commercial world.
let Us take the box Of apples bought By the editor Of the Cap.
italJournal. 1t cost the consumer $1S5. The producer got
.eghty-hve cents. What became OF the dolar2
To begin with, the selling agency at home-the fruit growers
selling agency-got seven cents (this is the rule in many of the
associations the broker 1.-THE man who acted for the association and
|diposed of the carload of fruit to the wholesaler or jobber) got
three cents, or Whereabouts; the wholesaler in turn must get from
ten to fifteen cents, and more IN some cases, for unloading and load
freight from Washington, where this particular box OF fruit was
grown, to Pierre, was about fifty cents; so that, by the time it
reached the Pierre retailer the charges against lit (Without taking
into account cold storage) ranged from seventy to ninety cents
The retailer, in selling the box for $lS5, probably did not derive
la very great ratio OF profit.
If the apples were bought through the selling associations
travelling man, the gobetween expenses would not be much less and
might have been more The Grand Junction colorado association
kept q man in the two Dakotas in 1912 and found that the cost per
box IN reaching the retailer was greater than would have been the
ease had it dealt through the usual channels, including the whole
Isalers.
cost of distribution. The solution is but IL. its experimental stage.
THE wholesaler and the jobber and the commission man and the re-
taller cannot be done away with until some better method 1s devised
for passing the products Of our farms and our factories from the
producers to the consumers.