1--An extension of the local grocery store, trading merchandise for
eggs. 2--An independent traveling peddler. 3--A cash dealer who buys
his load, and hauls it to the nearest city where he peddles the
produce from house to house or sells it to city grocers. 4--A
representative of the local produce buyer. 5--A fifth style of egg
wagon does not visit the farm at all, but is a system of rural
freight service run by a produce buyer for the purpose of collecting
the eggs from country stores.
As far as the quality of product and advantage to the farmer is
concerned, the fourth style of huckster is preferable. This style
exists chiefly in Indiana and Michigan, and the better settled
regions of Kentucky and Tennessee. The writer found hucksters in
southern Michigan working on a profit of one-half a cent per dozen,
while in the mountains of Tennessee he found a huckster paying ten
cents for eggs that were worth eighteen cents in Chattanooga, and
twenty-three cents in New York.
The huckster scheme of gathering eggs would seemingly be a means of
obtaining good eggs because of the advantage of regularity of
collection, but in reality it does not always work out that way.
While it must be admitted that in the isolated regions of the Middle
and Southern States the presence of the huckster is the only factor
that makes egg selling possible, it is also true that the peddling
huckster of those regions usually disregards the first principles of
handling perishable products. He makes a week's trip in sun and rain
with his load of produce, with the result that the quality of his
summer eggs is about as low as can be found.
In the more densely populated region with a twice or thrice a week,
or even daily service, the huckster egg becomes the finest farm
grown egg in the market.
The second step in the usual scheme of egg marketing is the sale of
eggs collected by the small storekeeper to the produce man or
shipper.
The Produce Buyer.
Throughout the Mississippi Valley there are wholesale produce houses
at all important railroad junctions. A typical house will ship the
produce of one to three counties. These houses, once a week or
oftener, send out postal card quotations. These quotations read so
much per case, and are usually case count, with a reservation,
however, of the privilege to reject or charge loss on goods that are
utterly bad. Each grocery receives quotations from one to a dozen
such houses, and perhaps also from commission firms in the nearest
city. The highest of these quotations gets the shipment.
The buyer repacks the eggs and usually candles them, the strictness
of the grading depending upon the intended destination. The loss in
candling is generally kept account of, but is seldom charged back to
the shipper. The egg man wants volume of business, and if he
antagonizes a shipper by charging up his loss, the usual result will
be the loss of trade. So the buyer estimates his probable loss and
lowers his price enough to cover it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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