In the past the great problems of peach-growers, as of those who grow other agricultural products, have been cultural in their essential character. Attention to problems of distribution have had to do with the opening up of new regions of production--the expansion of the agricultural domain; with developing means of transportation--railroad lines, steamboat service, canals; and in developing centers of consumption in the cities and towns which have been springing up everywhere in the habitable parts of America. Until recent years, little has been done in studying the commercial disposition of agricultural products. Now, however, studies are being made everywhere of the distributive systems by which products get to market and to determine what share of the consumer's price should go to the producer and what to the distributor. Everywhere the importance of these economic studies is recognized and no producer sees more clearly than the New York peach-grower the need of improvement in handling products to distribute risks, reduce risks, decrease the numbers in the vast armies of middlemen and in every way improve defective distribution. But these questions belong to specialists--economists. We wish here only to furnish a few fundamental data which may be of use to all concerned in the distribution of the peach-crop. In the economic study of the peach-industry in the State it is essential to know the volume of the product in the State; what proportion of the total different sections produce; how the crop is distributed in consumption; and the movement of the peach-crop from competing peach-states. These data we undertake to furnish for the year 1915, a normal peach-year, taking the figures from the transportation lines handling peaches in New York so far as obtainable. The volume of the product for western New York is shown by figures taken from the New York Central Railroad[258] and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Peaches were shipped from towns as follows: