The New York Times/1916/11/22/City Takes Egg Inventory
CITY TAKES EGG INVENTORY.
Police and Health Departments Set Out to Learn True Supply Conditions
Police Commissioner Woods, in co-operation with the Department of Health, began yesterday an investigation into the egg market here to determine whether there was any conspiracy to advance prices. The city authorities especially wish to ascertain if the report is true that speculators and storage men are accumulating large quantities of eggs and holding them back for higher prices.
Commissioner Woods has detailed Inspectors in every precinct in the city to ascertain the actual egg supply in New York. Their efforts will be supplemented by those of men from the Health Department. The Commissioner has asked storage men to submit figures showing the egg stock on hand as compared with a year ago, also the comparative wholesale prices.
Commissioner J. J. Dillon of the State Department of Food and Markets has already warned the egg dealers that they must obey the law regarding the representation of storage eggs as the fresh article. He threatens, if the existing law is disobeyed, that the state will require each egg to be stamped with the date it was placed in storage. He expressed an opinion that good storage eggs could today be sold for 33 cents a dozen, but he said he suspected of such character were now being disposed of at “strictly fresh” egg prices.
More than 32,000,000 eggs are used in New York City every week. The trade figures this number of eggs at 90,000 cases, each containing thirty dozen, which makes an actual total of 32,400,000 eggs.
“There is a great deal of misapprehension regarding the present price of eggs and its reasons,” said C. F. Droste, President of the wholesale egg firm of Droste & Snyder, at 177 Duane Street, yesterday. “There is no combination on the part of any of the storage men to keep prices up. It is purely an economic question, based on supply and demand. The shortage is now 1,000,000 cases or more, about 25 per cent. fewer eggs in cold storage now than a year ago.
“The demand from abroad has tended to advance the price, but since Nov. 1, the wholesale price has reached such a point that no more exportations have been made. The last exportations were on the basis of about 36 cents a dozen. The price is now 38 cents. Within the last week, however, inquiries from abroad have begun to come in. Should the price fall to 33 or 35 cents, England stands ready to take 100,000 cases at once, and even at the present rate exportations are likely to be resumed before Christmas.”
Mr. Drost said the same condition that had led to a cessation in the exportation of eggs also prevailed in the case of butter. Since the first of this year more than 20,000,000 pounds of butter has been sent from this country to Europe, but since Nov. 1 hardly any has gone abroad.