Women Want to Eliminate Profiteers to Cut Cost of Groceries, Form Buyers' Co-operative to Buy from Sellers' Co-ops, Dec. 22, 1923

Some Reasons for High Prices

Nine organizations of New York women have united to combat increasing living expenses. They have found that potatoes can be hauled in 100-pound bags from Michigan to New Jersey City, a distance of 1,150 miles, for 28 cents, and in the same bag from New Jersey to the Bronx, 15 miles, costs 41 cents.

They have also discovered that in one 13-mile section in New Jersey, freight cars must go over roads belonging to three different companies and travel 174 miles to reach the 13-mile distant destination.

They also found that it takes 200 trucks to unload a consignment of lettuce; when there is only room for 20 trucks on the pier. It took one truck 11 hours to transport 95 baskets of lettuce.

In that market they found 116 speculators, officiating as middlemen, and who unnecessarily, unduly increase the costs to the consumers.

The women tabulate prices of standard fruits and vegetables as given to them by co-operating dealers together with the names of the jobbers who sold them to the retailers. Knowing the price paid by the jobbers on that day and the location of the store from which retail figures are derived, the causes entering into the spread of prices can be analyzed with profit for all concerned—except any profiteers.

The movement is developing into a co-operative buying plan to co-operate with farmers’ co-operative selling organizations.

From the editorial page of the Tri-City Daily Gazette, Dec. 22, 1923