A Terminal Market System New York's Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, and Comparisons of European Markets

Excerpt

United States

New York, with over 5,000,000 inhabitants, has no effective market system. The buildings are out of repair, there is little or no organization, and the superintendent has testified before the New York Food Investigation Commission (March 12, 1912) that on their administration last year there was a loss to the city treasury of $80,000. To that must be added due consideration of the inconvenience to the consumers, producers and dealers, and the extra cost of handling entailed by the lack of modern market methods. The city has almost quadrupled its population in a generation, but the markets remain about as they were. Many other cities in the United States not only testify to the value of municipal markets as a means for lowering prices to the consumer, but so guard their interests as to provide a very different balance sheet.

Boston has a profit on its markets of $60,000, Baltimore $50,000, New Orleans $79,000, Buffalo $44,000, Cleveland (Ohio) $27,507, Washington (D. C.) $7,000, Nashville (Tenn.) $8,200, Indianapolis $17,220, Rochester (N. Y.) $4,721, and St. Paul (Minn.) $4,085.

If the following facts concerning municipal markets are studied, also, it will be seen that no city in any way comparable to New York fails to make the municipal markets yield advantages both to the community and the city treasury.

London naturally serves as a starting point for a tour of European investigation. The British capital has, indeed, features that render it comparable in a peculiar degree with New York. The population of both, including their outer ring of suburbs, is over five millions. In each case there is access to the open sea by means of a noble waterway over which passes the commerce of the seven seas. Railroads supplement the water-borne cargoes with home-grown produce, fresh from the farms for the use of urban kitchens.

London's markets do not afford the unbroken example of municipal control that they would if a new system were to be created at the present day. Precedent looms large in British administration and even now there are only two ways of establishing a market—by Parliamentary authority and Royal Charter. King Henry III covenanted by charter with the City of London not to grant permission to anyone else to set up a market within a radius of seven miles of the Guildhall, and this privilege was subsequently confirmed by a charter granted by Edward III in 1326. But of late years the City Corporation has waived its rights and allowed markets to be established in various districts wherever a real necessity has been shown to exist. In fact the markets of London have grown with the city, keeping pace with its requirements.

COVENT GARDEN MARKET
The Morning Rush of Farm and Garden Produce for London Consumers.

There remains, however, the fact that certain Corporation markets and Covent Garden market serve as great wholesale terminals, connected more or less unofficially with the numerous local markets in the outlying districts.

Chief among the Corporation markets is Smithfield, covering about eight acres, and costing altogether $1,940,000. There are to be found wholesale meat, poultry and provision markets, with sections for the sale, wholesale and retail, of vegetables and fish. In the last twenty years the development of cold storage processes has lowered the quantity of home-killed meat and remarkably increased the importation of refrigerated supplies. Last year the wholesale market disposed of 433,723 tons of meat, of which 77.2 per cent came from overseas.

Ten years ago the United States supplied 41 per cent of the Smithfield meat, but now these supplies have fallen off enormously and the last report of the Markets Committee says: "The United States, in particular for domestic needs, is within measurable distance of becoming a competitor with England for the output of South America." South America and Australasia are, indeed, the chief producers today for the British market.

This has developed a great cold storage business in London. All told London can accommodate 3,032,000 carcases of mutton, reckoning each carcase at 36 pounds. Over 41 per cent of England's imported meat passes through Smithfield, and railroad access is arranged to the heart of the market. The Great Northern Railway Company has a lease from the corporation on 100,000 feet of basement works under the meat market, with hydraulic lifts to the level of the market hall, and inclined roadways for vehicular traffic....