Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 275, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1913 — TURKEYS WON’T COST CONSUMER SO MUCH [ARTICLE]

TURKEYS WON’T COST CONSUMER SO MUCH

Indications Are for Biggest Crop in a Dozen Years and Oonse- - quently at Smaller Cost. A Chicago paper prints: Thanksgiving turkeys began to arrive here yesterday. Five thousand dry picked birds were in the first lot. They came from Texas and other parts of the southwest. Every day from now on turkeys will get here in constantly increasing numbers. Owing to the dry but mild summer the crop is the biggest in the last dozen years. It is estimated in the local poultry selling district that about 750,000 turkeys have been engaged for shipment to this city. They will come, P. Q. Foy says, from fourteen states, with Texas, Kentucky and Ohio in the lead. There are no last year’s turkeys in cold storage, and all that will be eaten this fall l\ere will be fresh birds. Several thousand turkeys are being imported from Russia, China and Siberia, it is asserted, under the new tariff, which lowers the duty from 6 cents to 2% cents a pound. The price of Thanksgiving turkeys, the dealers say, will not exceed 25 cents a pound, retail, for plump western birds, and will range down to 20 and even 18 cents a pound for thinner specimens. The average price will be three to five cents a pound less than last year. The turkeys from Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee will sell at retail at 25 to 30 cents a pound. Some very choicest Virginia and Maryland birds*, have been contracted for at 35 cents a pound by wealthy New Yorkers. As for quality, the turkeys this fall are fairly fat, the experts say, but not quite as plump as in some previous years. Cranberries are plentiful, and so are the other customary turkey trimmings.