Short-distance farming increases profits by decreasing transportation charges. A vivid illustration of future possibilities is given by an expert in these words: "Long Island is about the size of Holland. Its population is about the same. The produce taken out of the soil in Holland is twenty-one times that which is taken from the soil of Long Island. If Long Island were brought under proper cultivation it alone would produce the larger part of the vegetable products required by the six millions of people in New York City and vicinity." The retail middleman and the parcel post would in that case suffice.
At present the big profits in the food business go chiefly to the gambling middlemen—the jobbers. This must be changed. Possibly the prices will not become lower; but if the method just suggested is carried out, the quality (flavor) of the food we eat will be vastly improved and the profits will go to those who deserve them—the market gardeners. Let us do all we can to make their work as alluring and profitable as possible in order to greatly increase their numbers. To the lowering of the cost of food we ourselves can largely attend by stopping our sinful waste and taking to heart the methods taught in the preceding pages of economizing in our food without lowering its nutritive value or diminishing its pleasurableness.
[XIII]
GASTRONOMIC VALUE OF ODORS
SWEET, SOUR, SALT, AND BITTER.
In the London "Zoo" one day, as we were nearing the bear den, we heard the most heartrending cries on the part of one of its denizens. It sounded as if some bruin were being murdered or vivisected. In reality, the wails and tears were all due to the fact that one of the animals "wanted more"—more of the jam which an attendant was distributing to his charges in turn by the spoonful. That bear had a particularly "sweet tooth"; but is not bruin proverbial for his love of wild honey? It is a casus belli with many a swarm of bees.
If you wish to make a horse love you, let him take cubes of sugar from the palm of your hand. As for dogs, they are supposed to be about as carnivorous as carnivorous can be; yet I have heard of a dog who, for months, daily brought a basket of meat from the village butcher and never touched it; but one morning some horehound candy was put in the basket and that was too much for his integrity; he stopped on the way and ate it all up. I felt inclined to doubt that story until I found that Laddie, my own beautiful collie, invariably was much more eager for sugar than for meat (with the possible exception of imported Lyons sausage). Candy and sweetened cream are his ideas of ambrosia and nectar.