L.
EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION.
The machinery whereby the farmer of our day converts into cash or other values that portion of his products which is not consumed in his house or on his farm, seems to me lamentably imperfect. Let me illustrate my meaning:
After three all but fruitless years, we have this year a bountiful Apple-crop, in this State and (I believe) throughout the North. Our old orchards being still, for the most part, preserved and in bearing condition, while a good many young ones, planted ten to twenty years ago, begin to fruit considerably, we had, throughout the three Fall months, a superabundance of this homely, wholesome, palatable fruit. It should have been cheap for the great body of our mechanics and laborers to provide their families with all the ripe, good Apples that they could consume without injuring themselves by gluttony. Good Apples should have been constantly displayed on every workingman's table, to be eaten raw as a dessert, or baked and eaten with bread and milk for breakfast or supper. Each provident housewife should now have her tub of applesauce, her barrel of dried apples, or both, for Winter use; while a dozen bushels of good keepers should be stored in every cellar, to be drawn upon from day to day during the next four or five months. In short, Apples should have been and be, from last August to next May, as common as bread and potatoes, and should have been and be as freely eaten in every household and by every fireside.
How nearly have we realized this?
I will not guess how many millions of bushels have rotted under the trees that bore them, been eaten by animals to little or no profit, or turned into cider that did not sell for so much as it cost, counting the Apples of no value. Living immediately on a railroad that rims into this City, wherefrom my place is 35 miles distant, I should be able to do better with Apples than most growers; and yet I judge that half my Apples were of no use to me. Many of them sold in this City for $1 per barrel, including the cask, which cost me 40 cents; and, when you have added the cost of transportation, you can guess that I had no surplus, after paying men $1.50 per day for picking and barreling them. I sold all I could to vinegar-makers at fifty cents per bushel for cider-apples—the casks being returned. But they could not take all I wished to sell them, there being so many sellers pressing to get rid of their windfalls before they rotted on their hands that even this market was glutted. That it was much worse for the farmer a dozen miles from a railroad and a hundred from the nearest city, none can doubt. I have heard that, in parts of Connecticut, cider was sold for fifty cents per barrel to whoever would furnish casks, and that their size was hardly considered. Manifestly, this left nothing for the apples.
If Apples could have been daily supplied to our poorer citizens in such quantities as they could conveniently take, at from fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel, according to quality and comeliness, I am confident that this City and its suburbs would have taken Two or Three Millions of bushels more than they have done; and the same is true of other cities. But the poor rarely buy a barrel of Apples at once; and they have been required to pay as much for half a peck as I could get for a bushel just like them. In other words: the hucksters and middlemen set so high a price on their respective services in dividing up a barrel of Apples and conveying them from the rural producer to the urban consumer that a large portion of the farmer's apples must rot on his hands or be sold by him for less than the cost of harvesting, while the poor of the cities find them too dear to be freely eaten.
Nor are Apples singular in this respect. I would like to grow a thousand bushels of English (round) and French or Swede Turnips per annum if I could be sure of getting $1 per barrel for them delivered at the railroad. If the poor of this City could buy such Turnips throughout their season by the half peck at the rate of $2 per barrel, I believe they would buy and eat many more than they do. But they are usually asked twenty-five cents per half peck, which is at the rate of $5 per barrel; and at this rate they hold them too dear for every-day use. So the Turnips are not grown, or the cattle are invited to clear them off before they rot and become worthless and nuisance.
Quite often, a green youth undertakes to get rich by farming near some great city. He has heard and believes that Cabbages bring from $5 to $8 and even $10 per hundred, Squashes from $10 to $25 per hundred, Watermelons from $20 to $50, and so on. He has made his calculations on this basis, and sanguinely expects to make money rapidly. But his products, in the first place, fall short of his estimates; they are not ready for market so soon as he expected they would be; and, when at length they are ready, every one else seems to have rushed in ahead of him. The market is glutted; no one seems to want his "truck" at any figure; he sells it for a song, and quits farming disgusted and bankrupt. May be, his stuff would have sold much better next week or the week after; but he could not afford to bring it to market and take it back day after day, on the chance that the demand for it would improve by-and-by. I judge that more young men have on this account turned their backs on farming, after a brief trial, than on any other. They might have borne up against the shortness of their crops, hoping for better luck next time; but the necessity for selling them for a price that would not have reimbursed their cost, had they been ever so luxuriant, utterly disheartens and alienates them.
I preach no crusade against hucksters and middlemen. I hold them, in the actual state of things, benefactors to both producers and consumers. In so far as they deal honestly and meet promptly their obligations, they deserve commendation rather than reproach. What I urge is, that more economical and efficient machinery of exchange and distribution ought to be devised and set at work—machinery that would do all that is required at a moderate, reasonable cost.