My first visitor this Monday was a man of business. As I was making my tea he came up towards me driving two lean horses and a great black oblong box on wheels. At the farm where I had drawn water for my kettle he pulled up and dismounted. A girl who had seen him from a window of the farmhouse came tripping to meet him. He exchanged some words with her, and then from the far side of his hearse-like cart he produced a black chest, out of which he pulled a pair of boots. The young lady then hopped back to the house to try them on. Satisfied as to her purchase she took in addition a pound of tea and a packet of sugar. The cart was a moving store: here were all manner of things for sale. But the storekeeper received no money; all his debts were paid in eggs. One side of the hearse was full of merchandise, the other contained nested boxes and crates for the accommodation of hundreds of dozens of eggs.
The storeman gave me a lift and explained to me his business. He possessed a cold-storage establishment in the city; he credited the farm people with sixteen cents (eightpence) for every dozen eggs they gave him, then he stored them in his freezing-house till autumn, when they could be thrown on the market at twenty-five to thirty cents the dozen.
He was a great believer in cold storage. "Meat," said he, "is tenderer when it has been frozen some weeks."
Business in eggs used to be better. Now the State set a limit on the time you could keep them in cold storage. Sometimes he had to sell out at a loss. The hope was to keep all the farm produce till there was a real scarcity and prices went high. Then it would be possible to make a small fortune.
"But I'm tired of this business," said the storeman, "I'd like to give it up and buy land."
We lumbered along the road and stopped at each farmhouse. Sometimes we sold articles, but whether we sold anything or not we always took a few dozen eggs; every farmer was in business with my man and used him as a sort of egg-bank. Even if they were not in debt to him they were glad to hand over their eggs and be credited with the corresponding amount of money. We took four or five dozen eggs at least at every farm, and sometimes as many as twenty and thirty dozen. The storeman left behind an empty crate at each farm, so that it might be filled for him next time he came along, and he took aboard the crate already filled. In exchange he sold kerchiefs, boots, corsets, cloth, brooms, brushes, coffee, corn-flake, wire-gauze to keep out mosquitoes, etc. At the end of his round he would have got rid of almost all his merchandise and have filled both sides of the hearse with eggs. He took home upon occasion as many as five hundred dozen eggs!
A cheerful American with a word of news, a titbit of gossip, and the top of the morning for all the country women. He was eagerly awaited, and children at farm-gates descried him a long way off and ran in to tell their mothers. Even the babies were excited at his approach, for they knew he carried a supply of candy. At each farm where there was a baby the storeman left a little bag of candy. He knew the value of good-will.
"It's a good business," said he; "no expense of keeping a shop, double profit,—profit on the goods and profit on the eggs; it pays all right. But I'm tired of it, and I think I shall give it up and buy land." To several of his customers who asked after his business he replied in the same terms. He was getting tired of it, and was thinking of buying land. When I took a photograph of his cart and himself he said he would be very glad to have a copy, just to remind him of old days—for he was thinking of giving it up, etc.
It is interesting to observe the commercialisation that goes on in the country in America. Not only does the egg-bank and travelling store come round, but the cream-vans come also and buy up all the cream, and the baker comes from the bread factory and dumps, twice or three times a week, huge baskets of damp, tasteless loaves, all wrapped in grease-paper. Not many people bake their own bread—they save time and take this astonishing substitute. Then travellers in coffee have exploited special brands—"Euclid Coffee," "Primus Coffee," "Old Reliable," and the like, done up in pound packets. Rural Americans do not realise that good coffee is coffee and no more.