54 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



you v$300,ooo per year and they turn it over to the state for 

 nothing. 



And then, in addition to this you have an absolute certainty 

 that if you standardize your goods, grade them carefully at 

 home, put them up in the best kind of package, the buyers 

 bidding for these goods will pay a premium that will justify 

 you in doing your work right in grading and packing the goods 

 where they are raised. 



Competition has always been considered a necessary ele- 

 ment to satisfactorily market any commodity. In the auction 

 system at our sales, you have from two hundred to three hun- 

 dred retailers and their representatives bidding for the goods, 

 with but one salesman. Under the old commission system, you 

 have forty-five or fifty men running around trying to sell the 

 same commodity to the same buyers. It was an easy matter 

 for a buyer to tell the salesman that some one else had offered 

 him the goods for less ; that he could buy them cheaper. In the 

 auction salesroom there is no opportunity to do this. There 

 is but one way you can secure the goods and that is to bid up 

 a price over and above what the other fellow bids for it. 



Chicago has become the greatest grain market in the world 

 and it has been the greatest grain market for many, many 

 years. In that market the State of Illinois has for years main- 

 tained the inspection bureau which inspects all the grains that 

 arrive in Chicago and puts the grade on them. In New York 

 State the commission merchant or wholesale merchant has 

 been his own inspector, and if the market was not right, he 

 sometimes did his own rejecting. If the market was down, 

 the goods were poor very often ; if the market was up, the 

 goods were very satisfactory. If the goods were on commis- 

 sion, he labored with the publishers of the prices current to 

 have the quotation low, and as the price current man had no 

 other method of finding out what the market was, except to 

 listen to what the sellers told him the price at which they had 

 sold the goods, he published whatever he was told. It was only 

 human for the receiver of the goods to be conservative in giving 

 out prices. He was very careful not to give out a price higher 

 than he had actually sold the goods, and very often he had not 

 sold the goods at all, but had simply given them to somebody, 

 and was to bill them at the market quotation. This has lead to a 



