SECRETARY'S REPORT. 117 



portation. For example, lie may have fat cattle ready for the butcher; 

 there are certain market days, well known and established, when the 



London butcher attends to make his purchases. He may not even drive; 

 his cattle to market, but may bargain for them to be delivered at a given 

 day. Or he may have a crop of oats, this he may sell by sample ; and 

 thus save the cost of transportation, in case the market happens not to 

 suit his ideas as to price. This is briefly stated to show the benefit of 

 system in comparison with our desultory method of hunting up purchas- 

 ers, as is now the case. On a well-established, well-known market day, 

 buyers and sellers meet together ; fair prices are at once established, and 

 no time is lost, no needless expense incurred, by searching here and there 

 for what may be easily and cheaply brought together under a proper 

 system. 



Massachusetts is as favorably situated as England is for the establish- 

 ment of markets. Her manufacturing cities, towns, and villages are 

 spread as thickly over the State, and the consumers are far in excess of 

 what is supplied from the soil. All that is needed on our part is to create 

 unity of purpose and of action on the part of consumer and producer. 

 The cost of bringing the article produced to the consumer would, in a 

 vast number of cases, afford an enormous profit to the producer. All 

 this he could not be expected to get, but it would be divided between the 

 producer and the consumer. The turkey that is picked up by a travelling 

 buyer throughout our country towns, at 75- cents, finds its way to Faneuil 

 Hall, and the consumer there willingly pays $1.50 for it; the difference 

 is the cost of getting it to market with one or two intermediate profits, 

 which are by this method unnecessarily added to it. If the purchaser 

 for the Boston market could have attended a country market on a poultry 

 day, when all who had it for sale for miles around attended, he could have 

 afforded to have given $1 for the turkey, and have sold it in Boston at 

 $1.25. This is a supposed case ; but at the same time it is one which 

 every farmer will admit to be justified by experience, and it is adduced 

 to illustrate the general principle, that the producer pays the principal 

 cost of transportation. A farmer in Berkshire county can get no more 

 for a turkey in Boston market than one who brings it from Chelsea ; but 

 if he has a market for the turkey near home he is sure of getting the 

 Boston price, less a very moderate cost of transportation. This cost is 

 always less in proportion to the amount, and the expense of collecting 

 the requisite quantity to make the transportation cheap, is almost entirely 

 saved by having it brought to a central point. 



The value of farming property depends very much upon its proximity 

 to a quick and ready market, and hence it is that farms in the neighbor- 

 hood of large cities bear so much higher prices than those which are 

 remote. But even those most favorably situated in this respect would be 



