THE MIDDLEMAN IN AGRICULTURE. 93 



The most successful application of the co-operative 

 principle, hitherto, in agricultural production has been 

 in cheese factories and creameries. The former have in a 

 few cases been established for some time, but they have 

 not been multiplied ; the latter have never become very 

 popular in Great Britain, but in Ireland a large number 

 have been started and appear to be flourishing. 



Reference has already been made to the fraudulent 

 profits which are still obtained by some unscrupulous 

 middlemen in the case of margarine and meat. As 

 regards the former commodity, two suggestions have 

 been made for the amendment of the law. One is that 

 all margarine, or butter containing an admixture of it, 

 shall be sold uncoloured, or coloured in a distinctive 

 manner ; and the other is that travelling inspectors shall 

 be appointed by a central authority to carry out the law 

 against adulteration. 



As regards meat, the figures given of the supply at the 

 Central Market showed that nearly half of it was foreign. 

 When we see in the London butchers' shops anything 

 like that proportion of foreign meat we shall believe 

 that it is all sold openly and honestly, but until then it 

 is justifiable to assert that a fraudulent profit is frequently 

 made by selling foreign meat as English. 



In summing up these rather disjointed observations on 

 a subject of which it may be said that age does not 

 wither, nor custom stale — but indeed increase — its 

 infinite variety, let it be admitted that to talk of elimi- 

 nating the middleman, in a country such as this, is absurd. 

 He is at once the product and the organiser of civilisation. 



Even in modern England we find now and then a village 

 artisan who adheres to primitive methods, and makes things 

 on his own account for sale to his neighbours, managing his 

 own business and undertaking all risks. But such cases are 

 rare ; and in the greater part of the business of the modern 

 world the task of so directing production that a given effort 

 may be most effective in supplying human wants has to be 

 broken up and given into the hands of a specialised body of 



