154 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



just charges. The reason the farmer thinks he is mak- 

 ing money when he is doing work like this is because 

 he pays himself nothing, does not charge himself rent, 

 takes no account of interest on the land or of the ex- 

 penses of its maintenance. He thinks he is making 

 twenty dollars on every steer that he fattens and sells, 

 or fifty cents on every bushel of wheat he grows, when 

 in point of fact he is probably running in debt on both 

 counts. 



THE MIDDLEMAN USEFUL* 



I am not in sympathy with the theory that the mid- 

 dleman is unnecessary. I do not see how I, as a farmer 

 in Loudoun County, Virginia, can take my products 

 to New York and sell them direct to the consumer. I 

 do not believe that the railways of the country are eat- 

 ing up the farmers' profits. In this country, under the 

 present method of distribution, the railway is the salva- 

 tion of agriculture. Without the railway, the cost of 

 bringing food commodities to the great cities would be 

 immensely increased, and the price paid to the farmer 

 would correspondingly diminish, while the price paid 

 by the consumer would correspondingly increase. 

 Moreover, trade in food products could not be carried on 

 without the wholesaler and the retailer. They are, like 

 the railway, necessary to distribution. But in farming 

 as in logic we do not want too much undistributed 

 middle. 



The true problem to be solved is the regulation of 

 these avenues of transportation and methods of distri- 

 bution, not their suppression. It might be well to ask, 

 though, if there are not too many railways, too many 

 brokers and wholesale and retail merchants. In other 

 words, one of the principal problems relating to country 



