EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION. 299 



I had no surplus, after paying men $1.50 per day for 

 picking and barreling them. I sold all I could to 

 vinegar-makers at fifty cents per bushel for cider- 

 apples the casks being returned. But they could 

 not take all I wished to sell them, there being so 

 many sellers pressing to get rid of their windfalls be- 

 fore they rotted on their hands that even this market 

 was glutted. That it was much worse for the farmer 

 a dozen miles from a railroad and a hundred from 

 the nearest city, none can doubt. I have heard that, 

 in parts of Connecticut, cider was sold for fifty^ents 

 per barrel to whoever would furnish casks, and that 

 their size was hardly considered. Manifestly, this 

 left nothing for the apples. 



If Apples could have been daily supplied to our 

 poorer citizens in such quantities as they could con- 

 veniently take, at from fifty to seventy-five cents per 

 bushel, according to quality and comeliness, I am 

 confident that this City and its suburbs would have 

 taken Two or Three Millions of bushels more than 

 they have done ; and the same is true of other cities. 

 But the poor rarely buy a barrel of Apples at once ; 

 and they have been required to pay as much for half 

 a peck as I could get for a bushel just like them. In 

 other words : the hucksters and middlemen set so 

 high a price on their respective services in dividing 

 up a barrel of Apples and conveying them from the 

 rural producer to the urban consumer that a large 

 portion of the farmer's apples must rot on his hands 

 or be sold by him for less than the cost of harvesting, 



