94 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



THE NECESSITY OP TRAFSPOBTATION FACILITIES. 



I am not one of those who denounce the railway for 

 proper charges, nor the necessary middleman for rea- 

 sonable profits. When I send a bushel of flour from 

 my farm fifty miles away to Washington and pay 

 twelve cents freight, I do not consider that I am robbed ; 

 but when I pay the city transportation company seventy- 

 five cents to deliver that package at my house, I am 

 robbed, but the railroad is not the robber. If I offer 

 my goods for sale to a middle party and he charges me 

 six per cent, commission, if he gives me an honest deal 

 I do not consider that I have been defrauded. When 

 I sell my product to the buyer and he re-sells it the 

 next day at a profit of thirty per cent., I am robbed. 

 He makes more in a day out of my year's work than I 

 make in a year. 



It is easy to state the conditions of trade, but it is 

 not by any means so easy to suggest a better way therein. 

 I can best illustrate by transactions which I have just 

 had. The small farmer is in no position to ship his 

 beef cattle to a market and take the chances of their 

 sale. He is not a large enough dealer to know how to 

 protect even his own interests, and the farmer with his 

 cattle on the market far from home is at the mercy of 

 the bidder. 



The practice in my part of the country is as follows : 

 When the beef cattle are ready for the market you are 

 visited by a number of buyers. As they look over your 

 stock of cattle, they shoot it full of holes. This steer 

 is too slender in the flank, the next has a sway back, the 

 third shows its ribs too plainly, and the fourth and fifth 

 have grave defects. In fact, the beautiful herd of cat- 

 tle that you so admired before the buyer came along, 



