74 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



The city of Boston suffers not only from the 

 usual embargo on products from outside the city 

 but is hampered still further by a particularly in- 

 adequate system of internal transportation of mer- 

 chandise. This adds to the difficulties of the farm- 

 ers of Massachusetts in securing a large and accessi- 

 ble market in Boston and appreciably increases the 

 cost of living. One of the chief needs of the city in 

 meeting the situation, says the report on transporta- 

 tion, is a wholesale terminal market. 



This is merely suggestive of the blockade through 

 which the food and fuel supply of our cities must 

 pass from the producer to the consumer. It af- 

 fects every article of daily consumption — meat, 

 eggs, poultry, fish, butter, fruit, vegetables, coal, 

 and lumber. Prices are artificially made. They 

 bear no relation to cost of production, the price paid 

 the farmer, or the service rendered by the middlemen. 

 An association fixes the prices at what the traflEic 

 will bear. An investigation of the prices demanded 

 for turkeys during the Thanksgiving season of 1916 

 showed that the middlemen added 100 per cent, to 

 the cost of the patriotic bird to the consumers of 

 New York. Their profits were estimated to be in 

 excess of $1,500,000. 



One of the worst results is the destruction of agri- 

 culture about the great cities, for it is to the interest 

 of the railroads to bring supplies from as long a 

 distance as possible. Food from the Far West gives 



