WHY THERE IS NOT MORE FOOD 93 



country and the consuming power of all classes was 

 increasing rapidly. 



Similar methods are employed by the distributers 

 to kill off local truck-gardening. Local produce in- 

 terferes with the control of the market. The rail- 

 roads again find it to their advantage to bring in 

 food from a distance, while the middlemen find it 

 much easier to control prices if they are free from 

 competition by the neighboring farmers. And all 

 sorts of discriminations are made against local pro- 

 duction. The farmers find it difficult and expensive 

 to get their food into the city. There are no ter- 

 minals that are free from control. Ofttimes their 

 consignments are rejected. Often they are left to 

 rot at the terminals. It is to the interest of the 

 middlemen to keep down the supply and prevent 

 anything like an excess supply in the market. In 

 time the city becomes dependent on vegetables 

 brought from a distance just as it becomes depen- 

 dent on meat brought from the packing centres. 

 And after the middlemen and distributers have 

 crushed local competition they treat the distant 

 shippers as ruthlessly as they do the near-by farmer. 

 They refuse his shipments. They leave consign- 

 ments to spoil or offer the shipper a price that is 

 so low that it scarcely pays for transportation. In 

 the spring of 1917, when Congress was debating the 

 food bills and the press of the country was ringing 

 with condemnation of the food speculators, 800,000 



