340 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. • 



privilege, judging from the crowds of liappy faces one always 

 meets there. 



I cannot give an adequate idea of this fine city. Its beauty, 

 its wealth, the exquisite taste displayed in its public grounds, 

 the boundless luxuriance of flowers, so skilfully arranged and 

 tended, the apparent happiness of the people, and the patronage 

 of art and science, struck, me with astonishment, because they 

 were all on so much larger a scale than I had expected to find 

 them. 



I attended the markets, of course. I always made it a point 

 to go into the markets of every considerable town for the sake 

 of seeing the people, their customs and habits, and the products 

 of the country. The market brings together about as fair a 

 representation of the masses as one could find. I regard it as 

 a better stand-point from which to judge of the real practical 

 coiidition of the people than the exchange. And what better 

 place is there to study both the products of the soil and the 

 mode of life of a community ? 



So far as the interests of agriculture are concerned, the 

 markets, in most of the large towns on the continent, are far 

 better conducted than our own. There the system is almost 

 wholly that of open markets and complete freedom for the pro- 

 ducer, who pays a small duty at the gate of the city. There 

 are no forestallers, no enormous rents to pay, no large bonuses 

 for the right to hire a stall, which must come out of either the 

 producer or the consumer ; part of it, perhaps, out of both. 



The market women came into Vienna, as they do into most 

 of the cities, bringing whatever they have to sell, and .had a 

 particular location assigned them in a street or public square. 

 Each had a basket, or a small hand or donkey-cart, or wagon, 

 and sold her wares just as they were brought in fresh from the 

 country. The fruit and vegetable sellers had a location by 

 themselves ; others, with something else, — eggs, poultry, butter, 

 cheese, &c., — had other locations. The consumers always know 

 where to find them. Thus the consumer and the producer are 

 brought face to face. There are fewer middle men. If the 

 producer docs have to pay tribute at the gate of the city, it is 

 small, infinitely small, compared with the splendid establish- 

 ments which m;iiiy of our market men have to keep up. 1 do 

 not know how the price of produce, as a general rule, compares 



