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CHAPTER 8 



DISTRIBUTION 



Nobody Loves the Middleman 



WHEN a farmer eats in a restaurant, which is seldom, he 

 sometimes orders a glass of milk. He is likely to receive a 

 small glass, for which he is charged a nickel. He may be a 

 dairyman and possibly may be drinking milk that he himself 

 produced. Elementary arithmetic tells him that he received 

 about one cent for producing the glass of milk that cost him 

 a nickel. The middleman got the other four cents. 



Similarly a man in the city may hear that a friend of a 

 friend in the country has just sold his cabbage for 8 dollars 

 per ton. The city man may recently have bought some cab- 

 bage over the retail counter and may have paid two cents 

 per pound for it, which means a rate of 40 dollars per ton. 

 The consumer paid the grocer five times as much as the 

 farmer received. 



Nobody loves the middleman. He is alternately accused of 

 robbing the farmer and gouging the consumer. The general 

 opinion is that he has somehow inserted himself between the 

 farmer and the consumer and takes toll from both. 



With passing time, the middleman takes a larger share of 

 the consumer's dollar. It is believed that he is taking a bigger 

 profit, or is becoming less efficient, or both. 



