No. 4.] RIGHTS OF THE PrxODUCER. 115 



he sells on six, eight, twelve and sixteen months' time, and 

 he mnst cover himself. There are a great many people in 

 mj city who I know do not pay the market man oftener than 

 once a year. There should be a big difference there between 

 the amount the consumer pays and the amount the farmer 

 receives. Where the sales are for cash, or where the bills 

 are settled within one week, there is a smaller difference be- 

 tween what the farmer receives and what the consumer pays. 

 Take it, for instance, in the price of lettuce, where 18 

 heads of lettuce are selling for 35 cents in a wholesale way, 

 the consumer is buying 3 heads of lettuce for 10 cents. 

 In most every case where they pay their bills promptly or 

 buy for cash, in large cities, they buy on a very small margin. 



In regard to the public market. I think it is a wonder- 

 fully good thing for both farmer and consumer. Every 

 producer, every farmer, goes to market on certain days, and 

 if there is a public marketplace in every city or town for 

 the farmer's use, and the consumers can go there and buy, 

 they can buy pretty close, and the farmer gets very close to 

 the consumer's dollar. The temptation, then, is for the com- 

 mission man and the dealer to try to do the farmer up by 

 forcing him to get out of the market at a certain time in 

 the day and give them the opportunity to do business the 

 rest of the day. That scheme was tried in Boston, — to 

 drive the farmers out of South Market Street and out of 

 State Street at 10 o'clock in the morning, — but it didn't 

 work. The farmers had an association, the Boston Market 

 Gardeners' Association, and they defeated that attempt. 

 We have got to have associations in order to protect our- 

 selves, or we will never do anything as farmers. I should 

 like to see in every town and in every village a public market 

 some day in the week ; in the smaller places one or two days 

 in the week is enough. 



Mr. II. A. TuRXEE (Xorwell). Mr. Chairman, I have 

 been very much interested in this address of Dr. Twitchell, 

 and I want to ask him one question. In our locality our 

 leading industry just now is the poultry business, and it 

 is very nice for the poultry dealer to have the middleman 

 come in with his team and pick up the fowls and pay the 



