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information that will enable the producer, the distributor, the consumer 

 and the carrier to keep more closely in touch with each other, to the very 

 material benefit of all." 



To be sure, those bureaus have been organized primarily for the 

 purpose of furthering the business interests of the concerns affected. In 

 furthering their business interests, however, they have also 'furthered 

 without doubt the prosperity of the farmer, the business interests of the 

 city, and remotely, no doubt, the interests of the consumer as well. 



IV. What is the Consumer Doing? 



But what is the consumer doing, he who pays half his income for 

 food? We certainly would expect him to be alert as to exactly the 

 channels through which his food products are reaching him. 



Quite to the contrary, he has done practically nothing. He is not 

 even thinking, he is just wondering — ^wondering because he does not 

 have the data with which to think. 



Some consumers, to be sure, have voiced their demands through 

 Housewives' Leagues, which have done much to give needed publicity as 

 to certain ills in the food distribution world, to certain abuses by retailers, 

 to certain types of misrepresentation, to needless costs to consumers 

 through underweights and false measures. Other consumers have united 

 in blindly groping for some kind of curative legislation that they hope 

 will cure all the ills to which they have been subjected, though ofttimes, 

 through this very legislation, their ills have been increased rather than 

 diminished. 



I have said that the consumer was doing practically nothing. But 

 there is one thing he is doing. He is making up his mind that something 

 must be done and that he is going to see that something is done. And 

 that something will be done, no one can doubt. That it will be wisely 

 done is utterly unthinkable, unless by sheerest luck, for the consumer 

 does not have at hand the information essential for wise action. 



V. What is the City Doing? 



In the nineteenth century urban prosperity was linked closely with 

 the growth in land values and the returns that came from exploiting the 

 virgin soil. This source of wealth has passed away. The city must now 

 rely upon the productive power of its average citizen. That productive 

 power depends primarily upon how and at what cost that citizenary is 

 fed. One would naturally think, therefore, that the city would certainly 

 have been busied in formulating methods whereby food prices might be 

 kept at a minimum. 



But such is far from the case. Philadelphia is spending $100,000 a 

 year — and more is being spent in other cities — in studying the needs for 

 a facile transit system that will get the wage-earner to his work; she is 

 paying one market clerk $1,000 a year in order to solve the problem as 



