148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Massachusetts and the consumers of Massachusetts to open their 

 eyes to the importance of this question, and say tliat this thing 

 shall not 1)0 done any longer. 



I want you to look at this matter broadly, throwing out all 

 narrow considerations in regard to any personal friendships 

 you may have for the middle-man, or the commission merchant, 

 or the produce dealer. I ask you to put the question in regard 

 to most of the articles you purchase or sell, as producers or 

 consumers, from day to day, whether there is any reason why 

 there should be such a discrepancy between the price which the 

 farmer gets for an article, and the price at which it goes into 

 your mouths ? We are apt to consider only those things rob- 

 bery which are called robbery, that is, the taking of property 

 by force from the pockets or houses of men. I speak not of 

 "moral aspects, I make no charges of crime ; but, in point of 

 fact, what greater robbery is there in that, than for a set of men 

 who arc not producers to assume to take all the profits of the 

 labor of mankind ? That is the tendency to-day in regard to 

 everything, and it is especially the tendency in regard to 

 farmers. 



I believe I have stated strongly enough in what I have said, 

 what I mean ; perhaps I have stated it too strongly ; but I want 

 to set your minds thinking on this subject. It seems to me that 

 it is a question worthy of earnest consideration, whether a law 

 requiring every town of over five thousand inhabitants to pro- 

 vide some suitable place, with shelter for teams, where those 

 who have produce to sell, themselves being the producers, or 

 their immediate agents or servants, may meet the consumers face 

 to face, would not be of great service to both classes. 



It is no use for us to say, and it is no use for a committee of 

 the city council of Boston to say, as was said in a recent report, 

 that Boston is diflferently situated from other cities in the 

 United States, and that the markets there have not enhanced 

 prices. It is a fact, and it must necessarily be a fact, so long as 

 we know that two, three or four thousand dollars are given for 

 single stalls, 10 by 15 or 20, in Faneuil Hall market. Mr, Quincy 

 has said that when he was mayor of Boston, he knew of a case 

 where hundreds of bushels of peaches were thrown into the 

 dock below Faneuil Hall Market early one morning, rather than 

 allow them to be sold at a reduced price. I know of other 



