CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON. 149 



cases where the same thing has been done in regard to poultry 

 and meat. These men make so much money that they can 

 afford to throw these things overboard six or eight times dining 

 the summer, rather than reduce the price of a staple in which 

 they are dealing a cent a pound or a dollar a ton ; and as long 

 as these facts exist, it is idle to say that Faneuil Ilall Market is 

 not a curse, not only to Boston, but to Massachusetts. It is 

 time the attention of our farmers was directed to this subject, 

 and we of the country should demand of the legislature that 

 we have free trade in Boston, and free access to the people of 

 Boston. I am tired, for one, of seeing committees of the city 

 council, year after year, appointed to consider this question, 

 who travel all over the country, and come back and say that 

 nothing can be done. I am tired of seeing new markets going 

 up, to be let out in this way to these monopolists. I want to 

 see some plan adopted by which the people of Boston can, 

 every day, meet the producers, and learn something of the 

 value of the articles they consume, and what they ought to pay 

 for them. 



The committee of the city council state that tlie suburbs of 

 Boston are thickly settled, and therefore gardening cannot be 

 carried on in its immediate vicinity. Therefore, if I understand 

 them, free markets can do no good. In other words the 

 suburbs of Boston are Boston. But is Boston with its suburbs 

 larger than London, where almost everything is sold in its 

 streets. The " London cries " are proverbial. Are Boston and 

 il9 suburbs more extended than Paris and New York ? Why, 

 gentlemen, the committee of the Boston city council give that 

 as a reason, for not having a free market, which is the result of 

 the monopoly and exclusion which they would perpetuate. 

 The present system has driven out of existence the numerous 

 and worthy class of small farmers, the peasantry, which are 

 found in the neighborhood of all large cities ; your organized 

 market gardeners remain, but the men who sell the single pro- 

 ducts of their own industry, from their small plots, are not to be 

 found. I care not whether they would be Irish or German, 

 Americans or Norwegians, this class of small farmers is extinct, 

 because no opportunity has been allowed them to market the 

 small products of their daily labor. Encourage such a class, for 

 whom there is still plenty of room within ten miles of the city 



