156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



fifteen cents. There was that difference in the fruit. You will 

 find sometimes a fancy farmer who will send in some of that 

 stuff, and then he will wonder why he cannot sell it. 



Mr. Barnard of Worcester. I have been raising vegetables 

 for the market to a greater or less extent for the last quarter of 

 a century, and I have found it more difficult to dispose of the 

 vegetables than to raise them. We tried a free public market 

 in Worcester, but we found, although it worked well for the 

 first few months, that people were not disposed to come to the 

 market to buy vegetables. They would rather follow the old 

 custom of going to the market-house and having the vegetables 

 sent home. If they bought at the public market, of course 

 they were expected to take them away in their baskets. That 

 seemed to be one difficulty. Furthermore, the farmers were 

 not disposed to give two lialf days, perhaps, in a week to go to 

 market with their products. There was still another difficulty. 

 Perhaps the consumer would come to the market, and would 

 not find the producer, and then the producer would come there, 

 and the consumer would not be there ; so the public market 

 has not been as successful in Worcester as it has been in Phil- 

 adelphia and other cities ; and now we have to carry our pro- 

 ducts to the market-houses, and sell them for the most we can 

 get. But it seems to me if the cities would establish public 

 markets, the people would accustom themselves to visit them, 

 and farmers would find it for their interest to devote two half 

 days in the week to selling the products of their gardens. 

 Then, when the producer and the consumer come face to face, 

 if they cannot make their interest mutual, I do not know who 

 can do it for them. I think it would be best for both parties, 

 but they have got to be educated into it. 



Mr. N. S. Hubbard of Brimficld. This is a matter which is 

 of great consequence to the farming community. The only 

 thing that we can do, that will be of great benefit to the far- 

 mer, is to devise some plan in which the middle-men shall not 

 get too large a share of the profits. There are articles that can 

 be taken into the market, as the gentlemen have represented, 

 and sold to a very much better profit to the producer than 

 under the present system, probably ; but if a man is living 

 seventy or eighty miles back from the city of Boston, where his 

 produce is marketed, he cannot go with the produce of his sin- 



