MARKET DAYS. 331 



tion, and that sales will be readily effected at remunerating 

 prices. 



The tendency of trade in this country is to centralization. 

 The large manufacturers of cotton and woollen goods and of 

 boots and shoes, instead of selling at their factories, have their 

 places for making sales in the metropolis. And where the 

 manufacturer and the salesman are united in the same person, 

 it makes but little difference whether the factory and the shop 

 are in one and the same place or at a distance from each other. 

 But where the manufacturer sells his goods to the merchant, 

 who buys to sell again, — as in the case with boots and shoes — 

 then it makes oftentimes all the difference to the manufacturer, 

 of a living profit by the sale of his goods, or no profit at all, 

 whether the purchaser comes to the manufacturer, or the 

 manufacturer goes to the purchaser. The Scripture adage — 

 ." It is naught says the buyer," — will operate in the former case 

 with unrestricted vigor, while in the latter it will fail of its 

 o iject to depreciate the price of that which it is known is 

 wanted by the purchaser. 



In the third place, no small advantage would accrue to the 

 farmer by the establishing of regular market days, from their 

 tendency to equalize the prices of agricultural products. At 

 present, prices are left to depend too much upon caprice and 

 accident, and but little difference is made between different 

 qualities of the same article. An inferior article often brings 

 as much as, or more than, a superior one; so that the sale of 

 agricultural products resembles more a lottery than a fair and 

 equable traffic. " What luck to-day?" is the usual interroga- 

 tory put to the farmer on his return from market ; meaning 

 thereby not whether a sale was effected of his produce, but at 

 what rates. And as a consequence of this uncertainty in prices, 

 there is but little inducement to prepare for the market any 

 commodity — such as butter or cheese — of a superior quality, 

 when it is well understood that as a matter of dollars and cents, 

 an inferior one, requiring less time and labor in its production, 

 will pay much better. The advantage of an open market where 

 products of a similar kind are exposed to sale side by side, is 

 that a standard of prices is readily fixed, each takes its place 

 according to its merit and commands the price to which it is 



