i6 



peril, even if his acres suffer for the forcing, search out the 

 potent fertilizer and plant the early delicacy, — something 

 that will steal the march upon his vigilant and active neigh- 

 bors, for the adage about the early bird that catches the 

 worm is not more true than this, — that it is the early cu- 

 cumber — the early celery — the early spinach — the early 

 radish — the early lettuce — the early tomato, that catches 

 the customer. 



You do not fail to perceive the drift of my reflections, 

 which time will not permit me to develop further. I Avould 

 restore the individuality, — the autonomy, — the independent 

 activity of the local market and make the smaller cities and 

 greater towns self-reliant centres of consumption and dis- 

 tribution, — the parade of yesterday is precisely in this line, 

 — I would have them precisely what they were before the 

 railroad system built up at Boston a central market for 

 eastern Massachusetts, and made of it, as it were, a great 

 prehensile octopus cast up on the shore of Massachusetts 

 Bay, reaching out for everything, and stretching its iron 

 tentacles — its steel-rail tentacles, rather — for thirty miles 

 around, and sucking into its inexorable maw, not your 

 farm-products alone, but a good part of the business energy 

 and brain-power and wealth-producing capacity and art 

 capacity and capacity for recreation that belong of right to 

 the surrounding country. I would have vegetables and 

 fruits and butter and eggs and many of the products that 

 depend on their freshness for their merchantable value, 

 treated very much as milk, for instance, is treated to-day, 

 — treated as they can well be treated when street railway 

 lines perform their destined function — that is to say, trans- 

 ported not so much to a central market at Boston, where 

 the wholesaler may deal them out to a country retailer, 

 who often brings them back again, — but moving much more 

 directly from producer to consumer. A little more organ- 

 izing capacity and a little more independence in the rela- 



