184 THE FARMER AS A BUSINESS MAN. • 



cash to the larger market, and uncomplainingly pay the high 

 prices for whatever they are compelled to buy locally, or they 

 can contract to give the local store all their trade, paying cash, 

 at an agreed profit upon actual cost to the dealer. When 

 the trade of an individual is large, this last arrangement can 

 ordinarily be made, provided the dealer feels confident that 

 nothing will be said about it. It will not usually pay him 

 to get only one customer at the expense of letting the whole 

 neighborhood know his scale of profits. It is quite customary 

 — and it is an excellent custom— for granges, or other farmers' 

 societies, to buy at wholesale, for cash, and distribute to their 

 members. It will frequently, if not usually, happen that quite 

 as much profit, and far more convenience, will be gained by 

 working the trade through the local dealers. In the first 

 place, the dealer, if in good credit, can usually buy cheaper 

 than any grange. It is entirely common for granges ordering 

 from wholesale dealers, to imagine themselves to be getting 

 the lowest net rates, when, as a matter of fact, a local dealer 

 may be regularly receiving a percentage on all their purchases. 

 There are many wholesale firms which will fill orders from 

 such bodies at what they term "wholesale rates," and credit 

 any customer in the town with a fair profit on the transaction, 

 or, if there be two customers, divide it between them. The 

 reason is that the trade customer buys more goods than the 

 farmers, and is likely to buy much larger, and it will not pay 

 to ofi'end him for the profit to be made on a few direct orders 

 from those who should be his customers. 



Still, if the grange buyers spend time enough and study 

 enough to keep fully in touch with the market, they can 

 obtain, for such ordinary goods as they buy, lower prices than 

 the local dealer can make for them under any circumstances. 

 They can hunt until they find some wiiolesaler from whom 

 the local dealer does not buy, and who will not therefore care 

 about "protecting" his trade. Even this, however, is not 

 certain. I have known a wholesale house to fill such an 

 order, and credit a profit to a dealer who was not dealing with 

 them at all. A little later, of course, the dealer's trade will 

 be solicited, and some part of it probably obtained. It wiil 



