Proceedings of the Farmers^ Club. 023 



through middlemen. For three or four years previous to the last, I 

 was at different localities on the sea shore where fisherman follow it 

 as a business. Prices for sea bass in New York averaged through 

 the season twelve to twenty cents per pound, while the highest price 

 the fisherman received Avas five cents per pound, and the greater part 

 of the time but four cents. At Tom's River clams sold to wagoners 

 for two dollars per thousand, and carted thirty or forty miles in the 

 interior of the country and retailed at forty to fifty cents per hundred, 

 while the same article was retailed in JN'ew York markets for one 

 dollar per hundred. Vegetables and fruit seldom reach the consumer 

 but through middlemen. They are monopolized before they reach 

 the market, and generally kept on hand until they become unmarket- 

 able, rather than let competition regulate the price. But little is 

 known by the community how almost every article of the productive 

 agricultural industry of the country is monopolized, and reaches the 

 consumer only through middlemen. At Albany I have found the 

 price of beef to average five cents per pound less than in New York, 

 At Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Geneva, Elmira, and all the principal 

 towns west of Albany, the price of beef would average ten cents per 

 pound less than in New York. Near the terminus of the railroads com- 

 ing into Albany and Troy, there are extensiv^e cattle yards, where cattle 

 are herded until the tell-tale telegraph wire informs the monopolizers 

 that it will answer to hurry their cattle to market, l^y this means the 

 price of beef has been and will be kept up at starvation prices, so 

 long as capital can control the market. For a number of years I 

 had my butter sent to me by a friend from western New York, at 

 the difterence of ten to twelve cents per pound less than New York 

 prices. My correspondent at length informed me that New York 

 monopolizers went through the country and made their contracts 

 with dairymen for all the butter they made, and required all the tubs 

 to be regularly numbered to prevent any outside dealing, and that 

 the only way he could supply me was by the dairyman making two 

 tubs of the same number, and letting him have one. For two years 

 afterward I got my butter from ten to twelve cents per pound less 

 than New York prices, but my friend was obliged to take a twin 

 number,. without any choice of quality. I was obliged to abandon 

 my western supply and pay New York prices, to get the same quality 

 of butter that I had formerly had at producers' prices. When in 

 Illinois I inquired the price of potatoes, and was told that if they 

 were delivered on the wagon they would be three cents per bushel, 



