156 COMMON SENSE 
Marketing. 
NS the mild days of spring approached, eggs began ccme in 
quite rapidly—thirty and forty dozen per day—and 
it was necessary to find some method of getting rid 
of them profitably. I tried to sell all I could to private parties, 
and the rest I was obliged to get rid of at the stores, though the 
price was at this season very low—even down to 18 cents per 
dozen. As I expected next year to have twice the number of 
hens in my yard, and to get more than twice the number of eggs, 
it was necessary to get up a system of marketing which would re- 
lieve me somewhat from the danger of glutting the stores, and I 
saw that this could only be done by offering extra inducements in 
the way of freshness; neatness and convenience to tie consumer. 
I had always had a great horror of “ middlemen” and “job- 
bers.” As a general rule they are mere parasites on the body 
social, standing between the retailer and the producer, and fleecing 
both. I concluded, therefore, that I would have nothing to do 
with them. I found, however, that the “egg business” was in a 
most singular state. The retailer paid almost as much for his eggs 
as he got fer them, and those large establishments (restaurants, 
hotels, etc.) offered prices a good deal less than the groceries paid. 
At first I was puzzled over this condition of things, but I soon saw 
through it. The hotels and restaurants in our large cities never 
buy fresh-laid eggs. When I could get forty cents per dozen for 
eggs in the groceries, they offered twenty and twenty-five! What 
eggs could they buy at that price? Chiefly imported eggs, 
brought from Belgium, Denmark and Germany, where money is so 
scarce amongst the wretched inhabitants that their crops are sold 
for whatever they can get. No wonder that such eggs differ 
widely in flavor from what are called country eggs. I have always 
been suspicious of eggs in restaurants, but since my investigations, 
