The Food of the People. 
115 
under consideration at the Society of Arts, and will shortly be 
fully discussed there in a paper to be read by Mr, J. C. Morton, 
who is making the necessary collection of facts. 
The Royal Agricultural Society would probably co-operate 
with the Society of Arts in dealing with the important question 
of food markets. 
Suggestions have been mad(! for the establishment of additional 
markets in connexion with the principal railway stations in 
London. The metropolitan salesmen and butchers are entirely 
averse to such suggestions. How do they strike the agricultural 
interest ? 
How far is it desirable for the producers of stock that the 
sale of dead meat should be substituted for the sale of live 
meat ? 
There can be no doubt that under present arrangements the 
transit of live meat by the railways is damaging to the condition 
and value of the animals. Cannot the Royal Agricultural 
Society, its affiliated societies — the Chambers of Agriculture, and 
the Farmers' Clubs — combine to procure an improvement of such 
arrangements ? That which the individual farmer is powerless 
to obtain from a railway company might very easily be secured 
by a little combination among the powerful bodies that are 
established for the express purpose of promoting the interests of 
Agriculture, 
Meat Trucks. — The quantity of dead meat now sent to London 
from the country is great : but the arrangements for conveying it 
are barbarous. The meat is exposed to unnecessary injury. Why 
should not agriculturists combine to insist on the adoption of 
suitable meat vans, in which the meat might not be pressed, nor 
piled up, nor handled, nor exposed to dust, heat, and wind, — 
well ventilated meat vans, kept at a moderate temperature, and 
fitted with portable larders where the joints might be placed by 
the farmer or country butcher, and which might be lifted into 
the London kitchen, or butcher's shop, without handling the 
meat at all ? 
Is it impossible to adapt the principle of " co-operative " 
action to the case of the producers of meat ? With new arrange- 
ments, or even with the present arrangements of markets in 
London, could not meat be sent on the co-operative principle, 
directly from a given number of farms to a London butcher, or 
to an agent of the farmers, who would divide with the farmers 
the actual profits, instead of leaving them to be carried off by the 
other parties ? Why should there be any intermediate agency at 
all between the farmer who kills his own meat, and the large 
consumer who buys it, in the club, the hotel, the large private 
house ? 
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