60 
The Middleman in Agriculture. 
for keeping the roads in a proper state of repair ; from him also 
are levied rates which maintain a police establishment, considered 
necessary to make property secure.” 1 
The term “ cost of distribution,” therefore, it will be seen, 
bears a wide meaning, and consequently it is not so easy as it may 
at first sight appear to strictly define who may be included under 
the designation of “ middlemen ” in Agriculture. But for the 
purposes of this article it will at any rate be safe to exclude 
scavengers and police from the category. 
It will be admitted that the chain of “ middlemen ” between 
the farmer and the householder has quite enough well-recognised 
links. The expense of conveyance from the farm to the market 
no doubt comes primarily under the head of cost of distribution, 
and it is perfectly fair to class railway companies and others who 
control the carrying agencies of the country among middlemen. 
At the present time a very considerable amount of dissatisfaction 
has arisen, and has been more or less emphatically expressed, 
with the position and power assumed by the railway companies 
in their dealings with agx-icultural produce. No doubt the 
British farmer is of necessity very much in the hands and at 
the mercy of the distributing agencies, and it is perfectly true 
that Parliament in its wisdom has made the carrying trade of 
the country a monopoly. It is evident, further, that the railway 
companies have chosen a most inopportune time for attempting 
to impose upon their customers increased charges under the 
revised powers which Parliament has lately sanctioned. At 
any time it would have come with all the force of a grievous 
disappointment upon the agriculturists of the kingdom to find 
that the result of the long struggle on the question of Railway 
Rates was to be chiefly an addition to the ordinary charges for 
the conveyance of their produce ; but what in a time of com- 
parative prosperity might have been only disappointment, at 
such a time as the present leads to positive desperation. But 
burning as this subject is, and tempting as an excursion into it 
might therefore be, we must venture in the present article to 
put it aside as one which, if dealt with at all, would demand for 
itself the whole of the space which is here available. A further 
reason for deferring it may be found in the fact that the question 
is just now, so to speak, sub judice, the Board of Trade having 
given the railway companies until Easter to come to terms with 
their customers, and having promised then to move for a Select 
Committee to decide upon the best independent tribunal to set 
up for the settlement of “ reasonable ” rates. It may perhaps 
Fawcett’s Manual of Political Economy, 6th ed., p. 109. 
