S80 
PRODUCTION OP ANIMAL FOOD. 
intermediate dealers, whose exactions are not less than from 
10c. to 15c. per kilogramme each. There are also the com- 
missioners near the same markets ; the guides, to show the 
way from Sceaux to Poissy, and from Poissy to Sceaux ; the 
hay-merchant, and the lodging-house keeper; and all these 
people have their share of the benefit that the consumer 
ought to pay to the producer. It also raises the price of 
meat from 6c. to 8c. per kilogramme, on the average. 
I am aware that all these middle-men cannot be sup- 
pressed, but they may be considerably reduced in number ; 
and they ought to be placed on a well-understood footing. 
Nor can the production of cattle make any important advance 
whatever until the agriculturist shall be fully satisfied and 
secured in this respect. 
Light breaks in on every side, and the most interesting 
publications are applying the torch to those questions which 
the interest of the Paris butchers hold in voluntary obscurity. 
Documents abound ; and we can obtain from them a know- 
ledge of abuses of all kinds, which ignorance alone of the 
facts has suffered to exist to the present time. 
It is to the parliamentary inquiry commenced in 1851 — ' 
which the political events of that period prevented from being 
completed — to which is due the merit of the deep investiga- 
tion of this question. The documents collected at that period 
are the basis and starting-point of all the publications which 
have since been issued. They display such a character of 
honesty and truth, that we have felt secure in quoting them ; 
and they are found continually under the pen of every w riter. 
One of these, amongst others, M. E. Blanc, in his c Mys- 
teries of the Butchery/ supports by that authority the 
result of his personal works. M. Blanc does not draw con- 
clusions in favour of freedom ; he w r ould substitute one 
monopoly for another. But his statements are, nevertheless, 
interesting and instructive ; and I shall borrow from him 
some of great importance. 
The price of beef at Paris, in 1820, v r as from 55 to 60c. 
per pound; in 1841, according to the report of M. Boulay 
de la Meurthe to the Municipal Council, 70c.; and it lias 
successively risen from that time to 100 and 104c. (or 1 Or/, 
to 10 cl. l-25th per pound) — an increase of 90 per cent, in 
thirty-six years, and that in spite of all the efforts of the 
administration to reduce the price of meat, and a multitude 
of opposite measures contradictory and incessantly reviving, 
with the viewr of remedying the evil. “ He has been assured 
that the butchers of Paris could sell meat retail at 10c. less 
per kilogramme than they purchase it, on account of the 
