Mexico weekly ledger., 1877-02-15

cents and here it is sold for As. Penn
.sYlvania farmers think themselves
fortunate to sell potatoes at so cents
a barrel, but the New York laborer
pays 80 cents a peck. The New jersey
fisherman is glad to sell his catch of
blue-fish for % cents a pound, and the
New York householder is glad to buy
one of the fish three days after it is
caught for Is cents a pound. The Iowa
farmer gets rich by selling his wheat
and corn at one-ffth the retail price in
our market, and sometimes burns them
because they will not sell for enough to
pay for their transportation. And so
through the whole list of articles that
enter into the daily consumption of our
people the exhaustless resources of the
country, the fertility of our prairies, the
increasing application of machinery to
agriculture and manufacturing and the
arts, which have so cheapened the cost
of production that we can send our
meats and grain and fruit and even
cloths and shoes abroad to compete
successfully with foreign labor and cap
ital on their own ground, do not help
the great body of u people a whit.
And the English papers hint at the
secret of the difficulty in intimating that
their butchers are making an effort to
absorb the American meat business.
The question has been asked how it is
that France a stand an annual tax of
500, OO0, 900 more than England,
and yet thrive under the burden. The
Spectator suggests that it is because the
French farmer and mechanic and
trader pay their taxes directly to the
Government, while the English farmers
pay their landlords, and the money
drops through two or three sets of
hands before it reaches the treasury.
1t is the middleman again. He is
everywhere. He intercepts every pro-
duct of the soil on its way to market
and trebles its price. He stops every
article of manufacture and doubles its
cost to the consumer. He thrusts his
finger between the hand of the laborer
and the mouths of his children and
steals three-quarters of their food.
The practical question of modern civil
life is how to get rid of this army of
middlemen which doubles and in some
cases ~quadruples the cost of the great
staples of life TO the Co
operative stores have been tried, but
with only partial success. The Granger
societies began in a somewhat clumsy
way, but lacked the necessary materials
and agencies for complete success.
The problem is complex, and not
easily solved, but it is one of tee most
pressing questions of our time. One
reason of the immense success OF
Stewart was that he abolished the mid
dleman and brought the manufacturer
and purchaser face to face at his count
er. He made the silks, and woolens,
the carpets, and the threads he sold by
the yard to the poorest people in the
CT y. He could afford to sell a better
article at a lower price than his rivals,
and put millions in his pocket by the
operation, because he was both maker
and retailer, and allowed nobody but
himself to take toll on his wares. Other
great firms are adopting his method,
and it suggests questions that deserve
careful study. Is relief to come in that
or in some better way? In some way
modern society must protect itself from
the extortions of people who add moth
ing to the general stock, but prey upon
the wit of one class and the work of an
other. One reason that trade rallies SO
slowly and that labor is so depressed is
that the prices of ali necessaries of life
are s unreasonably high.-NsW York
Graphic.