Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1912-01-18
PUBLIC MARKET
SUCCESS: SHANK
indianapolis Mayor Tells New
York Society of Operation
of His Plan.
BIG SAVING TO PEOPLE
Getting Producer and Consumer To-
gether Solving of High Cost
of Living.

Albany. \. Y. Jan. 1S.-Samuel
Lewis shank. mayor Of Indianapolis,
who has gained fame by his personal
" conducted cut-price sales OF pota-
toes, poultry, mince meat and walnuts,
in the public market at Indianapolis,
as ''war on the middle man. deliv-
cred an address yesterday before the
New York Agricultural society. The |
only solution of the high cost of liv- |
ing problem, he said, was to bring to-
gether the producer and the consumer !
He had satisfied himself and the peo- |
pie of indianapolis that his municipal
purchase and sales agent idea, when |
put into operation, was effective in re-
ducing artifcially inflated prices of
foodstuffs.
Under modern commercial methods !
and the development of several grades |
of middlemen," said MI Shank, 'the |
law of supply and demand, so far as
the consumer is concerned, has become
more or less a dead letter. The con-
sumner in large cities finds that large
crops of fruits and vegetables mean
! little or nothing to him. He used to
cheer up when he read of big apple
crops, big peach crops, big potato or
cabbage crops, for he knew these
products would be cheap. Now news
of this kind is received with derision.
ONLY BENEFITS MIDDLEMEN.
What difference does it make if the
cranberry crop is large? Doesn't the
price always climb. from so to S12 a
barrel or 10 to Is cents quart by the
time the Thanksgiving day demand
comes? Do overloaded peach trees in
Georgia, Florida or Michigan mean
that the workingman is going to have
cheap jellies and jams all the next
winter? Not if the market handlers
of crops know it. Though the growers
may accept low price for the peach
es rather than have them rot on the
ground. the various middlemen see 10
it that they get the advantage of cheap
production, and not the consumer. If
the law of supply and demand gets into
operation, you see it works almost eX-
clusively to the benefit of the middle
men.
The growers in some states found
this out some time ago and have taken
protective measures as far as they can,
by organizing associations, pooling
their crops and making the middlemen
pay them reasonable prices. if they
hope TO continue in business as dis
tributors. But the consumers are only
now organizing to look after their own
Interests in the food supply question.
They have for years seen the distrfbu-
tive forces putting their selling agents
in the large cities to see that the sup
plies of foOdstuffs do not Overtop the
demand and thus lower prices. 1t is
the business of these selling agents TO
see that the fruits rot where they grow
rather than that they may crowd the
markets and threaten the dethrone-
ment OF high prices.
CARS SWITCHED OFF.
According to reports that have in
them the evidences of truth, if for ex-
ample, the selling agent in ndianapo-
, lis for the orange crop sees, after or
dering shipments 10 that city, that the
demand has fallen OFF at the prevailing
, prices, leaving more stock on hand
than ne had expected. he sees to it
: that the cars on their way from Flori-
/ da or California to Indianapolis are not
, allowed to get there and glut the mar
ket, but are switched off to other mar
kels where there is no danger of them
causing reduction of the price
1t is said that the grape, lemon.
: strawberry, banana pineapple, melon
: and other fruits and vegetable crops.