Norwich bulletin., 1918-11-01

the third profit sticks to his fingers.
 It would be rank injustice to charge these men with being all hogs or prof. lteers or robbers. While the three of them get, combined more than the Farmer, no one of them gets as much as he. It is not they, personally and individually, who are to blame for the enormous and outrageous difference between what the consumer pays aad what the producer gets, but the sys- tenn in which each one of them is only a cog.
 In the old days there were post-roads all over the country with toll-gates across them at-E+ated intervals. Ev- cry so often the traveller was held up at one of these gates. till he had paid a fee for permission to pass That was in the earlier days. AS popula- tion increased and travel grew ana the needs of prompt, easy and cheap con- 1aunication became more iusistent, the whole toll system was seen to be in defensible and unjust Gradually but irresistibly the force of public opinion swept the toll-gates away from the highways whereon they had impeded free traffic.
 There are voters in Connecticut to- day who, I am sure, never saw a toll gate and can hardly credit the histori- cal fact that once6 the country side tolerated such things.
 Our present system of produce-dis- tribution, with any middleman who can find an eligible situation free to erect and maintain a new toll-gate across the routes of such distribution, is as much an anachronism and hack number as would be the recreation of 1 toll gates across the Norwich New London or the Danielson-P high l ways.
 When popular intelligence reached that point that it demanded the aboli- ton of the toll-gates. it didn't go about the job by cursing or kicking the toll gatherers who stood at the gates. They were simply the agents and hired men of a system. Instead of biackguarding them, a senSibIy direct ed public sentiment laid the axe at the cause; abolished the whole system cut down the gates; took over the care ard maintenance of the public high ways and made them free for all fTaf- | fic, from end to end.
 Some time or other. that same thing will be done with the needless and costly and vexatious and wasteful sys- 1 tenn by which the road between pro- Gucers and consumers is now blocked and barriered.
 1 We can not expect it at once. It will come only when public sentiment has reached the point of demanding it.. And public sentiment will not reach | that point till actual suffering has sharpened it's wit. so it can sec | through the hole in the mlllstone. In the meantime, we producers can, some of us. do a little towards hasten i ing that time. by liking every possi- ! fn dealings.
 Twenty-Five years ago. when came l back to the farm. I found all the far mers of the vicinage buying their sup plies at retail prices and selling their products at wholesale prices. And they all had to scratch graver to pay taxes and make even a poor Hy- ing.
 Now, I, for one. have just reversed that process. I have changed from general farming to special gardening. raising such crops and such only as l can sell direct to consumers at about regular retail prices. I sell nothing either to travelling speeulators or wholesalers. If I happen to have any small surplus, more than my liHaired local maAet will absorb, I se1 the
 oVerplus tHN my COW or my pig or my
 chickens, and invariably get more than
 by selling to any speculator.
 On the other hand, buy most of my supplies at wholesale. This Is easily done by combining with two or three or half-a-dozen neighbors, buylng six months supplies at a time, and paving lowest wholesale cash prices for them
 Some wholesalers won't sell to a consumer direct. But I have never failed to find others whom the sign:
 -+ +,,-o o, +I7rea sim hfl1c wouldn't fn- duce to talk business"
 In my own casc I find that this sim
 pie reversal of the old rule-this buy ing at wholesale and selling at retail instead of vice versa. means differ
 ence of nearer 200 per cent. than 30e
 per cent. in my own favor.
 And I fatter myself. from frequent indications. that the .leaven of exam
 Die is slowly permeating some Jumps
 THE FARMER.