Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX THE VILLAGE IN THE MARKET The food supply is the main problem, but of course it is not the only one. Many other things are requisite besides food, and the man who is entirely dependent on the land, finds that over and above the produce he requires for home consumption, he must raise a surplus that may be exchanged for other things. It may be simple exchange, or?what is exactly the same thing in a more convenient form?he may sell his surplus for money which he may pay away for what he requires. It is just at this point that the question of markets naturally and necessarily arises, and it is here that the small cultivator’s failure generally comes in. It is here that all the man’s real difficulties begin. He has no trouble in raising his own food; he can grow even alarge surplus beyond his own requirements, but when he has grown it he has to go out into the market with it, and there he finds himself in quite another world. A man may be a first- rate agricultural or horticultural worker; may be a good, competent, all-round farm hand, may even have in him the making of a shrewd, intelligent farm manager and director of productive work, and yet may be no good at all in buying, and selling, and making money. In his work on the land the man may be in his element, strong, energetic, clever, and resourceful. In the business world he may be totally out of his element, a mere incompetent. It is in the marketing that most small cultivators fail. If they are near a populous centre, rent is high, and if they are a good way off, though rent may be lower, they will be hampered by carriage expenses and the profits of middlemen. Very commonly, their trouble is to get at a market at all. A villager sometime ago showed me a bill he had just received from a commission agent to whom…
