Am I asked, How are these things to be amended? I will tell you in the first place, that they must be remedied; and this particular case of dealing in the labor of the people is to be remedied by abolishing huckstering, or the system of middle-men, and substituting therefor a general system of public markets, conducted by the people through their paid agents, as all other public business is performed. In these markets the products of the country should be received, in first hands, direct from the producers, who should realize their entire proceeds. In this manner the immense fortunes realized by middle-men, and the profits made by the half-dozen different hands through which merchandise travels on its way to consumers, would be saved to the producer. A bushel of apples, purchased in the orchard at twenty-five cents, is finally sold to the consumer at a dollar. Now, either the consumer has paid at least a half dollar too much, or the producer has received a half dollar too little, for the apples; since, under a perfect system, the apples would go direct from the orchard to the market, and thence direct to the consumer.
We are forever talking of political economy, but it appears to me that the most vital points—one of which is our system of huckstery—is entirely overlooked.
Suppose Mr. Stewart, instead of having labored all these years for his own selfish interests, had labored in the interests of the people? Is it not clear that the half-a-hundred million dollars he has accumulated would have remained with the people who have consumed his goods? Place all other kinds of traffic upon the same proposed basis, and do you not see that the system which makes merchant-princes would be abolished? Neither would it require one-half the people to conduct a general system of markets who are now employed speculating in the results of labor.
In short, every person should either be a producer or a paid agent or officer of consumers and producers, and our entire system of shopkeeping reduced to a magnificent system of immense public markets. In this way there could also be a perfect control exercised over the quality of perishable goods, the want of which is now felt so severely in summer in all large cities, and a thousand unthought of remedies would necessarily suggest themselves as the system should develop.