The " Marketing Investigator " writes on the theme one
paragraph that is almost literature. Most of our pigs are bought by a very small group of men, but what a vast, un- necessary, costly army serves their need !
" Over a thousand live stock markets up and down the country contribute their quota. Many hundreds of farmers transport their pigs and themselves to these markets ; scores of auctioneers are engaged in marketing them, sometimes to the ultimate buyer, more often to dealers, agents, and other intermediaries. Horse and motor transport drivers, -drovers, and railway hands all add to an avoidable duplication of effort in effecting the necessary. distribution. The widely distributed effort of selling is only paralleled by the far-flung organisation. of buying. Curers, wholesale butchers, and other large users employ agents, dealers, and com- mission men to seek out supplies all over the country, and bargaining also goes on by post. The buyers' armies meet the sellers' armies on numerous fields, the battle-ground being usually the live stock markets, and the only result is that the contending forces of either side gain small local victories according to circumstances and the market price laboriously emerges."
What a picture of the incurable individualism of rural trade in England the paragraph holds up !
* *
Previous page
