Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/482

462 in the usual market products have located their "commission houses" a "market." The old continuous fight of our forefathers against the forestallers and regraters is forgotten, and the whole market delivered to these, to immense loss both in money and health, in price and quality of the market. No town in this country—as far as the author has been able to learn—has a market-place of size in any way commensurate with the size of the town; but some of our towns—and that is the most peculiar part of the condition—have had a place for that purpose, but have used it as a site for a retail bazaar, thereby squeezing the real market out into the abutting streets and alleys. It ought to be evident that there cannot be much of a market under such circumstances; but the denizens of these places do not see, and if they see do not understand. Just a few truck farmers, offering their vegetables for sale, appear under these circumstances, and these few have, furthermore, in order to secure a stand near the "market-place," to take station the preceeding day and sleep on their load until the market hour. You can meet these silent reproaches of our civic institutions any afternoon—especially on Sunday—on the highways leading into our larger cities.

Most well-established cities of the Old World have a number of market-places, generally under roof, one for each class of products, as, e. g., vegetables, hay, meat, fowl and butter, fish, flowers, birds and dogs, cattle and horses. In the beginning there was always one general market-place, and then, as soon as the city's growth made this inadequate, classes of products have been separated and new places furnished for these.

Our market system, as we find it today, is that of the forestaller, and it is organized in the way that seems best suited for the building up of large private business concerns. Such a wholesale house as that of the forestaller always is has its agents out among the farmers and fishermen, making contracts with the producers, keeping these, if possible, in dependence by advancing money on prospective harvests. This wholesale house then furnishes the retailers of the city with the products, keeping these also, if possible, in bondage by a liberal use of the credit