Suppose, for illustration, two merchants in the same town are each doing a business with a twenty per cent. profit, and are buying eggs at ten cents and selling for eleven, the cent advance being sufficient to pay for their labor, incidental loss, and a small profit.  Now one merchant concludes to play for more trade.  If he marks his goods down he would gain some trade, but many people would fear his goods were cheap.  But if he puts up a placard, “Eleven Cents Paid For Eggs,” the farmers will throng his store and never question the quality of his goods.  This move having been successful, his rival across the street quietly stocks up with a cheaper line of dry goods, and some fine morning puts out a card, “Twelve Cents For Eggs.”  The farm wagons this week will be hitched on the other side of the street.

The rate of business at ten per cent, being insufficient to maintain two men in the town, a mutual understanding is gradually brought about by which the prices of goods sold are worked back to the basis of twenty per cent, gross profit, but the false price of eggs will serve to draw the trade from neighboring towns and is therefore maintained.

As a matter of fact the price paid to farmers for eggs by the general stores of the Mississippi Valley is frequently one to two cents above the price at which the storekeeper sells the product.  Allowing the cost of handling, we have a condition prevailing in which the merchant is handling eggs at from five to ten per cent. loss, and it stands to reason that he is making up the loss by adding that per cent. to his profits on his goods.  Some of the effects of this system are: 

1—­The inflated prices of merchandise is an injustice to the townspeople and to farmers not selling produce, in fact it amounts to a taxation of these people for the benefit of the egg producers. 2—­The inflated prices of merchant’s wares work to his disadvantage in competition with mail order or out-of-town trade. 3—­The farmer who exchanges eggs for dry goods is not being paid more for his eggs, save as the tax on the townspeople contributes a little to that end, but is in the main merely swapping more dollars. 4—­The use of eggs as a drawing card for trade works in favor of inferior produce, and the loss to the farmer through the lowering of prices thus caused, is much greater than his gain through the forced contributions of his neighbors.

The Huckster.

The huckster or peddling wagon which gathers eggs and other produce directly from the farm, prevail east and south of a line drawn from Galveston to Chicago through Texarkana, Ark., Springfield, Mo., and St. Louis.  North and west of this line the huckster is almost unknown.

The huckster wagons may be of the following types: 

1—­An extension of the local grocery store, trading merchandise for eggs. 2—­An independent traveling peddler. 3—­A cash dealer who buys his load, and hauls it to the nearest city where he peddles the produce from house to house or sells it to city grocers. 4—­A representative of the local produce buyer. 5—­A fifth style of egg wagon does not visit the farm at all, but is a system of rural freight service run by a produce buyer for the purpose of collecting the eggs from country stores.