Demagogues have set the agricultural classes against Wall Street and against Exchanges, but producers everywhere, in default of exchanges, are forming quasi-exchanges of their own. Every day we hear of combinations, Farmers’ Alliances, rural co-operative movements, etc., each designed to regulate the market for eggs, butter, potatoes, and such things, and each having for its purpose the very functions which govern a Stock Exchange in its own field--namely, the establishment of a fair price under the nearest possible approach to ideal conditions. It is now proposed in Congress that the Department of Agriculture shall collect and transmit to the agricultural districts by telephone and telegraph all available information concerning price movements, markets, and centres of supply and demand, this again embodying the essential functions performed in its own field by a great exchange. In practice, of course, there can be no exchange to deal in perishable products of the farm, and this is a pity, because if such an exchange were practicable we should hear less of our old friend the cost of living. Why? Because at present the market for these commodities is controlled by commission dealers and by middlemen. The producer and the consumer are alike at the mercy of these people; the price is fixed by them; the number of bona fide dealers actually bidding against each other is limited, in many instances there is no competition whatever; the producer and the commission dealer are, moreover, widely separated; the man who sells has few sources of information, and it is the business of the dealer who buys to see that he gets none; the small producer therefore has to submit to a great inequality in price, and often to downright cheating. There is no standard. There are no rules governing the dealer, and no high-minded board to enforce his honesty. Naturally this sort of thing contributes to the cost of living, since the commission dealer, on his part, regulates his profits just in proportion to the ignorance, cupidity or remoteness of the farmer, while the middlemen, of whom there are sometimes three or four, apply the same iniquitous processes to the ultimate purchaser--who happens to be you or me. Every thinking man knows that this is rank economic error.[4]