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warning and to expect a decline in the business sooner or later unless radical improvements are made.

It is to be considered furthermore that the city is not in the market business simply for the sake of getting a little revenue out of it. It is justified in conducting such an enterprise only on the ground that it provides a facility for the people which can not otherwise be well and economically provided. In the first instance public market places have always been established as a convenient means of purchasing provisions in an "open market," a place where prices are supposed to be determined by free competition among the producers with the minimum absorption of profit by the agencies roughly indicated by the term "middlemen." Under modern conditions, as the gap between the producer and the consumer has grown steadily bigger, the mere providing of a convenient vacant space in the city, where producer and consumer could meet and do their bargaining, has proved utterly insufficient. Apparently the recognition of the changing conditions has been so tardy on the part of those representing our cities in the administration of public markets, and their action so timid and temporizing, that they have left the bridging of the gap to commercial middlemen. In the course of the last two or three generations, therefore, the public provision markets have become largely places for a special group of middlemen, or retailers, to display their wares; in essence not very different from the natural groupings of other classes of retailers' stores in various quarters of the business district.

It is, therefore, of peculiar interest to note that the only two public markets in the cities investigated which have not shown a decline of business are those in which special, constructive efforts have been made, by the market administration, to maintain a close relation with the producer and to minimize the growing obstacles that tend to impede and complicate and make costly the operation of transferring goods from him to the consumer. Not only do these two exceptional markets with increasing trade point this moral very clearly; but at Boston, where the market is still very successful, though in diminishing degree and with an increasing emphasis on the wholesale end of the business, the superintendent is very clear in his view that it is upon the facilities offered to the farmers for direct sale from

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910