only by adulteration.

With the view of avoiding these evils of trade, evils that, as ever and
everywhere, are hardest on the masses, "Consumers' Associations" have
been set up. In Germany, the "Consumers' Association" plan, especially
among the military and civil service employees, reaches such a point
that numerous business houses have been ruined, and many are not far
from the same fate. These Associations demonstrate the superfluousness
of trade in a differently organized society.[171] In that consists their
principal merit. The material advantages are not great for the members;
neither are the facilities that they offer enough to enable the members
to discover any material improvement in their condition. Not
infrequently is their administration poor, and the members must pay for
it. In the hands of capitalists, these Associations even become an
additional means to chain the workingman to the factory, and they are
used as weapons to depress wages. The founding of these "Consumers'
Associations" is, however, a symptom that the evils of trade and at
least the superfluousness of the middlemen have been realized in wide
circles. Society will reach that point of organization at which trade
becomes wholly superfluous; the product will reach the consumer without
the intervention of any middlemen other than those who attend to its
transportation from place to place, and who are in the service of
society. A natural demand, that flows from the collective procurement of
food, _is its collective preparation for the table upon a large scale,
whereby a further and enormous saving would be made of energy, space,
material and all manner of expenditures_.

* * * * *

The economic revolution in industry and transportation has spread to
agriculture also, and in no slight degree. Commercial and industrial
crises are felt in the country as well. Many relatives of families
located in the country are partially or even wholly engaged in
industrial establishments in cities, and this sort of occupation is
becoming more and more common because the large farmers find it
convenient _to convert on their own farms a considerable portion of
their produce_. They thereby save the high cost of transporting the raw
product--potatoes that are used for spirits, beets for sugar, grain for
flour or brandy or beer. Furthermore, they have on their own farms
cheaper and more willing labor than can be got in the city, or in