§ 20

It is midsummer again; my dream is again vagarious! I find my way to the Market Place. In its centre stands the Town Hall. Now that the smoke fiend is slain and outdoor life in cities is pleasant, markets, which fell into disuse owing to grasping profiteering tradesmen, who put what price they pleased upon indifferent goods, robbed honest folk right and left, did not like the restraint which markets put upon unreasonable profits. A weekly market is a wholesome and sensible institution. It fosters an influx of fresh goods, it tends to economy and providence, in that the people reckon up their weekly requirements and purchase them at a price which, if not absolutely uniform, varies little compared with the chaotic licence permitted in the less well regulated communities of the past. On every Monday the market opens early and continues through hours of daylight. Pretty well any useful article is found there, from reels of cotton, pots and pans, good woven stuffs, boots and shoes, groceries also, which under old conditions were the means of elaborate swindling, are to be bought in all their varieties. Market days bring into contact town and country folk; their existence is one of the chief causes of the departure of that expensive nuisance, the middleman. Markets discourage fluctuation in prices and encourage the sale of fresh, in place of stale goods. The weekly held market lessens weekly expenditure by something like half of what it was when tradesmen charged what they pleased for even stale goods. The middleman was a rascal, he was the “Muck Rake” in the Pilgrim’s Progress, he grabbed money earned by his betters, he was a kind of cuckoo laying eggs in other birds’ nests, he was sharp, not clever, and as unprincipled as constructively idle. As a social pest the middleman is now being dealt with by wiser economic measures. Probably the lessening in the numbers of small tradesmen has tended to speed agriculture. Unable to build up small fortunes by dishonest trade proceedings, the class which was pre-eminent in that respect is tending toward land labour, which, under the new conditions of life, is numerically larger than it was.

On market day all the classes meet. Owing to the high price demanded by domestic servants in the past, ladies of high rank are their own housekeepers. The most wealthy keep few servants; hence the young ladies of noble families are converted into economic housewives, and setting themselves to their task, do it well; being better educated now, whatever they set out to do they do with forethought. Thus they make good wives, daughters, and mothers, and are spending far less time than formerly upon idle amusements.

The foregoing is a sketch of what the weekly open market is doing for the community by bracing it up and giving it backbone, eradicating spineless self-indulgence and a mischievous system of profiteering.

The Town Hall is the most ample building outside the factories. It is the centre of INTELLECTUAL as well as COMMERCIAL life. While it belongs to the people it represents also a kind of University. No pedantic teaching goes on there, but lectures upon all branches of knowledge are delivered by chosen experts, to which the public are admitted free. These lectures are delivered voluntarily by good and cultivated citizens, whose pride it is to give their knowledge without fees. Chiefly these are delivered in the winter months, because most of the people’s spare time in summer is spent, not within, but outdoors. Socrates found wisdom in the Agora, and wise men of to-day search in the market for the same. Hence there is constant touch of intellectual as well as commercial interests between class and class. This is leading to a surprising unity of conception and practice. Within the walls of the Town Hall is the large concert room, where the best music is given, and as far as possible by local talent, which does not mean only of the cities, but coming out of the population of the county inclusive. This concentration gives a chance to local success which importation in the days of centralisation never achieved, when native talent was overlooked.