The Halles Centrales occupy an entire square in the center of the city
and cost $75,000, exclusive of the site. Gardeners and farmers are not
permitted to sell their produce on the way to the market and are only
allowed to deliver to storekeepers after the wholesale markets are
closed. Here, as elsewhere where the markets are successful, every
precaution is taken to avoid the prosperity of the market being
dissipated by sales in the surrounding neighborhood. The annual rents
for butchers are very moderate, ranging from $57.90 to $154.40,
vegetable dealers $42.85 to $92.64; dairy produce dealers $52.11 to
$85.11, fishmongers $23.16 to $86.85. In the wholesale markets there is
an annual trade turnover worth well above $1,000,000, of which fish
represents $280,000. So far from the fishermen finding the fish market
detrimental to their interests, they welcome it and cheerfully observe
the rule forbidding sales on the quays or transit sheds except under
special permits.
LYONS, with a population of half a million, may be taken as the best
example of a flourishing French provincial city at a considerable
distance from the sea. The principal market, La Halle, is known all
over France for its public auctions. Accommodation is provided for 276
stalls, rented at 14 cents a day per square meter for fruit, vegetables
and cheese, while other stalls for meat and fish are rented at 33 cents
per square meter.
At the morning auctions, held at the rear of the hall, are sold immense
quantities of fish, oysters, lobsters, game, poultry, butter, cheese,
eggs, fruit and vegetables. There is a rule that all supplies must come
from outside Lyons, so that local store men cannot there dispose of
surplus stocks, but dealers in other French cities often thus relieve
themselves when overloaded. These auctions not only enable local
dealers to distribute supplies at cheap rates to the small stores all
over the city, but wide awake housewives can frequently tell just what
the stores gave wholesale for the produce offered to them retail later
in the day, so a check can be kept on overcharges.
The auctioneers are given a monopoly of selling for ten years, on
binding themselves to pay to the city a sum equal to two per cent on
the total annual sales. The minimum is fixed at $1,930 for one stand or
$5,650 for four stands, to be paid to the municipal treasury. Two per
cent is added to the purchase price of every payment made by buyers at
auction, and if this does not amount to $1,930 per stand for the year,
the auctioneer has to make up the difference. The poorer classes
benefit largely by these sales, banding together to buy wholesale and
then dividing their purchases.
[Illustration: A DRASTIC INSPECTION