Middle-class critics in Jamaica complained that higglers, the small traders who buy produce in the countryside and resell it in town markets, paid farmers too little and charged consumers too much, while simultaneously undercutting the greengrocers and wholesalers who might modernize distribution. Mintz answers both charges with case material gathered in 1952. He follows a woman who borrows capital at punishing rates, packs eggs, pineapples and avocados on a donkey, catches a Sunday truck to Kingston, and commits more than a pound in transport and market fees before making a single sale. Perishability, bad roads and absent storage govern every choice she makes. Given how little capital and how much labour the island has, Mintz argues, this crowd of independent traders is the efficient arrangement, and its sheer number prevents anyone cornering supply. Reforms borrowed from wealthier economies would spend scarce capital in order to save the one resource Jamaica holds in surplus.