As you may have gathered, I admire both artists and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, cross-pollination is minimal. And when it does occur, the product is often quite dreadful. I guess the "dismal science" spawns the dismal aesthetics. Anyway, among the more hopeless examples of the poets of commercialism is James McIntyre, the cheese poet of Ingersoll, Canada. Essentially, he's the Adam Smith of poetry, a Scotch-Canadian who extolled the virtues of enterprise, and even wrote a poem about comparative advantage! Ricardo would be both flattered and appalled. He's got a fan club (of sorts), and a contest even. The geographic limitations of which are truly unfortunate. I'm sorely tempted to write an entry myself. But instead, I leave you with McIntyre's reflections on market response to surplus commodities:
Hints to Cheese Makers
Addressed to Jonathan Wingle, Esq.
All those who quality do prize
Must study color, taste and size
And keep their dishes clean and sweet,
And all things round their factories neat,
For dairymen insist that these
Are all important points in cheese.
Grant has here a famous work
Devoted to the cause of pork.
For dairymen find that it doth pay
To fatten pigs upon the whey,
For there is money raising grease
As well as in the making cheese.
James McIntyre
Link via Harry Hutton.
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