156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



I received a letter from a lady in New York, who said to 

 me: 



" I have two little children to support, and I want to sell 

 my eggs in the New York market." I went down to a gentle- 

 man whom I knew, told him about the matter, and he said, 

 " Why certainly, I will take all she has to sell." She shipped 

 them in, and he immediately telegraphed her not to sen'd any 

 more. I telegraphed her to come to New York. She came, and 

 I took her to the store. That man paid her five dollars to stand 

 in his store for two days and try to sell her own eggs. It taught 

 her a lesson. She went back home, and for five years she has 

 never been paid less than thirty cents a dozen for her eggs in 

 that store every single week in the year, summer and winter. 

 She learned the lesson that every one must learn in the future 

 who expects to successfully run a farm, and that is, if you sell 

 at the bottom price you are going to be bankrupt ; if you sell 

 at the top price, you are going to make money. 



There is another thing that I want to talk to you about, and 

 that is the agricultural interests of the United States. Five mil- 

 lion and nearly six hundred thousajid farms are reported as 

 growing poultry, in the last census of the United States. That 

 proves conclusively that we have five million six hundred 

 thousand farmers not only interested in agriculture but inter- 

 ested in poultry. It is safe to say that each one of 

 those farms represents or .supports five people, making 

 a little over thirty millions of the population of the 

 United States that we know are farmers or dependent 

 upon the farms. If those thirty million of people go with a 

 load of potatoes or a load of corn, or a load of water- 

 melons, or with a basket of eggs to market to sell they have 

 got to deliver to the people to whom they offer those goods, 

 the identical article that they are selling. Perchance, some of 

 the good ladies here have gone to market with their farm pro- 

 duce, and they desire to return home and make some lovely 

 mince pies, such as my grandmother used to make and serve 

 when I was a child. I want to ask them if they believe that the 

 people to whom they present their products for trade will be 

 as particular in returning a good quality of cinnamon, cloves, 

 allspice, ginger, or whatever they wish to use at home, as they 

 are to get good products from you ? How do you know when 

 you trade your wagon-load of potatoes, in part, for a few 



