No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 6B3 



regularly to the market, and that means to a large extent, that he will 

 almost, at the time, monopolize the business. He can furnish seeds 

 and plants for his neighbor, for he grows them on a large scale, 

 and has them in fine condition. Its a continual income for him, but 

 an outgo for his neighbor; which is a decisive difference in the profits 

 and always gratifying as he sees his dollars continually coming in. 

 He also has a large variety of products, and can furnish what his 

 neighbor is utterly unable to do, so he has the preference with cus- 

 tomers every time. The poultryman who makes a specialty of the 

 business, can succeed vastly better than the farmer who conducts 

 the affair with other branches of his business, in a slipshod way. 

 The farmer with a multitude of cares, usually lets his poultry take 

 care of themselves. They roost in the fruit trees, straggle over his 

 gardens and scratch out the tiny plants in search of the earth-worms 

 and insectiverous food. They live largely on grass, and the tender 

 leaves of garden plants. They take care of the croj) of garden peas 

 as fast as they develop into palatable food. They are fond of strip- 

 ping the leaves from beets and celery, and they take peculiar de- 

 light in appropriating the delicious strawberry to their own use. 

 In fact, they destroy, on the premises of such a man, doing that kind 

 of business, vastly more than thej^ will ever be worth ; and are kept 

 at an actual loss. To the specialist they are an exceedingly profita- 

 ble investment. They are given comfortable quarters. They are 

 well-fed and cared for. They have separate apartments. They 

 represent a family of choice birds, and they are an ornament to the 

 farm. Their egg and meat production, aggregate an income to the 

 farm larger in proportion to the investment, than anything else on 

 the premises. 



The same is true with the fruit grower who makes a specialty of 

 his business. The general farmer puts out a few fruit trees, as he 

 realizes that he will surely need an orchard, but he largely leaves 

 them to take care of themselves. He is easily capitivated, as I per- 

 ceive, with the string-fellow method of setting them, because that 

 does not require so much work. He can clip off all the roots of 

 young trees, make a hole in the ground with a bar, crowd them in 

 and stamp down the earth around them, easier and much faster 

 than could be done by digging out the earth, making a suitable hole, 

 and then carefully placing the tree to live and grow for years to 

 come. But this farmer is doing a general business, and he is crowded 

 to get through with his vast amount of work. He usually lets the 

 borer destroy about half of his young trees before he realizes what 

 is taking place, and then he is quite apt to think that the soil is 

 not adapted to fruit growing. What is the appearance of our or- 

 chards in Pennsylvania as we pass along our roads and see them on 

 farms, where our farmers are doing a general business? The answer 



