1907.] MY FRIEND THE HEN. 99 



off! How can you get along? Why don't you pull up and 

 come out here on the prairies? Well, I began to figure with 

 those people. I stood in one of the packing houses in South 

 Omaha, and saw those hogs and those cattle sold, and saw 

 how they were killed and passed along. I stood there with 

 one of those farmers with whom I had been talking, from 

 southwestern Iowa, and pointed to a big steer, and said, there 

 is the end of your farming. I pointed out the window rather 

 and said, there is the end of your farming, my friend, 

 where your farming ends ours begins. The end of your 

 farming is the beginning of ours. We can afford to pay the 

 tremendous price that we have to pay for your feed, feed it 

 to our poultry, and make more out of it than you do on your 

 steers. They did not believe it. A^ery well, I said, I will give 

 you the figures if you will give me yours. So he gave me the 

 figures showing what he made on a fifteen hundred pound 

 steer. He figured it all out from the time the steer was born 

 until it was sold at the stock yards, and the figures showed that 

 on a fifteen hundred pound steer, in something over sixteen 

 months, the farmer would be netted about twelve dollars in 

 profit. Why, I said, there are plenty of men up and down 

 our New England hills who will take twelve hens, and buy 

 your corn and your grain, and feed your grain to those twelve 

 hens, and make more profit out of it than you do on that big 

 steer. He would not believe it. I showed him the figures 

 and the man was astonished. He had no idea that such a 

 thing was possible. He had an idea that it was a most 

 wonderful thing that all of these people down here in New 

 England did not come right out there on their rich soil and 

 stay there. Well, I said to him, there is just one thing that has 

 kept a great many New England men and women from leav- 

 ing, and that has prevented many a New England town from 

 running down hill into the Mississippi valley. Well, he was 

 anxious to know what in the world that was. He said he 

 would like to know. I said it is the sentiment, " There's no 

 place like home." That is what has kept thousands of people 

 on these New England hills, and that is what has kept people 

 from seeking homes upon the prairies of the west, that is what 

 has kept many people here who were content to work under 

 hard conditions, just that sentiment, " There's no place like 



