38 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Dean Davekpoet. The natural nucleus is essential, to 

 do it successfully. In the communities where this is done, 

 they can't do general farming, — they are driven to special- 

 ties; and that is what we should do here, only we can get 

 along without it, but not as well. I visited a farm in Kansas 

 City where a man is making a name for a community with 

 the White Orpington. Very likely his next-door neighbor 

 raises Buff Cochins. What they should do is, to all go into 

 White Orping-tons, for that man will die some day, and 

 that community ought not to lose the reputation he has 

 made for it. The community should specialize, rather than 

 the individual; the individual is too small, and doesn't live 

 long enough. 



The Chairman. Perhaps Mr. John II. Robinson will give 

 us a word about poultry. 



Mr. RoBjNSON. We have here in ISTew England two poul- 

 try-producing communities, that to some extent furnish 

 illustrations of the conditions Dean Davenport has described. 

 They are the South Shore section in Massachusetts about 

 I*[orwell, Rockland and Hingham, and the section of Rhode 

 Island about Tiverton. The South Shore section produces 

 what I believe to be the best chickens that go onto the market 

 anywhere, and they retail at from $3 to $4 apiece. There are 

 just two middlemen, instead of four or five, practically all 

 the product of this locality is handled by two firms, and the 

 producer gets all he is entitled to for his product, which 

 is taken at his door alive. There are more poultrymen mak- 

 ing money in that section than anywhere else. In the Rhode 

 Island section the production end has been developed, but 

 the selling end is still in the hands of the individual; each 

 man's product goes into the general market, and he gets an 

 ordinary price for it. 



Question. Suppose Jones's apples are inferior to Smith's, 

 — does he get the same mouey as Smith ? 



Dean Davenport. No; they are haudled carefully. 

 Every box Jones delivers is credited to him, and is assorted. 

 He has so many boxes of firsts, running 120 to the box; so 

 many boxes of seconds, running 00 to the box; so many boxes 

 of firsts and seconds, running so and so to the box. Ilis 



