102 LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING SECOND SERIES. 



LESSON X. 



The Host Important Part of the Poultryman's 



Equipment. 



BEFORE leaving the class of topics we have been discussing in the last few lessons, I 

 want to consider more particularly some of the points that have had incidental men- 

 tion in them. We have discussed a number of matters of prime importance to the 

 beginner in poultry culture: the possibilities of the business, the different branches of 

 it, locations, markets, the kinds of stock, and various like questions, and I have tried to indi- 

 cate how a venture in poultry keeping may be as free as possible from mistakes that use up the 

 beginner's capital and often exhaust his enthusiasm. 



But not only through these lessons, but constantly in correspondence with readers of the 

 paper, I find that many express in varying degrees the feeling of the correspondent \vho>e 

 letters with my comments on them appear in this issue of the paper. They think it would be 

 much easier for them to get along if I would explain and decide for them in everything, down 

 to the last and least detail, and where I stop they imagine that there are other reasons for stop- 

 ping than those that are given, and that my freedom of speech is restrained by consideration 

 for other interests. 



When in connection with this series of lessons, I organized a special class in poultry keeping, 

 with the purpose of keeping more closely in touch with a number of poultry keepers, and 

 following their work in its details, and advising them more definitely than is possible in the 

 majority of cases, I found in connection with this class an obstacle I had not at all anticipated. 

 By far the greater number of the class evidently failed to understand that the "Special Section" 

 was in effect only an effort to give individual instruction, as far as it could be given under such 

 conditions, to a limited number of readers of the paper. The questions they asked, and the 

 comments they made soon made it clear that the general idea was that the special section 

 students were to be given such an answer as they wished to any question they saw fit to ask. 



At the time I was quite at a loss how to account for this, for I had tried in the announce- 

 ments and in all correspondence relating to this plan, to make it entirely clear that I was not 

 going to do these very things. I have since thought that this general misapprehension of the 

 purpose of that plan was owing to the general feeling among novices that the greatest hindrance 

 to quick and sure progress in poultry culture was in the impossibility of i>etting absolutely 

 authoritative and reliable directions as to what to do in every instance where the poultryman is 

 called upon to make a docision. 



In a sense this is true: but what to the novice seems to be the trouble is not the real trouble. 

 His view of the situation is superficial. His difficulty is not that he can find no one to direct 

 him, but that he does not know himself. He is undertaking to do things for which he has had 

 no preparation, or inadequate preparation. The first and strongest reason for urging begin- 

 ners in poultry culture to begin small and go very slowly, is that only in this way is it possible 



