THE DOLLAR HEN 
CHAPTER I 
IS THERE MONEY IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS? 
The chicken business is big. No one knows how big it is 
and no one can find out. The reason it is hard to find out is 
because so many people are engaged in it and because the 
chicken crop is sold, not once a year, but a hundred times a, 
year. { 
Statistics are guesses. True statistics are the sum of little 
guesses, but often figures published as statistics are big 
guesses by a guesser who is big enough to have his guess ac- 
cepted. 
A Big Business; Growing Bigger _ 
The only real statistics for the poultry crop of the United 
States are those of the Federal Census. At this writing these 
statistics are nine years old and somewhat out of date. The 
value of poultry and eggs in 1899, according to the census 
figures, was $291,000,000. Is this too big or too little? I 
don’t know. If the reader wishes to know let him imagine 
the census enumerator asking a farmer the value of the poul- 
try and eggs which he has produced the previous year. Would 
the farmer’s guess be too big or too small? 
From these census figures as a base, estimates have been 
made for later years. The Secretary of Agriculture, or, speak- 
ing more accurately, a clerk in the Statistical Bureau of the 
Department of Agriculture, says the poultry and egg crop for 
1907 was over $600,000,000. 
The best two sources of information known to the writer 
by which this estimate may be checked are the receipts of 
the New York market and the annual “Value of Poultry and 
Eggs Sold,” as given by’the Kansas State Board of Agricul- 
ture. 
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