34 COMMON SENSE 
ous, being simply a frame covered with very cheap bagging on 
sides and bottom. ‘The top was made of slats and after the 
bird was put in, these were fastened with nails. Thompson kept 
these crates on hand ready made, and he told me that they were 
so cheap that he could afford to give one with every bird he sold. 
As I drove home that afternoon I could not help thinking a 
good deal about what I had seen and heard. I had always been 
a reader of the journals devoted to country life, and was fully aware 
that the attempts to raise poultry on a large scale had been numer- 
ous, persistent, and in many cases carried out with great intelli- 
gence.and enterprise, and with abundant capital. And yet, so far 
as I then knew, all these attempts had failed, and I have not 
learned to the contrary yet.* And the question then arose and 
pressed itself upon my attention: Is failure a vecessary sequel to all 
such attempts? It argued, of course, even to my own mind, that I 
had a good deal of self conceit when I decided that success could 
be attained; that there was no absolute obstacle in the way, and in 
all the plans that had come under my observation I could see that 
there were glaring defects that must of necessity cause failure. 
Some had failed because their quarters were too cramped, I 
called to mind one man—and, strange to say, a medical man at 
that—who attempted to keep nearly 300 fowls on a space that 
should barely have accommodated -fifty. He was thoroughly 
“scientific,” and fed his fowls on rations whose composition was 
determined more by chemistry than by common sense, and he 
failed. 
Another, a business man in a large city, felt that he nad a call to 
raise poultry and eggs, and so he established a poultry yard. But 
although (perhaps this word should be Jéecause) he purchased 
liberally of all kinds of food, and procured fowls that were the very 
best that the dealers would recommend he failed, and the reason 
was obvious. He knew nothing about poultry, and could not meet 
emergencies as they arose, but supposed that a hen was a machine, 
* Since the above was written we find in a recently published work—Beale’s 
“Profitable Poultry Keeping "the following statement: ‘There is little talk 
now of establishing poultry farms pure and simple, which never have, and we 
do not think ever will, succeed.” : 
