feed for them was mostly fish and grass and that they could not 

 stand meat feeding. When one goes to supposed experts— - 

 and the man who held the "Muscovy" theory was named to me 

 by one of his neighbors as "the duck king" — and hears such 

 absolute stuff as this, one begins to doubt the value of "experc 

 testimony." I have enough background of knowedge both of 

 the ducks and of commission markets, to be able to sift out the 

 good from the bad. But suppose one who had not, had gone 

 to some of these men for information — do you see what a black - 

 ened reputation would have been the Runner's? « - '-«j 



Possibly the most useful thing I learned, speaking generally, 

 was that commission men are not helpful as a class, but are as 

 individual as men of no class (if there are any such). In 

 short, they are courteous or discourteous, clever or ignorant, 

 prejudiced or open-minded, helpful or suspiciously secretive an I 

 unhelpful, exactly as other individuals. Naturally, they de- 

 duced conclusions from experience. Just as naturally, they de- 

 duced some of their conclusions from very insufficient or excep- 

 tional experiences. 



For example, one commission merchant, a very honest man, 

 of whose dealings I have known for some years, told me that 

 the reason the Runners would never make a market duck was 

 that they were so very small, not weighing more than two and 

 one-half pounds. I put some leading inquiries, and he told me 

 this story: Just before Thanksgiving, in 1913, a man came into 

 the place of business one morning, stated that he had just sent 

 in a shipment from his own place up-country a bit, of birds 

 raised and fed by himself under the best modern conditions, and 

 dressed and packed by an expert. This product was said to be 

 of the very best grade, and the shipper wanted 20 cents a pound 

 for it. It chanced that the market had gone all to pieces at the 

 time, so that all sales of anything but the best were very slow. 

 It also chanced that the shipper's barrel of goods was delivered 



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