IN THE BEGINNING 17 
man to put your trust in. I grant that poultry-farming to be 
successful requires a certain amount of knowledge, skill and 
general adaptability, but one may be overburdened with know- 
ledge ; skill may be of the dilettante order and adaptability may 
be another name for inefficiency. The qualities necessary above 
everything are grit, confidence, sound common-sense, carefulness, 
observation and business methods. Nothing slipshod, nothing 
casual, nothing taken for granted will ever do for poultry-farming. 
Depending upon other people may bring you to fortune or to 
Carey Street, the chances are all in favour of the Bankruptcy 
Court. Depending upon yourself may not lead to fortune, but 
with normal luck it will bring you a measure of success. If you 
have to employ labour, see to it that the labourer works upon 
your lines, your knowledge, your methods, for then and only then 
will he be a profitable servant. One might, were it necessary, 
refer to poultry-keeping as a duty — as a form of patriotism. 
Certainly if Adam Smith was right in saying that the man who 
could make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, was 
a public benefactor, so assuredly is the man who can make one 
egg grow where none grew before. Fortunately in this calling the 
poultry-keeper has the pleasant reflection that duty and desire 
may be one. 
