II. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 



I had a position paying me a good salary which I gave up 

 for a small job on a poultry farm and I have struggled 

 through fifteen years of poverty and discouragement — many, 

 many times with the bare necessities of life and sometimes 

 without even these — so that I could continue my experiment- 

 ing, and learn the secrets of the hen. I have been an object 

 of ridicule for many; I lost every dollar I possessed; I lost 

 every friend I had. I have struggled through, and I have 

 seen so many homes lost by poultry people, people with 

 experiences similar to mine that these memories are ever 

 vivid to me. 



Shall we, under the present method of doing business, for- 

 get such things as honesty and kindness? If we do, then the 

 quicker we change our methods the better. Even an outcast 

 from the lowest depths can and will respond to kindness, 

 and kindness will bring out the best that is in even the 

 worst of us; kindness will lead to success where injustice 

 will bring disaster. 



I started into the poultry business fifteen years ago. Every- 

 body told me that my hens would get the swell-head and 

 die, but I was going to go into it even if they did, because 

 I was interested in hens and if others could make a living 

 in the business, why not I? I bought incubators, etc., and 

 hatched 2,200 chicks that year, and as I then knew positively 

 nothing about the business I lost 2,100 of them. I was 

 located on the bank of a creek far out in the wilderness, and 

 one morning I looked out of my poultry house and saw the 

 hens all perched up on the roosts. The house was three 



