Abuses IS 



lars are being spent in subdividing large acreages. Some of 

 the companies employ a large number of salesmen; offices 

 are maintained in different cities. One company has spent 

 thousands of dollars a day in advertising alone, and the 

 expenses must have 'been enormous. They set forth in their 

 advertisements how well poultry pays on their land, but the 

 facts of the case are that there never was a successful poultry 

 farm there, nor is there one today. After reading their 

 advertisements you think that all you have to do is to buy a 

 few acres, work hard, and you can make a good living raising 

 poultry. The poultry business is set before you in its most 

 attractive style, statistics are quoted showing what a demand 

 there is for poultry and eggs, and you get the "chicken 

 fever" pretty badly. You buy their land, start up in the 

 poultry business, and before you know it you have a flock 

 of dumpy, roupy hens. 



One company in particular has run page after page of 

 advertising in the daily papers, showing pictures of fine fowls 

 and telling you what a splendid location they have for poultry 

 raising. It is, as a matter of fact, one of the worst possible 

 locations for poultry in the State. I lived a few miles from 

 the place, where I had the management of a poultry farm; 

 the wind blows continually; as one man expressed it, "It 

 would blow the tail off a jack rabbit." 



I called at the office at another location not very far away, 

 owned by another company, and there I saw how the prospec- 

 tive poultryman was swindled. He was made to believe by 

 a clever-tongued rascal that he could get rich quickly in the 

 poultry business; that the place was the only one in Cali- 

 fornia where poultry raising can be successfully carried on. 

 This in spite of the fact that there is not one successful 

 farm there, because there are only a few and these have 

 just been started. When you go into the office, the sales- 



