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10 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



wrecked, and untold misery and suffering are endured. The 

 poultry papers keep on month after month printing the same 

 old articles, the same old cures, and their proprietors wonder 

 why their subscription lists do not increase more rapidly. 

 They opine that the great number of failures are the result 

 of laziness and carelessness, and so they print articles occa- 

 sionally, telling you that in the poultry business you have 

 to work and work hard, or that you have to have a special 

 talent to succeed. But the failures continue just the same, 

 and seldom if ever does anything appear in these papers 

 which might have a tendency to show people what causes 

 these failures. 



I know that the poultry papers, by changing their policies 

 might lose some of their largest advertisers, such as the poul- 

 try-feed dealers, manufacturers of condiment nostrums, etc., 

 but we do not care what Mary Smith did to mend the 

 crooked toe of her pet hen; what we are interested in is 

 knowing why 95% of the people who go into the poultry 

 business fail. Poultrymen do not believe any longer that 

 the 95% who fail do so on account of laziness or for want 

 of a special talent, particularly when with the hens laying 

 heavily it costs more to produce eggs than they will sell for. 



We want articles that give us credit for intelligence; we 

 demand articles on the conditions that are threatening our 

 existence, and we demand that the large percentage of fail- 

 ures be prevented. We demand that a proportion of the large 

 sums that are going into the pockets of a few rich men, 

 who produce absolutely nothing, be turned into the pockets 

 of the real producers. When this is done, and not until then, 

 the failures will diminish. We demand that the powerful 

 influence of the poultry press be used in our behalf. Is it 

 not most important to print information on which the very 

 existence of the poultry man depends — information which 



