14 DUCK DOLLARS 
capacity (600 chicken egg). There are a score or more of other incuba- 
tors which have been sent on by the manufacturers for trial. 
The investment in farm (100 acres) and duck buildings represented 
up to the summer of 1911 an expenditure of $35,000, but on account of 
the advance in prices of lumber during the past ten 
As e years, this farm and these buildings could not be repro- 
HPOpIREsS. duced for that sum. The business can be said to have 
Proposition produced a net income of $20,000 a year on an invest- 
ment of $35,000 capital, not counting the labor of the two broth- 
ers as salaries. This is a dividend of fifty-seven (57) per cent., making 
the duck business, as the Webers do it, rank with the most successful 
enterprises. If we allow each of the two brothers a salary of $50 a week, 
or $2,800 a year, for the daily labor which they do, or $5,000 for the two, 
there is still left for net dividends each year $15,000, or a net dividend of 
forty-three (43) per cent. on the capital invested ($35,000). The ten- 
dency of the age has been to give youth educations in the professions 
as the best opportunity; but demonstrations such as the Webers are 
giving are changing this, and giving force to the advice, “ back to the 
farm.” To take the city of Boston, for example, the physicians whose 
income from practice is more than $10,000 a year do not exceed a score, 
and the same may be said of the lawyers, journalists or other professional 
men. The graduates of colleges and technical schools, as money-makers, 
are also not in the same class with these duck breeders. The growth 
in farm interest, farm instruction, government appropriations, etc., the 
past decade, is justified, and the movement has only begun. 
For many years the Webers have sent either to the New York or 
Boston marketmen, or both, from 40,000 to 45,000 ducklings a year, 
known as the Weber dry-picked Boston ducklings. 
Fifty Cents They are now shipping exclusively to two Boston mar- 
Profit per ketmen. 
Duckling On each duckling they plan to make, have made 
and are now making a net profit of fifty cents. " The net 
income of the farm, therefore, for many years, has been rising $20,000 
a year. 
When grain was low they made that profit. When grain is high, 
as it is now, they get more for their ducklings, so the average net profit 
of fifty cents a duckling has remained the same. 
They started from nothing, poor, and have made themselves rich in 
this business. Out of their profits they have added to equipment from 
year to year as they have gone along. Their first equipment was 
meager; their present equipment is first-class. In the fall of 1909 a new 
water plant costing $1,500, consisting of a six horse-power gasoline 
engine, triple action pump, tank, piping, etc., was installed. In the sum- 
mer of this year (1911) $5,000 is being spent in equipment, including a 
new house 25 x 200 feet for growing young ducks and a new storehouse 
30x 50 feet. Two gasoline engines and two feed mixers will be located 
in the basement of this storehouse. The first floor will be used for 
storing grain and the second floor for storing feathers. Four more 
breeding houses, each 15 x 20 feet, colony houses, are to be erected in 
the fall of 1911, located in the meadow, for experimental purposes. 
