MARKETING POULTRY PRODUCTS 335 



Manure. Poultry manure was long salable (at high prices) for 

 tanning purposes, but the use of chemicals for tanning has greatly 

 reduced the demand for it. In some places men still make a 

 business of collecting poultry manure, but at present prices it is 

 worth more for fertilizer, and unless methods are highly intensive, 

 it is more valuable to the poultry keeper for that purpose than for 

 any other. When manure is sold for fertilizing purposes the price 

 depends altogether on the buyer's needs and on his appreciation 

 of its value. Poultry men who use it on land consider it at least equal 

 in value to the highest-priced commercial fertilizers designed for 

 general use. 



Cooperative selling of poultry products. As it relates to poultry, 

 cooperation is in the experimental stage in America. In view of 

 the nature of the industr}', the general conditions of trade, and 

 the difificulties in the way of any wide cooperative movement, it 

 must be regarded as highly improbable that much will be accom- 

 plished in this direction except as a part of the development of 

 cooperation in marketing farm products of all kinds. The situa- 

 tion with respect to poultry, a crop which, produced everywhere, 

 is being harvested all the year round and yielding quite a variety 

 of products not easily preserved, is unlike the situation in handling 

 fall fruits harvested in a short season and stored for months with 

 slight deterioration, shrinkage, or loss. The most that can be said 

 of the most advanced cooperative movements in selling poultry is 

 that they make some progress. With this it should be said that 

 nearly all cooperative movements in this line everywhere have been 

 subsidized either by actual government grants or through the serv- 

 ices, as promoters, of persons compensated not by the producers but 

 by the government or by some organization with educational aims. 



A large degree of practical cooperation is attained in some 

 poultry-producing communities, — notably in the South Shore soft- 

 roaster district, where, it should be noted, the crop is sold within 

 a short season. A study of conditions in such a district as this" 

 shows plainly that a cooperative selling movement will be most 

 stable when it develops as a part of an industry largely cooper- 

 ative throughout. In this case there is no formal organization or 

 corporation. The transactions between producers and dealers are 

 on the same basis as in the ordinary course of trade, but the 



