ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



6 7 



The average dairyman and farmer prefers to keep a large number 

 3f cows and cultivate large areas of ground, so that when his products 

 Are sold, he will get large sums of money for them. It matters but little 

 to him whether there is much profit above the cost of production, so 

 long as he has the pleasure and satisfaction of handling the large sums of 

 money. He is not, in most instances, keeping an account of the cost 

 of production, but assumes, because he has received considerable sums 

 of money, that there must be a good profit, but when his expenses are 

 all paid, cannot understand where his profits are. There should be more 

 pleasure in making two dollars, and keeping one of them as profit, than 

 in making two hundred without any profit. 



And right in this connection is where the "Chicken business" comes 

 in. It is not an industry in which one can get large sums of money at 

 any one time. But like the pennies that are indispensable factors in 

 making up the dollars that constitutes the wealth of the millionaires, 

 so the daily sums received for poultry and its production, exceed in value 

 every other agricultural production of the nation. 



Poultry culture has had so little thought bestowed upon it as a com- 

 mercial industry, that but compartively few people are aware of the mag- 

 nitude and the wonderful possibilities of its development as a branch 

 of farm production. If every farmer would keep a strict account with 

 every crop produced, and every kind of stock and poultry raised, they 

 would be astonished at the result, and many would find that after due 

 credit had been given their poultry for all the eggs, feathers and increase 

 produced, at market rates, it wouli save them a larger profit than some 

 of their most important crops. It is a branch of farm industry that, un- 

 til recently has always occupieda position far m the rear of all other 

 farm industries, but it is at the present time fast forcing itself upon the 

 notice of the farmers of the country, as a branch of their business that 

 demands better treatment at their hands. The very fact of its having 

 survived the long years of oppression to which it has; been subjected, is 

 a strong exemplification of the law of the survival of the fittest, and 



