Back to the Farm. Long Life for Strawberries. 
Vol. LVIII. No. 2572. 
NEW YORK, MAY 13, 1899. 
*1 PER YEAR. 
THE HEN AS A MANUFACTURER. 
HER WONDERFUL EGO PRODUCT. 
Possibilities of the Grain Crop. 
Mrs. Biddy Layman.—In these days of trusts 
and corporations, and when it is no uncommon thing 
to have half a billion of capital advanced in a single 
week, the manufacturers seem to think that they are 
the very salt of the earth. Their figures are large, 
but we wish to introduce a humble little friend, who 
“lays” over them as a manufacturer, in every sense of 
the word. Mrs. Biddy Layman is a philosopher, a 
poet, a chemist, a manufacturer, and an all-’round 
good citizen. Our manufacturers think they are doing 
a great thing when they take from the earth crude 
iron ore, and crude copper, or other minerals; when 
they go into the forest, and cut down the trees, and 
with these materials, 
fashion the articles that 
make society warm and 
comfortable. They 
never create anything, 
however ; they are mere 
handlers. Their work 
stops short of adding 
the vital forces of life, 
or of creating food with 
which to nourish these 
forces. Mrs. Biddy Lay¬ 
man excels them both 
in the care and quality 
of her work, also in its 
extent. She will take a 
bug, a weed seed, a few 
blades of grass, a piece 
of oyster shell, a few 
scraps of food that 
humans have thrown 
away, and in 24 hours, 
turn them into that 
most marvelous of all 
creations, an egg. It is 
marvelous, because it 
contains not only a 
balanced ration of ani¬ 
mal food, but it also 
contains life, the won¬ 
derful forces of hered¬ 
ity; all these are packed 
within its perfect shell, 
and all created and put 
together by our indus¬ 
trious little manufac¬ 
turer, the hen. 
of the city. In other words, the hen is laying some 
of the great buildings, and some of the marvelous 
monuments of industry that shall live for coming 
generations to admire and attempt to copy. 
Her Big' Job. —But what is the extent of the hen’s 
job ? Most creators that perform delicate work of 
this character, do but little of it. As a rule, genius 
is not coupled with extensive product. Let us see 
about this, in connection with the hen. The picture 
on this page shows one of our own black hens, be¬ 
tween a bag containing the grain food for one year, 
and a basket containing one year’s work The hen 
weighs about five pounds, but the bag contains 60 
pounds of a grain mixture. The basket contains 140 
eggs, the total weight being 20 pounds. In other 
words, this 5-pound hen consumes, on the average, 
one-sixth of a pound of grain per day, during the 
She Lays Cities.— 
We seldom stop to think 
what an egg represents. 
Think of our little 
friend, gathering, mixing and putting together in or¬ 
ganic form, 650 grains of water, 125 grains of fat, 108 
grains of lime, 80 grains of albumen, 26 grains of 
sugar, and 10 grains of ash. Hold up an egg, and ex¬ 
amine it critically, by the side of a modern watch, or 
by the side of some marvelous bit of machinery, and 
if you are honest, you must admit that the hen has 
excelled them all, not, perhaps, in inventive genius, 
for the first hen laid eggs, perhaps, as well as our 
modern birds. There is no animal mixture under the 
sun so intricate, so compact, so full of power and 
force as the egg. Go through New York City at din¬ 
ner-time, and you will find thousands of working men 
eating egg sandwiches for their dinner. Fried eggs 
between two pieces of bread and butter provide a 
large share of the motive power that is raising the 
buildings in our modern Gotham, paving the streets, 
erecting palaces, and adding to the pride and wealth 
THE FUEL, THE ENGINE AND THE PRODUCT. Fig. 142 
year. She turned that grain into 20 pounds of eggs, 
besides making a fair growth of flesh and feathers, 
and leaving fertilizer enough to produce one bushel 
or 60 pounds of potatoes. 
Starting from the shell with 1% bushel of wheat, 
the pullet will grow to henhood, lay her 140 eggs, and 
present her owner with a five-pound carcass of the 
most nourishing meat to be obtained. With this rec¬ 
ord, it is time for the cow, the sheep, and the hog 
either to hang their heads in shame, or retire to some 
quiet country, and go into training for a better rec¬ 
ord. I have said that one bushel of wheat will feed a 
hen for one year, with what bugs she can scratch and 
what worms she can dig out of the ground, in an or¬ 
dinary inclosure. If we are prepared to feed clover 
or Alfalfa in connection with the wheat, or if we will 
let the hen run at pasture, and give her a chance to 
graze, she will save for us, at least, one peck of the 
wheat. But take the record as it stands, and suppose 
that every American hen can do as well as ours. A 
record of 140 eggs is called a poor one by many of our 
experts, but let us take that as an average. 
Hens and Wheat. —Here we are bragging about 
our great grain crop, and how we are feeding the 
world on bread and meat. Last year, this country 
produced 530,149,168 bushels of wheat. Let us sup¬ 
pose that wheat was fed entirely to hens, and that the 
hens did as well as our hens have done. Do you re¬ 
alize how many eggs that would make ? It would 
represent 74,229,883,520. The average export value of 
eggs in New York, last year, was a trifle over 16 cents 
per dozm. They are worth more than that with us ; 
but take that average value. The eggs produced from 
the wheat, on this basis, would be worth the enormous 
sum of $954,268 502 40. As sold for food, this wheat 
was worth $428,547,121 ; 
in other words, our 
little friend the hen, 
would turn the wheat 
into a manufactured 
product, which would 
more than double its 
value. Last year, we 
produced in this coun¬ 
try, 1,902,967,933 bush¬ 
els of corn. It is said 
that injurious insects 
destroyed over $100,000,- 
000 worth of crops last 
year. If these bugs 
could have been fed to 
hens, in connection with 
the corn and the wheat, 
with what grass would 
otherwise have gone to 
waste, our estimate is 
that the 2,433,117,101 
bushels of corn and 
wheat would have pro¬ 
duced $4,379,610,781 80 
worth of eggs. We 
never want to hear an¬ 
other word said against 
the possibilities of the 
little hen as a manu¬ 
facturer, in the face of 
these figures. 
Great Figures.— 
Why, do you understand 
that all the railroads in 
this country, from 
Maine to California, 
have a capital stock of 
only $5,453,783,398 ? Our 
little hen could handle 
the corn and wheat of 
the country, so as nearly to buy half the railroads of 
the country in one year ! The gold and silver ques¬ 
tions have stirred up the world for a number of cen¬ 
turies. The experts tell us that there has been pro¬ 
duced in the entire world, since the discovery of 
America, or from 1492 to 1898, $9,220,725,400 worth of 
gold. Our little friend, the American hen, will take 
the wheat and the corn and the bugs of one season, 
and buy more than half the gold product of the world 
for over 400 years In the same 405 years, the world 
has produced $10,793 437,100 of silver. Give the Amer¬ 
ican hen, in addition to the corn and wheat, the 698,- 
767,809 bushels of oats, the 66,685.127 bushels of barley, 
and grind up for her, the scrub horses, mules, cows 
and other cattle that are at present running their 
owners in debt, and in three years, she would buy for 
Uncle Sam, all the gold and the silver that have been 
dug out of the earth’s surface, since Columbus sa led 
