CHAPTER I

IS THERE MONEY IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS?


The chicken business is big. No one knows how big it is and no one
can find out. The reason it is hard to find out is because so many
people are engaged in it and because the chicken crop is sold, not
once a year, but a hundred times a year.

Statistics are guesses. True statistics are the sum of little
guesses, but often figures published as statistics are big guesses
by a guesser who is big enough to have his guess accepted.


A Big Business; Growing Bigger

The only real statistics for the poultry crop of the United States
are those of the Federal Census. At this writing these statistics
are nine years old and somewhat out of date. The value of poultry
and eggs in 1899, according to the census figures, was $291,000,000.
Is this too big or too little? I don't know. If the reader wishes to
know let him imagine the census enumerator asking a farmer the value
of the poultry and eggs which he has produced the previous year.
Would the farmer's guess be too big or too small?

From these census figures as a base, estimates have been made for
later years. The Secretary of Agriculture, or, speaking more
accurately, a clerk in the Statistical Bureau of the Department of