Dairying.
—The use to which the motor truck has been put in other industries is fully as important. Many industries use several hundred trucks in their work. Creameries have already been mentioned. The very fact that trucks make regular trips along designated routes is an invitation to the farmers to do more dairying. If John Jones can draw from $50 to $75 a month from the creamery for a few hours’ work each day, Henry Smith living on the next farm is anxious to do likewise. Many good farmers find it to their advantage in the long run to allow the women folks to have all the poultry and creamery money while the men content themselves with the returns from grain, livestock, woodlot, and hay land. Thus is created a division of labor which if carried out to the limit will interest every member of the rural family in some particular part of the farm work.
Without going into detail it may be said that from raising beef on the natural grass of the plains region to the raising of stock for butter, milk and cheese may seem a far cry, but with adequate markets and dependable transportation this is rapidly coming to pass. Dairying has already reached enormous proportions, and since it is estimated that dairy products should constitute for the sake of health and economy about one-fifth the average diet, it can easily be seen that dairying always will be of great importance. Over $18,000,000 a year is now received for milk and cream by Nebraska farmers, and Nebraska is not a leader in this line. No doubt with better roads and better marketing facilities that will be doubled or trebled in a few years.
Poultry.
—We have just mentioned the Nebraska income from milk and cream sold by the farmers. It may be surprising that the sum received from the humble hen is nearly twice as much (given by state authorities as $35,000,000 from the fowls and eggs produced each year).
But the only way this can be successful is by quick and adequate markets. Dressed fowls and eggs are highly perishable products and must be put into the cold storage warehouses at the earliest possible moment. The motor car and the rural express, with their necessary accompaniment good roads, make this possible and thus increase the returns to the poultry industry as well as widen the territory over which it will pay to keep fowls for commercial purposes.
As an illustration of the efficacy of the motor truck in the poultry business this quotation from the New York Times, June 8, 1920, is given:[193]
At 6 o’clock one morning a motor truck was loaded at Lancaster, Pa., with 18,000 eggs in crates, and 1000 chicks a day old, and started for New York City, one hundred miles away, says the writer. At the same time a similar shipment was sent to the consignee by railroad. It took the truck twelve hours to reach New York. Four of the little chicks were dead and nine eggs were broken when the goods were delivered at the door of the consignee.
The train shipment was four days in reaching Jersey City. It took another day to send a notice to the consignee that the shipment had arrived. He was then compelled to send his own truck to Jersey City for the shipment. When it reached his door thousands of the eggs had been smashed and half the chicks were dead.