In these sixteen functions there is ample opportunity for capital, backed by ability in organization, to reap an ample reward. Is it a dream? In a sense yes, but a dream made possible by the observation of the actual results achieved in similar lines, and of the present tendency in the poultry producing world.
Why has not this thing been done before? Because no one knew enough to do it. Why did not the wonderful trucking regions develop earlier in the South, and why does it still take northern settlers, backed by railroad advertising, to develop the wonderful modern industries which enables every city dweller in the North to have strawberries in February and fresh vegetables any day in the year?
Why did the California fruit trade develop? Did anyone suppose forty years ago that the unsettled valley around Pasadena would ever produce one thousand dollars per acre in one year? These orange groves, too valuable for agricultural purposes to be used as town sites, were precarious experiments until the trans-continental refrigerator car and the California Fruit Growers' Exchange paved the way and put each day in every eastern and northern city just the quantity of oranges that the people could consume at a profitable price.
Mr. Harwood, in the World's Work for May, 1908, after describing the "City of a Million Hens," raises the question, "If in Petaluma, why not anywhere?" I would like to answer that question by saying that while anywhere is a little broad, the reason the industry has not developed elsewhere has been because of the diversion of interested capital towards impractical large individual poultry plants, manned by hired labor. Another reason has been the lack of the technical knowledge necessary to construct and operate efficient hatcheries.
The poultryman has been a disciple of the poultry papers and poultry fanciers of the day. The poultry papers and poultry literature has generally been supported by poultry fanciers and manufacturers of incubators, patent nests and portable houses. The good folks have vied with one another in complicating the business. They have built steam-piped houses, with padded walls and miniature railways with which daily to haul away the droppings. A few famous fanciers selling eggs at $10.00 per setting have made such business pay, but alas for the luckless investor in what the visiting poultry editor would style a "handsomely equipped modern poultry plant."
A few years ago a Government poultry expert paid a visit to Petaluma. He came back and reported, "It is a great disappointment, the methods are very crude." The case is most pathetic. Here was a man employed by the people to teach them how to make poultry pay. His carfare is paid across the continent that he might visit the only community in the United States where at that time any considerable number of people were making their living from poultry, and because he did not find lightning rods on the poultry houses, he came back with the look of Naamen who, when he was requested by Elisha to bathe seven times in the river Jordan, replied, "It is very crude."
Will Co-operation Work?
That magic thing, "Co-operation," while utterly lacking in the Utopian qualities with which the word artist paints it, is a decidedly bigger factor in American affairs than the average man realizes.
The chief difficulty with co-operation is that the manager, if not incompetent, has an excellent opportunity to be a grafter. In Europe co-operation in agricultural and mercantile enterprise is older and better developed than in this country. Perhaps the Europeans are less inclined to be grafters, but a more likely explanation is that the members of such associations as these have learned how to prevent and detect graft, just as our business men have learned to avoid losses from the dishonesty of employes. That this is the true explanation is substantiated by the fact that when co-operation once becomes established in this country, it succeeds even better than in Europe.
When the creameries were started in the West several years ago, there was much complaint of swindlers, fake stock companies, and co-operative ventures in which the manager absconded with the butter money. To-day more than half of the American creameries are co-operative and the number is constantly increasing. They are efficient and successful in every way, and to-day make the finest of butter and pay the highest prices to the farmer for his cream. But their way was first paved and the business developed by successful private concerns.