You will, of course, have more or less correspondence with your customers. By all means use your own letterheads, but do not let your printer embellish them with cuts of roosters, chickens, pigs, or the like. Not that we are ashamed of them; far be it from such. You do not, however, need to have a sheet of paper littered up with pictures of imaginary animals in order to convince your customer that you are selling the meats of that animal. I like a plainly printed letterhead that carries my name, my address and my business. That's all.
By all means keep books on your farm-to-table venture, if you undertake it. Set down on one side of the page what you pay for boxes, labels, postage, and so on, including what you pay yourself for chickens at your huckster's prices. On the other side of the page set down what your city customer pays you. Add up the pages, do a simple sum in subtraction, and you will know just how much you have made.
If I kept only twenty-five hens I should sell my eggs and my chickens direct to the city consumer. When the farmer learns to sell direct instead of letting the huckster, the poultry house, the commission man, the dresser and the retailer stand between him and the consumer, then poultry raising will become really profitable.
There are too many folks who sell their eggs and "take it out in trade."
One large illustration, a wash drawing, made by a staff artist.
BY JAMES H. COLLINS
"Say, you're a funny salesman!" exclaimed the business man. "Here I make up my own mind that I need two motor trucks and decide to buy 'em from your company. Then I send for a salesman. You come down and spend a week looking into my horse delivery, and now you tell me to keep my horses. What kind of a salesman do you call yourself anyway?"