Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1886 — The Chicken Business. [ARTICLE]

The Chicken Business.

It does beat the Dutch how closely great men arte watched. By some means the world has possessed itself of the knowledge that I own an incubator, and the result is that I am now having excellent opportunities for compiling a catalogue of persons desirous of Becoming rich in the poultry business. Scarcely a day passes that I do not receive a letter from somebody wanting a slice of my golden experience in the line of speculative knowledge, that begins with an old hen and generally ends in the poorhouse, if persisted in; and to save hard w’qrk and postage I have concluded to pad tbis column with a little information that if judiciously applied will stave off old age and keep wrinkles in the next county. There is money in chicken-raising if you know how to go about it, but like everything else, a certain amount of “know how ’is necessary to induce eminent success to come ypur way. The man who can’t tell a chicken from a gosling had better remain behind the counter, or stay in a bank until he learns something. My advice to the novice in poultry raising would be, to follow it simply for pleasure until you acquire a knowledge that will tell you to go ahead. Anybody can hatch chickens with an incubator, but it takes a large amount of science and eternal vigilance to raise them. Patrick Henry never said anything more true than his memorable allusion to the price of a spring chicken and the cost of liberty be--ing one and inseparable. Patrick no doubt keot a few hens himself. But to the man who goes into the chicken business simply to find steady employment and lots of pleasure, I say, “Go it you’ll get there in both respects.” When the motive is not mercenary the pursuit is an unbounded sea of bliss, with islands of pure delight scattered through it in great luxuriance. I don’t think I ever did anything outside of religious duty that gave me greater joy; though it must be admitted that I made a close carrom toward bankruptcy while doing it; and joy, although a nice thing to have around when you want to write poetry, is not equal to salt pork for keeping a man up when he has hard work to do. If you want to be happ.y and get your pay as you go along, raise chickens—unless your neighbor’s division fence is bad—but if you want to salt down something that can be used as collateral after awhile, don’t do it. I began by trying to raise chickens for sordid gain that could be jingled in the pocket, and a more miserable man you couldn’t have found with a constable’s warrant. I then gave it a whirl simply for fun, and felt glorious right away. It makes all the difference in the world whether your incentive is moonshine or money. When I heard the first chick chirp in my incubator, and realized clear down to my boots that I was indeed! a mother, and had the documents right there to prove it, in spite of the cold, unfeeling fact that I was regarded by -the world as a bald-headed man of much sadness, I felt as though I was worth a million dollars; but when, six moi ths later, I had to pawn my overcoat in mid-winter to buy corn meal, I felt that I had been blessed with altogether too much profuseness in a maternal way to suit the size of my flour barrel. I long at times to sit down and meditate on things that have made the world gnaw its beard for ages, but no man with a loaded incubator can take much time to muse, unless he. puts cotton in his ears, or gets dreadful reckless about consequences. An incubator is one of the most remorseless things outside of boarding school, and for keeping a man from loafing with the clouds it can discount both a failure of crops and an iron-clad chattel mortgage. When you see a man with hollow eyes, haggard cheeks, unshaven face, and lifeless hair, shambling around in an aimless, homeless sort of way, looking as though he hadn’t slept, washed, or combed himself for a month, bet every cent you can raise that he owns an incubator, which has just begun to fire its possibilities at him with a desperation of energy that will kill him if he don’t blow the light out. That’s what it means to monkey with a hen-roost on scientific principles, and as I love all mankind, I want everybody to know it. When somebody tells you that the easiest way on earth to get rich with quickness is to buy an incubator and plunge into the chicken business, pull down the corner of your eye and immediately give him a front view of your back.— Lige Broun in Chicago Ledger.