Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1907 — THE CHICKEN STEALING SEASON. [ARTICLE]

THE CHICKEN STEALING SEASON.

According to the Goodland Herald there are chicken thieves abroad in the land, at least in the vicinity of Goodland, and Ed Strubbe had 300 stolen, Sorphy Brucker 250, and Warren Wilson a large number. Brocket's were ail White Brahmas, which fact ought to lead to the thief’s undoing when he come to sell them if proper notification and a close watch was kept by poultry buyers in** neighboring towns. In our opinion the chicken thief is about the lowest down ornery cuss that the devil ever had in training, and whenever one is caught he should be given the extreme penalty of the law, which ought to be a thousand years imprisonment instead of one or two. The chicken industry is generally a side issue of the farmer’s wife, and the care and labor expended in raising a hundred or two hundred chickens and fitting them for the market is something that not one man in a hundred would go through with if he could get $2 apiece for the chicks in the fall instead of 30 to 40 cents, But the wife does this work, runs out in the rain to gather the little fellows in when they are young and a sudden shower comes upr feeds them through the season and watches them grow into large fine birds, in happy anticipation of the few dollars they will bring her and of the new dress, coat or some other article of wearing apparel she can buy for herself or some of the children with the proceeds, or some needed article of household furniture she can purchase —and then some night an ornery whelp who is too lazy to work comes along and steals the whole bunch! Say! A man under like circumstances would not only use all the swear words in his vocabulary but would be so badly discouraged that he would be apt to go to the river and jump in if the water were deep enough to end his troubles. But a woman, she will sit down and have a good cry oter the loss, swallow her disappointment over all the needed articles she was going to buy with her chicken money—for the farmer who denies bis wife this small part of the farm’s income is a stingy brute indeed—andtheb postpones her purchases until “next year” when She can raise another crop of chickens, perhaps to lose them again the same way. The chicken thief is worse than the man who takes his home paper for several years without paying for it and then, when a dun is seat him, puts it back in the postoffice marked “refused,” and whenever one of them is rounded up be should be dealt with in a manner that he will not forget for the rest of his natural life.