accepted.

A Big Business; Growing Bigger

The only real statistics for the poultry crop of the United States
are those of the Federal Census. At this writing these statistics
are nine years old and somewhat out of date. The value of poultry
and eggs in 1899, according to the census figures, was $291,000,000.
Is this too big or too little? I don't know. If the reader wishes to
know let him imagine the census enumerator asking a farmer the value
of the poultry and eggs which he has produced the previous year.
Would the farmer's guess be too big or too small?

From these census figures as a base, estimates have been made for
later years. The Secretary of Agriculture, or, speaking more
accurately, a clerk in the Statistical Bureau of the Department of
Agriculture, says the poultry and egg crop for 1907 was over
$600,000,000.

The best two sources of information known to the writer by which
this estimate may be checked are the receipts of the New York market
and the annual "Value of Poultry and Eggs Sold," as given by the
Kansas State Board of Agriculture.

[Illustration: Plate I. Page 14. Graph - Is There Money in Poultry?]

In plate I the top curve a-a gives the average spring price of
Western first eggs in the New York market. The curve b-b gives the
annual receipts of eggs at New York in millions of cases. Now, since
value equals quantity multiplied by price, and since the quantity
and values of poultry are closely correlated to those of eggs, the
product of these two figures is a fair means of showing the rate of
increase in the value of the poultry crop. Starting with the census
value of $291,000,000 for the year 1899, we thus find that by 1907
the amount is very close to $700,000,000. This is represented by the
lower line.

The value of the poultry and eggs sold in Kansas have increased as
follows:

Year Value

1903 $ 6,498,856
1904 7,551,871
1905 8,541,153
1906 9,085,896
1907 10,300,082

The dotted line e-e represents the increase in the national poultry
and egg crop estimated from the Kansas figures. Evidently the
estimate given in Secretary Wilson's report was not excessive.

Now, I want to call the reader's attention to some relations about
which there can be no doubt and which are even more significant. The
straight line c-c in Plate 1 represents the rate of increase of
population in this country. The line b-b represents the r