The Dollar Hen Part 4

Fourth, the sale or rent of these places to poultrymen at a reasonable profit on the investment, but at a rate which will still be below the cost at which the individual could have acquired the land. Fifth, the selection of the stock that would not only be better adapted to the enterprise than that which would be acquired by the individual farmer, but would possess the uniformity necessary to the maintenance of a standard grade in the product.

Sixth, the centralized hatching of the chicks by which means chicks can be more cheaply hatched and better hatched than by the imperfect methods available to the small poultryman.

Seventh, the purchase of all outside supplies with the usual savings involved in large purchases.

Eighth, a teaming system of delivering such supplies.

Ninth, a general protection against thieves and predatory animals by an organized war on all "varments."

Tenth, maintenance of the best methods in feeding and care by the employment of skilled advisers, or the operation of demonstration farms under the direction of the central management.

Eleventh, the enforced daily gathering of all eggs and their lodgment that same evening in a clean, dry cooler, with a thermometer hovering around 29 degrees Fahrenheit.

Twelfth, the strict enforcement of penalties against the man who attempts to sell bad eggs.

Thirteenth, the prompt dispatch of the product to its final market.

Fourteenth, the final sale of the eggs with opportunities for fancy prices made possible by an absolutely guaranteed product in quant.i.ties sufficient to permit of a regular supply and of advertising the product.

Fifteenth, the conduction of breeding operations along any desired line, with the opportunity of combining the principle of great numbers for selection with the comparison of all progeny from ancestry, a method that will bring results a hundred times more quickly than the efforts of the small breeder.

Sixteenth, the advantage of the sale of breeding stock to be acquired from the free publicity which is showered on all unique industrial enterprises.

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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sociations 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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.

Co-operation is entirely feasible and successful where the people behind the movement have enough interest in the enterprise and good enough business sense to run the proposition as efficiently as similar private enterprises are run. The idea that co-operation must always result in a big saving is a misconception. Employes will not work any harder for an a.s.sociation than for a private employer, sometimes not as hard. Certainly no employee will work as hard for an a.s.sociation as he will for himself.

Why people should expect to buy out the grocery store and hire the grocer to run it and save money for themselves, is a thing I could never understand. But if there is some great waste that co-operation will prevent, as where seven milk wagons drive every morning over the same route, or where the market of perishable crops is glutted one day and starved the next, centralization, corporate or co-operate, will pay.

I know of no better way to impress the reader with American co-operation in actual practice than to quote from a brief account of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange.

The Exchange was founded upon the theory that every member is ent.i.tled to furnish his pro rata of the fruit for s.h.i.+pment through his a.s.sociation, and every a.s.sociation to its pro rata to the various markets of the country. This theory reduced to practice gives every grower his fair share, and the average price of all markets throughout the season.

Another cardinal provision of the plan was that all fruit should be marketed on a level basis of actual cost, with all books and accounts open for inspection at the pleasure of the members. These broad principles of full co-operation const.i.tute the basis of the Exchange movement.

The Exchange system is simple, but quite democratic. The local a.s.sociation consists of a number of growers contiguously situated, who unite themselves for the purpose of preparing their fruit for market on a co-operative basis. They establish their own brands, make such rules as they may agree upon for grading, packing and pooling their fruit. Usually these a.s.sociations own thoroughly equipped packing houses.

All members are given a like privilege to pick and deliver fruit to the packing house, where it is weighed in and properly receipted for. Every grower's fruit is separated into different grades, according to quality, and usually thereafter it goes into the common pool, and in due course takes its percentage of the returns according to grade.

Any given brand is the exclusive property of the Local a.s.sociation using it, and the fruit under this brand is always packed in the same locality, and therefore of uniform quality. This is of great advantage in marketing, as the trade soon learns that the pack is reliable.

There are more than eighty a.s.sociations, covering every citrus fruit district in California, and packing nearly two hundred reliable and guaranteed brands of oranges and lemons.

The several local Exchanges designate one man each from their members.h.i.+p as their representative, and he is elected a director of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange. By this method the policy-making and governing power of the organization remains in the hands of the local Exchanges.

From top to bottom the organization is planned, dominated and in general detail controlled absolutely by fruit growers, and for the common good of all members. No corporation nor individual reaps from it either dividends or private gain.

So far we have dealt almost exclusively with the organization of the Exchange, its co-operative aspects, and general policy at home.

Equally important is its organization in the markets.

Seeking to free itself from the s.h.i.+fting influence of speculative trading, by taking the business out of the hands of middlemen at home, the Exchange found it quite as important to maintain the control of its own affairs in the markets.

For this purpose the Exchange established a system of exclusive agencies in all the princ.i.p.al cities of the country, employing as agents active, capable young men of experience in the fruit business. Most of these agents are salaried, and have no other business of any kind to engage their attention, and none of the Exchange representatives handle any other citrus fruits. These agents sell to smaller cities contiguous to their headquarters, or in the territory covered by their districts.

Over all these agencies are two general or traveling agents, with authority to supervise and check up the various offices. These general agents maintain in their offices at Chicago and Omaha, a complete bureau of information, through which all agents receive every day detailed information as to sales of Exchange fruit in other markets the previous day. Possessing this data, the selling agent cannot be taken advantage of as to prices. If any agent finds his market sluggish, and is unable to sell at the average prices prevailing elsewhere, he promptly advises the head office in Los Angeles, and sufficient fruit is diverted from his market to relieve it and restore prices to normal level.

Through these agencies of its own the Exchange is able to get and transmit to its members the most trustworthy information regarding market conditions, visible supplies, etc. This system affords a maximum of good service at a minimum cost. The volume of the business is so large that a most thorough equipment is maintained at much less cost to growers than any other selling agency can offer.

The annual business of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange amounts to over ten million dollars, and the Exchange handles over half the citrus fruit output of the State. Yet there are people who say co-operation in America will not work.

Co-operative Egg Marketing in Denmark.

I have discussed at length the work of the California Fruit Growers'

Exchange, as the best example in the United States of the co-operative marketing of farm produce. We have thus far but little co-operative work in the marketing of poultry products. Canada has a few examples, but it is to European countries that we must go for a full demonstration of the principle of co-operation when applied to the products of the hen. In England and in Ireland co-operative efforts in the growing, fattening, and marketing of poultry and eggs are quite common. It is to Denmark, however, that we must go to find the most wholesale example of this truly modern type of business effort.

The Danes are co-operators in the fullest sense. They have co-operative creameries and co-operative packing houses. The Danish Egg Export Society is an organization, the plan and work of which is very much like that of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange.

The local branch of the a.s.sociation buys the eggs of the farmer, paying for them by weight. Collectors are hired to gather them at frequent and regular intervals, and are paid In accordance with the amount of their collections, but must stand the loss of breakage.

Each individual poultryman's eggs are kept separate until they reach a centralizing station. There are a number of these central stations at which the eggs are carefully crated and packed for s.h.i.+pment to England.

The individual farmer is fined or taxed for all bad eggs found in his lot. This fine is deducted from his receipts and he has nothing to do but to submit to it or get out of the a.s.sociation. The latter he cannot afford to do because the a.s.sociation has its established brands and can pay him more for his eggs than he could secure by attempting to market them himself. As a result of this strict system of making the producer responsible for weight and quality of the eggs the Danish eggs have become the largest and finest in the world.

Although the writer firmly believes in the co-operative marketing of farm produce, and considers that the success already secured in this work is conclusive evidence of the practicability and desirability of co-operation, it would not be fair to infer that co-operation has entirely driven out private or corporate enterprise. Just as a goodly per cent. of the citrus fruit of California is still handled by private dealers, so in Denmark we find that nearly one-half of the eggs sent to England are handled by private companies. Let it be noted, however, that these companies maintain a system of buying on merit which enforces high quality that is not to be found where private buyers are without the spur of co-operative compet.i.tion.

Before co-operation entered the orange regions of California, the fruit was poorly packed and handled and the markets at times so glutted, that s.h.i.+pments of fruit sometimes failed to pay the freight, and this was actually charged back to the unfortunate grower. Co-operation has done away with this waste. In like manner the great loss from decomposed eggs and half hatched chicks is unknown to the egg trade of Denmark.

Corporation or Co-operation?