Excerpt from Standard and Commercial Poultry Culture: By Artificial Process, Or, How to Make Poultry Culture Profitable

Naturally. Then, a people thus conditioned, whose prejudices were wrong, whose poultry reading had not begun, and whose care for this class Of stock was such as I have sketched, who knew and cared nothing for the comforts and diet of domestic poultry, but confi dently emected all feathered fowls to breed spontaneously and be self-sustaining naturally, I suggest, that the sudden introduction Of thorough-bred poultry among such people must end at once in mis fortune, in the death Of the stock, from abuse and neglect, in general discouragement and in early collapse of the commerce. Such indeed, is the universal history of revolutions m everything. The cause that occasioned the awakening can never be sustained until the people are educated en masse up tothe required condition. Percipitate ao tion, as in that case, before the people knew the needs and necessity Of the situation, endangers defeat and injury to the cause.

The dificulty in the early decline Of the Hen fever implied no fault, no fraud, but rather relates to poultry periodicals and their careful study. There is absolutely no cause Or commerce that can long live in ignorance. Special and general education must under lie everything that survives, and poultry culture is no exception to the operation Of that axiom. Such, we believe, explains the quick collapse Of the early commerce in pure bred poultry. SO much re lates to the past and seems to us essentially necessary in this connec tion in order that we may soon consider whether the poultry com merce of the future is secure in its claims Of greater permanency.

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