The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-11
EGGS IN THE KLoNDIKE.

Diabolical Scheme to Feed Miners on
 lnfertile Hen Fruit.
 "We are all so much interested in the war nowadays" said Colonel John R, Wells, of Seattle, recently, that most of us have rather forgotten the Klondike with all it's rich possibilities of news and wealth. But up in my coun- try we are still very deeply interested in the Alaska gold fields, and thou sands of our people have invested their time, their money and many of them their lives in the lottery of gold digging. l believe l am a partner in the most diabolical and unique of all schemes to make money out of the poor devils that are toiling up under the Arctic Circle. My only justification is that if l were not doing the particular thing somebody else would be. You know, eggs are way up in that far way cold and desolate region, where the common fowl of the barnyard is as much a foreigner as the Hottentot or the Terra del Fuegan. I did not go into it until l was asked and it was with the recording angel. It was my nephew in one of the little country towns about ten miles out from Seattle who thought of the thing. He has for several years been interested in poul- try and knows all the fine points about it. When the excitement first arose about the gold discoveries he came to me and said he thought of shipping eggs and dressed and frozen poultry to Dawson City, where the prices were bound to go high in winter time and at any time of the year would afford a handsome profit. I encouraged him and finally I put some money in with his experience.
 He hadn't got on very far in the business before he thought.of scheme that beats any Yankee idea ever heard of before Of course, he buys his eggs here and there among the farm CTS and some of them are inferior goods that wouldn't stand shipment To make sure of eggs that would keep he bought half dozen incubators and began to hatch his eggs just as if he was in the broiler or the duck business on large scale. In this way, if an egg had germ in it he knew it would not keep. You see, it is a case where the bad eggs are the good ones. If an egg will hatch 1t will not keep. If it is in- fertile and will not hatch 1t will keep indefinitely, especially in cool eli mate. The experiment has proved a great success. We now have thirty 400- egg incubators running day and night matching out infertile eggs, you might say. The more infertile or bad eggs we get the happier we are. The chicks we hatch are simply by-product, like gas tar or crude petroleum. We get good prices for them, but the thing we are really after is the greatest quantity of infertile eggs. These we are now selling at Dawson for SAYS a dozen. Last fall our first shipment brought 30 a dozen at wholesale. We do not have to run the machines a full three weeks on our eggs. In seven days a fertile egg will begin to germinate, and with what is called an egg tester it is an easy matter to tell the hatchable from the infertile or non n-hatchabe ones. Thus our capacity is enormous. The fertile eggs are taken out as soon as found and consolidated in machines by themselves and allowed to run their full time of three weeks. It an in- genious and very profitable business. The eggs are far superior in quality to those you have here in Washington by the cold storage plan. They have a good flavor and are distinguishable from the freshest of eggs only by ex- perts. From the Washington Star.