The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-01-27
THE AMERICAN HEN.
Some Astonishing Figures About
Her Value.


Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and
the American Plutocrat rolled into one
have been eclipsed in the last year by
a modest and humble creature.
The American Hen. without giving
interviews or getting her name and
picture into periodicals, has performed
a financial and physical feat that
makes the head of the statistician
whirl. She has laid an epic poem.
When the. Census Bureau gets all its
reports together ii promises figures and
facts about this difficult creature and
her staple product that will make a
lot of United States Treasury Depart
ment figures look literally like 30 cents,
for that is the proportion some of the
biggest items in the budget will bear
as compared with the value of the
work of the American Hen.
In the last year she has laid enough
eggs to pay the expenses of the entire
War Department from top to bottom.
She has changed the balance of trade
in eggs She has earned more with
her quiet endeavor than the entire
postal system did. All the vessels
built in the country in the last year
do not weigh as much as do the eggs
that she laid.
Inc american men Is d bllus
There are enough of her in the coun-
try to feed our entire standing army
for eleven years, giving each soldier
and officer one chicken day.
If all the chickens in the country
were to conceive a passion for roosting
only on railroad tracks. there are
enough of them to block every line in
the country. for there would be one
chicken to every three and half feet
of railway.
If each locomotive in the country
were to kill one chicken day, the rail-
roads would have to keep up the kill
ing for twenty years without a break
in order to annihiiate all the chickens.
OR, if all the locomotives went mad
suddenly and tried to kill them all in
one year. they would have to resign
from the railroading business for II
months and kill twenty hens each day
for year.
If all the chickens of the country had
TO be transported on any one day, al
most all the 1,32S.0s4 freight cars in the
United States would be needed for the
work.
1t is lucky that hens are not drinkers
the bourbon and rye whiskey distilled
In the United States in 1900 would be
drunk in no time by the American Hen
and the American Tank would have to
go dry.
All the distilled spirits made in 1900
in the whole United States would last
them only few days.
THE eggs laid by the American Hen
in 1900 amounted to enough value in
dollars to pay the entire expenses for
that year of the United States Marine
Hospital Service, the United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey the Steam
boat Inspection Service, the running
expenses of forts and Notifications,
the Bureau of Labor and the Depart
ment of Justice. and then there would
be enough left to pay IS per cent. of
the total appropriations for 1901 for In
valid and other pensions.
The inhabitants of New York city
alone ate enough eggs in the year to
pay for another Brooklyn bridge.
Getting away from finance. and en-
tering the realm of physics, the cal
culations become still more bewilder-
ing.
For instance, all the eggs laid in
1900 if combined in one vast body of
proportionate dimensions, would make
a planet forty times greater in diam
eter than the earth. five times greater
than that of Saturn and four and one
half times greater than that of Jupiter.
But it would be an impossible and film
sy planet-so fiimsy that ii could not
fill the planetary system with novel
meteoric shower of Yolk.
In weight the eggs of the year COM
bined would not make big body COM
pared with the earth. A diagram
showing the earth as a globe two feet
in diameter would have to show the
globe made by the eggs with a mere
dot. But the eggs would make huge
body all the same, even if judged by
weight alone.
So huge a body would be made of all
the eggs laid by the American Hen in
1900 that ii II were to be dropped from
the sky on the entire American navy
the thirteen battleships, all the cruis-
ers, all the gunboats. all the monitors
and torpedo boats and converted craft
and Golfers and supply vessels and
tugboats--the mighty egg could an
initiate them all in an instant. If II
were to lie in the sea alongside of
the navy, that one great composite
egg would hide the ships, for in ton
mage IL would be far more than they
all are combined.
All the chickens in the country COM,
bined in one vast fowl would make
bird so huge that the Atlantic ocean
would be only puddle for it. 1t could
peck our battleships as the present
real hen pecks up bits of gravel and
stones to help her digestion. That
mighty composite fowl would not find
room enough on the earth to strut. 1t
could reach half way to the moon, and
II ii were put into a gigantic scale, al
most one-fifth of the entire merchant
marine of the country would have to
be put in the opposite scale to bal
ance il.
The eggs of 1900 weighed more than
four times as much as our entire do
mestic produce of WOOL three and three
quarter times as much as our domestic
produce Of cane sugar more than two
times as much as the copper output of
1900, more than two and three quarter
times as much as the tin plates manu-
featured during the year and thirty
times as much as the whole output of
gold.
The value of those eggs at the low
est market price was more than one
half the total income derived by the
United States in 1900 from the Gus.
toms revenue.
II all the banks in the country had
been called on suddenly to pay the
value OF the eggs in specie it would
have required more than one-third of
all the specie held by the 1871 national
banks.
There are so many chickens in the
country that IL they were divided
equally among the population Qeaving
cut Hawaiians), each human being in
the United States and the dependen-
cles would have to carry around with
him three chickens, or, to be exact
S.12 chickens. And each human being
would be entitled to 141. or 20 be exact