The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1902-02-05
WONDERFUL VALUE OF THE AMERICAN HEN
Some Astonishing Figures Showing the Financial and Physical
Feat She Has Performed The Government Has Had
Statistical Sportsmen Trailing Her.

Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and the
American Plutocrat rolled into one
have been eclipsed in the last year BY
modest and humble creature.
The American hen, without giving
interviews or getting her name and
picture into periodicals, has perform
ed fnantial and ply steal feat that
makes the head of the statistician
whirl. She has laid an epic poem.
When the census bureau gets all its
reports together it promises figures
and facts about this difficult creature
and her staple product that will max e
lot of United States treasury de-
partment figures look literally like 30
cents, for that's the proportion some
of the biggest items in the budget will
bear as compared with the value of the
work of the American hen.
10 the last year she has laid enough
eggs to pay the expenses of the entire
war department from top to bottom.
She has earned more with her quiet
endeavor than the entire postal sys-
tenn did. All the vessels built by the
country in the last year do not weigh
as much as do the eggs that she laid
The American hen is bird.
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 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
railroads would have to keep up the
killing for twenty years without a
break in order to annlhilate 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 Ito be transported on any one day
almost all of the l,32S,0S freight cars
in the United States would be needed
for the work.
II is lucky that hens are not drink
ers of alcoholic liquors. If they were,
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 1906
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
uOlldFS
that year of the United States marine
hospital service, the United States
coast and geoletic survey, the steam
boat inspection service, the running
expenses of forts and fortitications, the
bureau of labor and the department OF
Justice, and then there would be
enough left to pay 50 per cent of the
! total appropriations for 1901 for inva'
lid and other pensions.
The inhabitants of New York city
alone ate enough eggs in the year t.
pay for another Brooklyn bridge.
Getting away from finance and en-.
tering the realm of physics the cal
culations become still more be@ilder'
ing.
For instance, all the eggs laid in 1900
com bined in one vast body of proper