The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-27


give the whirling wheels and the sing
ing rails moments rest.
Hogs and sheep and mules, and cows
and steers and horses-count them,
watch them trampling. rushing to the
sea, and then turn to the figures gath
cred by the Census and Treasury de-
partments and find that all that jos
Ting, never-ceasing stream of great
brutes from millions of acres of pas
ture, does not amount in value to one
quarter of the value of the eggs laid
by the little hen. And If you add the
value of the hen herself to the value
of the eggs, that whole aggregation OF
horns and hcofs, all those tons of
flesh. do not amount in value to one
eighth of what fowl and egg are
worth.
Now sweep your eye over the vast
extent of continent from the great
ranches under the Rocky Mountains,
over the plains of Texas, over the do
mains of railroad and slaughter
houses from Omaha to Chicago. Take
in with it the immense city of Chica-
go itself, with its duchies and princi-
palities of stock yards and abattoirs
and factories and laboratories and
warehouses and shops and railroad
yards and wharves ana refrigerating
plants-all devoted to seizing the living
beast and converting him to thou
sand uses, hide, horns, hoof. tallow
and meat.
Take in the roads that bear miles
on miles of cars full of that product;
warehouses scattered along a thou
sand miles of land; warehouses 'front.'
ing every navigable nook on the
oceans; refrigerator ships that are
monsters. all stuffed full as they can
hold; watch them tear through the seas
of the world, flooding the ports from
London to Singapore.
The Hen Beats.
And then please go back to the dun
colored cackler that roosts in ttnv
ramshackle houses and drops her
golden egg into an old box that the
farmer happens to have picked up:
and behold! all the tons of canned
and fresh and salteG beef: all the tall
low; all the bacon and hams: all the
canned and salted and fresh pork: all
the sausages and the sausage meat;
yes, and all the castings for those saus-
ages and the hundred 'fixings" that
are exported as the result of the mad
hustle. hustle. hustle across the con-
tinents of locomotive and car. ana
exported by a hundred different lines
OF ships, do not come within 10000
tons of the weight of the eggs laid
during the year in the United States.
For the weight of all those animal
products is 'only," S46,S60 tons; and
the weight OF the cne and quarter
billion dozens of eggs, at the aver
age weight of eight to the pound, -
970,363 tons.
The would extinguish the entire
United States Navy from kearsarge
and Alabama down to the tiniest tor
pcdo boat. If all the yolk were to be
hurled down on 1t at once. there
wouldn't be a rivet left.
And in dollars those eggs equal 81
per cent. of the entire income pro-
duced by all the exports of all the
meat products, from the pigs tail TO
the sirloin steak. Add the value OF
the poultry to the eggs, and the meat
products are beaten.
Now throw in the remote animal
products that are exported annually
hoofs, horns. bristles. bones. and even
glue: add wool and things made out
of wool then add every kind of leath-
err: pile on IL all even the exported
boots and shoes-and with all those
allies. the mass can beat the poultry
and poultry products by only $4,000
900.
Wool Isn't Gin IT."
Not so many years ago. in the midst
Of battle over tariffs, the whole coun-
try was shaken by the fight over wool;
and it was well worth while, for the
wool product amounts to forty-five
and three-quarter millions of dollars
annually
But the poultry sold in a year beats
that by ninety-one millions, and the
eggs beat 1t by ninety-eight and half
millions Of dollars.
And all the worlds animal products
that have, in turn, come to these
shores, from goats herded in Moroc-
co and Switzerland to leather from
every place where leather can be OBJ
tanned, including even gloves made
from that leather, including, too, all
the cheeses from every land, even
China--they aggregate 1927 .909,553 in
value, less than half the value of chick
Ell and egg.
1t is almost sad to think of the ar
and battles and passions; and of the
Alaskan adventurers. with their Klon-
dikes and Nomes, their ripping open
of the frozen North itself, their war
against Ice and blizzard and wilder
ness for gold, when we study the
little seven pound hen and discover
that all the gold and silver that engi-
neers and miners and sluices and dy-
Mantle and laundering stamp mills
have wrested from a whole continent
do not equal I'm combined value, year
by year, the value Of the tiny, white
oval that is gathered in aprons and
baskets every morning in every ham,
let, without a single adventure that Is
worth the telling.
Only in one year--that of 1900
since records We're kept by the gov-
eminent. has it happened that the
American mines could beat the hen.
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