The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1908-02-05


on the whole navy, it is twice the
sum of all the pensions, and II Is
more than twice the amount we
spend for postage stamps.
The cash we pay out for chickens
land eggs in six months would secure
a receipted bill for the Panama canal
In three years our egg and chicken
expenditure would wipe out the ma
tional debt The eight hundred
thousand dollars we spend for eggs
land chickens on any day in the year
would euuiD seven arctic expeditions
4 Orr hen account for a single week
would nav for a splendid building
like the Congressional Library. Our
yearly hen money is forty millions
more than the total receipts from
United States customs and Sixty
millions more than our internal rev.
enue from all the cigars and WHISKY
Once more. the value of the chick
ems and eggs we consumed last year
exceeded the value of all the wheat
raised in the country, or OF all the
! cotton. or corn, or hay, or dairy prod
ucts. or wool. Above all, the product
of our memories last year far eX-
+ ceeded the value of the products OF
all our gold and silver mines.
WHY. then, do men rush to gold
| fields? Why not scramble to chick
| en- cOOps?
Eggs alone, for any one year since
1850. have yielded a greater sum of
cash than the products of all the
gold and silver mines combined. The
value of the products of all our gold
and silver mines in 19O4-the latest
year for which we have official fig
ures-was less than a hundred and
fourteen million dollars, while the
value of eggs that same year was
over a hundred and fifty millions.
Chickens alone, too, in any one
year for sixty years have exceeded
in value the products of all the gold
and eggs together; in any year during
the last fifty years, except 1899 and
1900, were worth more than all the
gold or all the silver taken from
the mines of the whole world.
Just comparison or two more in
an attempt to reach a fair under
standing of the immensely of the
business of the hen. For example,
if you wanted to buy up all of the
three hundred million chickens in
the country, and maintain them on
one farm, you'd need the entire
states of Delaware and Rhode Island
combined. For you can't keep more
than a hundred and fifty chickens
on an acre-nOt with profit. So you
would need two million acres, or
three thousand square miles, for
your purpose.
- Y CI1T1 n n
sixteen billions of eggs would make
one omelet three hundred thousand
miles in diameter and thirty-five
thousand miles high. You could
wrap the earth in that Omelet, just
as you'd wrap a marble in a hand
kerchief.
Merge the sixteen billion eggs into
one, and you would have colossal
ovoid more than a mile in length and
over a half a mile high That mas
todonic egg could contain the whole
tail-end of Manhattan Island, from
Fulton street to the Battery, includ-
ing the entire mountain range of sky
scrapers of the region. The egg thus
formed would weigh eight hundred
thousand tons, weight equal to
thirty-two sky-scrapers like the Flat
iron building.
Again, string the sixteen billion
eggs together and you would have
an egg necklace six hundred thou
sand miles in circumference, reach
ing from the earth to the moon and
back again, or making girdle round
the earth at the equator twenty
four strands deep.
Sixteen billions of eggs mean two
hundred for each inhabitant of the
country. AS a matter of fact, how
ever, we do not eat two hundred
eggs apiece in a year, but only one
hundred and thirty-three. The re-
mainder of the eggs go to factories.
For instance, calico print works, wine
CHARTERS and Photographic establish
ments last year used seventy million
dozen eggs, or over three-quarters
of a billion of separate eggs. Many
millions of dozens more of eggs were
used in bookbinderies and kid-glove
and leather factories.
With the mills of commerce, as
well as the menus of man, clamOring
for eggs, the hen long ago became
unable, alone and unaided, to supply
the daily demand 1t was at the
udlCHIHS point IHdJ the men len uONu
| hardest. She simply would not at
tend to business at certain lazy sea-
sons Well! What happened?
An American, an Englishman and
2 Frenchman simultaneously intro
duced a machine for Matching chick
-''incubator" they called it. But
it wasn't brand new thing by any
means. The Egyptians have prac-
ticed incubation for centuries by
I means of heated ovens, and thus for
the last thiYty years a hundred mil
| lion chickens have been produced
annually in Egypt.
The incubator as we know it, how
ever, is great Improvement on the
/ heated ovens of the Nile BY means
| of the machine as we use it a thou
sand chickens are now made to grow
/ where, by the natural mother method
only one chicken grew before-in-
|creasing egg production at the same