Norwich bulletin., 1915-11-20

milk ne 4SOlu. We AIG LOld WL1cI AhC COW cost originally so we can figure the interest on investment: we are not told what her feed cost: we are not told what share of wages should be charged against her daily milking and care. All we are permitted to hear is which gross income .$22o was from her proper cows work, viz: the prodnc-a tion of milk.
 We are not even told how much the owner paid in the. way of adyertis- ing to sell two calves at $40: nor how fairs: nor how much, transportation charges to and from them: nor how much in extra care for the animal while at them: nor how, much his own personal expenses were in follow ing her around. How much of that s977 he actually had as velvet" at the end of the year we do not know.
 Yet deductions for all these. and some other expenses ought to be made before we can get any just idea of the real income from such a COW and, therefore, of her real investment value. ~
 1t sounds well to say biuntly and briefly that the COW returned $977 in. the year. The figures have a mouth filling quality. To Q man who rather likes to brag, they are eminentIy agreeable. Especially when he can truthfully asseverate that they are correct to a cent.
 But, after all, don't you see that they are that most deceitful kind of an un-. truth that is to say, just a half-truth? They tell a part of the story, but not the whole story. They give one the shell of the egg but no white or yolk.
 There are big. lot of similar stor- ies going round, not only about cows but about hens and about various oth- CT farm animals and farm crops. Start ed originally, no doubt. simply to gratify the vanity of owners, they are, however, read by thousands who; fail- ing to note the sly omissions of es- Sential facts, are misled into utterly wrong ideas of what has been ac- cemplished. r. -t@s
 Some man, for instance, will tell his fellow poultrymen how he makes $500 or $2000 a year from half hundred hens on a. city back-1ot. The sub- nrbanite who has half-acre back garden reads this and promptly sets out to initiate it. He pays his fee to learn the boaster's methods of breeding and feeding, etc, and fondly expects to have every hen lay an egg a day or sometimes two, summer and winter, fall and spring.
 He assumes, you see. that the man who keeps hens keeps them to produce eggs, and that they've simply got to rain eggs if he is going to have enough to sell for $500 or 5000.
 Later.. if he keeps on 4workird and studying, he finds out that the big ir- come boasted Of didn't come from eggs as eggs, and couldn't ever have been obtained from the sale of any possi- ble production of eggs at any possible prices. Instead, it came mostly from Of h1rr to "easy marks at $25 or $50 each: or from the sale of very fair eggs in fancy boxes with fancy lettering at So or more per setting: or from the sale of booklets and feeding devices to beginners.
 Old hands are not often deceived by such representations. They can see through the hole in the miilstone-can even punch it open if it may have been mysteriously plugged up. But hum dreds and thousands of amateurs, of young aspirants for fame and for tune, of eback-to- the land" dreamers don't see through the hole. They as-. sume that if COW earns $977 year 1t is by doing her proper cows work, i. e. by producing that worth of milk or butter. They assume that if fifty. hens earn one or two thousand dol lars year, it Is by doing proper. hens work, i. e. laying that. much worth of eggs. : : Whereupon they go plunging gen- orally to find out when too late that they've dived into mudhole instead of into silver lined swimming pool When wac a boy, 1T used to hear that one might find a pot of gold wherever rainbow touched the ground,-IF he could only get there before the rainbow moved away. I
 As man, a"horny- handed son of