Читать книгу Natural and Artificial Duck Culture - James Rankin - Страница 8

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Men who have impoverished themselves by repeated failures in the city come out to retrieve their fortunes by raising poultry in the country. They visit your place and see thousands of young ducklings of all sizes and ages, each one vieing with the other as to which will consume the most food. They are completely carried away with the sight. They question you closely in regard to the profit derived from the business, and then openly avow their intention of doing the same thing themselves. You advise beginning small, and meekly suggest the possibility of failure through inexperience. The incredulous smile that plays over their features informs you that advice is wasted. "Why, haven't I read up all the poultry journals and got the whole thing down fine?"

Others, still, who, from close confinement at sedentary work in the city, are anxious to engage in a business which promises equally to restore their health as well as to provide them a livelihood. These invalids come out with their exhausted energies and dilapidated constitutions to engage in a business which, to insure success, requires a minuteness of detail and intensity of application second to none. They are unequal to the six or eight hours required of them on a revolving stool in the counting-room in the city, but are equal to the fourteen and sixteen hours indispensable to the poultry business in the country. Is it strange that a large proportion of these men fail?

Others, still, come to us wishing to engage in the business, at the same time candidly acknowledging their complete ignorance and inexperience. They frankly state their circumstances. They are poor, with families to support, and are not afraid of work, throwing themselves, as it were, upon one's mercy. They seek a good, healthy and fairly profitable occupation in which they can cultivate the physique and morals of their children away from the temptations of city life. Now you take kindly to such men; readily forfeit any advantages which may accrue to yourself through want of candor on your part, gauge their calibre, and to the best of your ability measure their chances of success, and give them the best advice you can, which advice usually is to begin small—say with one machine, buildings in proportion, and increase their plant as their experience and judgment dictates.