Chapter XXVI: "policy the Best Honesty."

This reversion of the old saying that "honesty's the best policy" seemed to have finally attained among many hen-men, and the ambition to dispose of their now large surplus stock, at the best possible prices, had become very general, while the means to accomplish it came to be immaterial, so that they got rid of their fancy poultry at fancy figures.

Nothing that could be said against me and my stock was neglected, or omitted to be said. But, as long as fowls would sell at all, I had my full share of the trade, notwithstanding this. The following veritable letter, received from a noted "breeder," in 1853, will explain itself; and it exhibits the disposition of more than _one_ huckster still left around us. It will be observed that this gentleman called me his "friend"!

"FRIEND B----: What has become of all the trade? I haven't sold
twenty dollars' worth of chickens, in a month! I've now got over
three hundred of these curses on hand--and they're eating me up,
alive. What'll we do with them? Do you want them? Will you buy
them--_any_how? And give what you like for them.

"They are a better lot than you ever owned,--everybody says
so,--Greys, Cochins (_pure_) and Shanghaes. D--n the business! I'm
sick of it. My fowls and fixin's cost me over twelve hundred
dollars. What do you think of an auction? Has the bottom fallen
out, entirely? Could I get back two or three dollars apiece for
this lot, do you think, at public sale?

"B---- is stuck with about five hundred of the gormandisers. I'm
glad of it--glad--_glad_! An't you? He always lammed you, as well
as me; and though I think _you_ can swinge the green 'uns as cutely
as 'most any of 'em, _he_ has been an eye-sore for three years that
ought to be put down. He got his stock of you, he says,--but (no
offence to you, friend B----), it an't worth a cuss. All of it's
sick and lousy, and he shan't sell no more fowls, if I can help it.

"Have you seen W----'s stock, lately? Isn't _he_ a beauty! I told
him, last week, he'd ought to be ashamed of himself ever to gone
into this trade, at all. He's well enough off, without stealing the
bread out of the mouths of them that's a long way honester than he
ever was. I'll have a lick at _him_, yet.

"Come and see my stock,--and buy it. I don't want it. I must give
it up. I'm too busy about something else. Come--will you? I don't
say anything against your fowls, outside; but you know, as well as
I do, that you haven't got the _real thing_. Bennett says you
haven't, and everybody else says so. As to your 'importations,' you
never had a fowl that was imported from any further off than Cape
Cod, and you know it! But that is neither here nor there. _I_ don't
care a fig how much you gouge 'em. All I want is to get rid of
_mine_. If you don't buy them, I shall sell them,--somehow,--or
give them away, sure. They shan't eat me up, nohow.

"They don't eat nothing--these fowls don't! O, what an infernal
humbug this is! I never got much out of it, though. I tell
everybody what all the rest of you do,--of course. But _I_ had
rather keep the same number of Suffolk pigs, anyhow, so far as
that's concerned. I an't afraid of your showing this letter to
nobody--ha! ha! So I don't mark it 'private.' But of all the
owdacious humbugs that ever this country saw, _this_ thing is the
steepest,--and you know it!

"Write me and say what you'll give me for my lot. I won't peach on
you. You can buy 'em on your own terms. I want to get out of it.
And you may say just what you've a mind about 'em. I'll back you,
of course. Couldn't you take them, and get up another fresh guy on
a 'new importation'?? That's it. Come, now, friend B----, help me
out. And answer immediately. All I want is to get out of it, and
catch _me_ there again if you can!

"Yours, &c.,

"---- ----.

"P.S. If you don't buy them, I shall kill the brutes, and send 'em
to market; though they are too _poor_ for that, I think."

This complimentary epistle from a brother-fancier was rather cool, but it didn't equal the following. I had more than one of this sort, too,--of which I had no occasion, for the time being, to take the slightest notice, for I had "other fish to fry," decidedly!

"MR. BURNHAM.--SIR: How is it that you have the impudence to try to
palm off on the public those fowls of yours for genuine '_imported_
ones,' when it is known that you bought them all of me, and A----,
and B----? How can you sleep nights? Don't you feel a squirming in
your conscience? Or is it made of ingy-rubber, or gutter-perchy?
You have made hundreds, and I don't know but thousands of dollars,
by your impudence and bare-faced deceit. They are _not_ genuine
fowls. I say this _bolely_. I wish there was a noospaper that would
show the inderpendence to print an article that I could rite for
it, on this subject of poletry. If I wouldn't make you stare, and
shet your eyes up, too, then I aint no judge of swindling!

"Why don't you act like a man? _Carnt_ you? Havn't you got the
pluck to own up that other people have done for you what you never
had the gumption to do for yourself? Why don't you act fair,--and
tell where the genuine fowls can be got, and of who? You're a doing
the poultry business more hurt than all the rest of the men in the
country is doing, or ever did, or ever will, sir.

"I don't mind a man's being sharp, and looking out for himself. _I_
do that. But I carn't humbug people as you are doing,--and I won't,
neither. You're sticking it into the people nicely,--don't you
think you are? And they _believe_ it, too! The people believes what
you tell them, and sucks it all down, and wants more of it. And you
keep a giving it to them, too! How long do you suppose such
infamous things as these can last? I hope this letter will do you
good. I havn't no ends to answer. I keep but a few fowls, and I
have never charged over twenty-five dollars a pair for the best of
them,--as you know. _You_ get fifty or a hundred dollars a pair. So
the noospapers say, but I believe you lie when they say so. You
carn't come this over _me_! You don't pull none of that wool over
_my_ eyes! No, sir!

"If you want to get an honest living,--get it! I don't say nothin
against that; you've a rite to. But don't cheat the people out of
their eye-teeth, by telling these stories that you carn't
prove.[11] You've no right to. You sell fowls, by this means, but
you don't get no clear conscience by it. It's wrong, Mr. Burnum,
and you know it. While you do this, nobody can sell no fowls except
_you_. Give other people a chance, say I. I wouldn't do this,
nohow, to sell my fowls at your expense; and I go for having
everybody do unto others as _I_ would do to _them_. This is moral
and Christian-like, and you'd better adopt it. That's my advice,
and I don't charge nothing for it. So, no more at present--from

"Your, resp'y,

"---- ---- ----."

These missives never disturbed me. Why should they? These very men would have sold, from that very stock,--_had_ done so, repeatedly, before,--whatever a buyer sought to purchase. I never knew either of them to permit the chance of a sale to pass by him, on account of the _variety_ of bird sought! They invariably possessed whatever was wanted. With them, "_policy_ was the best _honesty_." I did not complain. I was a "hen-man," but no Mentor.

[11] I never found, in my limited experience in this business, any particular necessity for attempting to prove anything. "The people" wanted FOWLS--not _proofs_!