Poultry Show

In Manhattan last week, 7,500 birds, 187 rabbits, 15 cavies (i. e., guinea pigs), and a great number of persons crowded the basement of Madison Square Garden. This was the 40th Annual Poultry, Pigeon and Pet Stock Show.

Of those present, the persons, staring about them with ennui or enthusiasm were the most absurd. The rabbits crawled about in wire enclosures, their noses twitching with annoyance, their legs dragging in bewildered apathy. The guinea pigs dozed or squeaked with fury. The fowl alone presented a pleasing appearance. Their bright plumes flashed and glittered; their stupid, shining eyes were red with pride or excitement as they strutted, with an excess of vigor, around their tiny hutches. The air, dark with smoke, lacking the dusty sweetness of a barnyard, was filled with the shrill, silly clamor of their voices. Roosters, supercharged with masculinity, cried loudly and beat their wings against bars which were barely sufficient to prohibit a shocking orgy and debauch. Hens cooed and ruffled their clipped, soft wings. Doves moaned, flattened soft bodies against the damp floor of their roosting place.

Whence had these strange and noisy creatures come, creatures whose eyes were purblind, whose wings had never sufficed to raise them over the hen hutch fence? Some of them came from Guilford, Conn. These were Reptilians, low birds reported immune to disease who seemed to glide rather than walk, an almost extinct breed whose 40 remaining members are owned by Breeder Paul P. Ives. Others, George Lowry's ten white leghorns who last year laid 3,014 eggs, came from West Willington, Conn.

There were many peculiar and eccentric birds upon display. One, a featherless, wingless, soundless, egg-laying edible chicken was called the Kiwi. There were Buttercups from Sicily and Austrolops from Australia, and one three-legged hen. Newsmongers in their enormously disagreeable eagerness to make some funny sayings about the poultry show and in their total inability to do so hung in anxious frenzy over prisons in which specimens of canaries whistled their shrill chants. These canaries were a special feature of the 40th show. One, worth $4,000, had died on reaching the show because his water and food had spilled en route from Cleveland. The canaries were judged mainly on their abilities to follow the tunes of a German water organ. Four shy canaries delayed the contest one day by refusing to whistle when they were expected to.

The Virginia team of the 4-H Club won a judging contest. The 4-H Club ("head, heart, hands and health") is an organization of boys and girls fostered by the Department of Agriculture to encourage an interest in farm life. The judging contest is a contest in which the members of the 4-H Club handed their opinions of fowl to the real judges.

Everyone knows that most professional sports have now become rackets. Boxing, baseball, all kinds of racing are infested with dishonest men. Poultry raising has not yet been considered among rackets, nor should it be. But last week there came rumors that wickedness, like a greedy red fox, had invaded even the hencoops.

For nine months the Federal courts have been investigating the live poultry situation in Manhattan. Last week they indicted 91 poultry racketeers who had maintained a monopoly on the distribution of live fowl by persecuting retailers who refused to join a ring quaintly called "Greater New York Live Poultry Chamber of Commerce." The retailers were unable to get chickens for their markets, or only to get inferior, poisoned poultry. Their homes and shops were destroyed by bombs; their markets burned or polluted by poison gas. Their truck drivers were slugged; the tires of their trucks sliced.

Among those indicted were the Brothers Herbert, most famed and feared by independent poultrymen. It was Arthur ("Tootsie") Herbert who held under his pudgy thumb all the truck drivers; who was implicated in bombing the home of Rebel Poultryman Joseph Hasenfratz. It was Charlie Herbert who bossed the Shochetim Union (Jewish slaughterers); who disciplined independents by refusing to kill their chickens according to Jewish dietary laws.