The chief reason why Petaluma shows a more advanced development in the poultry community than the eastern poultry growing localities, is to be found in the climatic advantages which favor incubation (see Chapter on Incubation) and the consequent development of the central hatchery. Outside of this, the location is not especially favorable. The temperature is milder in the winter than in the East, but the Petaluma winter is one of continual rain which develops roup to a greater extent than we have it in the East. The prices received for high grade eggs in San Francisco is in the winter about equal to the top prices in New York. In the spring and summer New York will give more for fancy goods. The cost of corn on the Pacific Coast is about 40 cents a hundred more than on the Atlantic Coast. Wheat, however, is cheaper than in the East, but not cheap enough to substitute for the more staple grain. The eggs from the Petaluma region are at present marketed largely through a co-operative marketing association. Developing Poultry Communities. I have shown why the large individual poultry farms with hired labor have not proven profitable fields for the investment of capital. Again, I have shown that in a few localities where the business was incidentally started, communities of independent poultry farmers have grown up which are very successful, and that there is no apparent reason why similar communities elsewhere, if intelligently located, could not do as well or better. This looks like an excellent field for corporate enterprise. Certainly there is no more reason why the poultry community cannot be as successfully promoted as an irrigation project, or a cheese factory, or a trucking community. In such a community there are many functions that can be better performed by a capitalized body managed by experts than by individual poultrymen acting alone. These functions are: First, the selection of a location and the purchase of the land in large quantities. Second, laying out this land into suitable individual holdings, with regard to economy of water supply and the collection of the product. Third, the partial or complete equipment of these farms at less expense and in a more suitable manner than could or would be done by the individual holders. Fourth, the sale or rent of these places to poultrymen at a reasonable profit on the investment, but at a rate which will still be below the cost at which the individual could have acquired the land. Fifth, the selection of the stock that would not only be better adapted to the enterprise than that which would be acquired by the individual farmer, but would possess the uniformity necessary to the maintenance of a standard grade in the product. Sixth, the centralized hatching of the chicks by which means chicks can be more cheaply hatched and better hatched than by the imperfect methods available to the small poultryman.