A CAT FARM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 56, 30 October 1912, Page 6

A CAT FARM.

The following is part of a business circular received by a correspondent in South America. He says it is typical of many:— “The idea is to operate a large “cat farm in or. near Taira, where laud can be cheaply purchased for this purpose, and climatic conditions are most favourable. To start with we will collect, say, 100,000 cats. Each cat will average twelve kittens a year. The skins run in value from 50 cents for tho white ones to 3.50d01. for the pure black. This, you sec, will give us 1,200,000 skins a year to sell at an average of two pesos apiece, making our gross revenue about 67,500d01. a day. A good man can skin 50 cate a day for six pesos. It will take 100 men to operate this farm, and therefore the net profit will be about 2900 pesos a day. Wc will feed the cats on the rats, and for this purpose propose to establish a rat farm next door. The rats multiply four times as fast as the cats. If we start with a million rats we will have four rats per day for each cat, which is plenty. Now, then, we will feed the rats on the carcases of the cats from which tho skins have been taken, giving each rat a fourth of a cat, which is likewise plenty for any rat. It will thus be seen that the business will be self-acting and automatic all the way through. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skinfc. This proposition is certainly easily understood; "and it is an opportunity for getting rich surely and rapidly.”

However, all this is not an impudent imposture designed to catch lunatics, but an ingenious introduction to tho “other lines’ ’of business which the advertiser offers as alternatives at tile end of his letter. They include cameras, typewriters, and cash registers. Possibly the South American public is too jaded with these articles to he interested iu them without a stimulus.— Manchester Guardian.