agricultural heartlands of the South were particularly receptive. Atlanta job-
bers always traveled north and northwest from town, understanding that
on the margins of Appalachia, cotton had always been a risky crop. Like-
wise, apple growers in northwestern Arkansas, after suffering two succes-
sive failed harvests, were eager to do contract work with feed men from
Fayetteville and Springboro. The first major expansion of chicken produc-
tion took place on the Delmarva Peninsula, however. About , a daring
woman raised several thousand birds, sold them all to advantage in Balti-
more, invested her profits in many thousands more biddies, and so on.
Feed-mill company managers (all men, presumably) took notice and set up
contract operations with local farmers, and as early as the peninsula
produced more than a million broilers a year for the markets of Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York.^18
The Delmarva ascendancy persisted through the s. All this time
eating-sized chickens were still sold, live or plucked, in traditional meat
markets, and most buyers were urban folk. Yet the success of Delmarva
broiler growers in the largest urban markets prompted, or coincided at
least, with other developments. One was the creation of the so-called super-
market, a revolution in retailing and consumerism that permitted cus-
tomers to wander about surveying products and even touching and han-
dling them, instead of seeking the assistance of a clerk who stood between
merchandise and buyer. A southern chain called Piggly Wiggly was founded
by a Tennessee owner of a traditional country store who, driving one day in
the country, observed a litter of piglets meandering freely over their enclo-
sure, picking and choosing their desires as they found them—a legendary
entrepreneurial inspiration. The second, complementary new thing was a
tendency in food marketing that mimicked industry: offer attractive, stan-
dardized, and reasonably priced products that customers might personally
examine. To this end the National Poultry Improvement Plan was created in
. The plan was a collaboration between industry and government dedi-
cated to the eradication of poultry diseases, especially pullorum—chick-
ens are sickly birds—and to the creation of high standards of breeding
and nutrition for the mass market. The ideal was a large-breasted creature,
tender, pinkish-white, and without dark feather quill marks after pluck-
ing. One of the earliest supermarket chains, the Great Atlantic and Pacific
Tea Company, announced in a Chicken of Tomorrow contest offer-
ing , to the breeder of such a superbird. The first contest finals were
conducted on the Delmarva Peninsula in ; the winner was a Califor-
nian. A second contest, in , was revealingly held in Arkansas. By that