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II K
B*AF?Y-AGR!CULTURE
OCPT^.j
THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
THE NEW BUSINESS
OF FARMING
BY
JULIAN A. DIMOCK
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
\
<04
I II
Copyright, 1918, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction 1
I. Size of the Farm from a Business Stand-
point ....... 10
II. Capital Necessary in Farming ... 20
III. Diversity 29
IV. Big Crops vs. Normal 40
V. Rotation of Crops 49
VI. Competition and the Laws of Prices . . 58
VII. Fitting Scheme to Conditions ... 67
VIII. Coordination of Enterprises ... 76
IX. The Opportunity for the Individual . . 84
X. Live Stock on the Farm .... 93
XL The Farm As a Home 103
Bibliography 113
415300
THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
THE NEW BUSINESS
OF FARMING
INTRODUCTION
The tale of the small bonanza farm, where
the owner makes a fortune from three acres,
is dear to the heart of the magazine editor and
the city reader, but it is " bunkum.' '
The individual may make a lot of money for
a year or two, but if the chance exists for an-
other to do the same thing in that region the
claim will have been preempted by a neighbor
long before the quick-footed city man can reach
the spot. Production will increase until the op-
portunity is overwhelmed. The produce will
flood the market until the producer cannot give
it away. Profits will drop out of sight. If
the space writer again visits his wonderland
l
2 TMi<: >TKW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
he will be confronted by the signs, "To Let"
and "For Sale." He will wonder what was
the trouble, for he remembers that he took every
precaution to verify his information. He pon-
dered over the balance sheets and footed up
the debit and credit columns of the farmers'
accounts.
Every one is looking for a gold mine, and
big returns from a small investment in land
look about as good as a mine. Actual mines,
however, are limited in number, but the acres
of land are limitless and the production thereof
is governed by the demand. An acre of ground
will grow four tons of hay whenever the price
of that commodity justifies the expense of mak-
ing it do so. In the meantime it will yield
scarcely better than one ton. If a man makes
a thousand dollars a year profit from an acre
of celery or strawberries there will be a rush
to that mining-field. People will flock in, and
competition will turn the profits into losses.
The first man on the job had better sell out to
the newcomers before the big crops flood the
market. If his profits come from acres of ap-
INTRODUCTION 3
pies he may safely hold the property much
longer, for it takes many years to raise apple-
trees to the bearing age, and competition will
be delayed.
There are plenty of individual opportunities
in farming as in everything else. The best
equipped will win out. One man succeeds where
another fails. If you want to farm, for heaven's
sake farm! Do not be discouraged by the ob-
stacles, for they make the fun. Seventy per
cent, of city business men fail at some period
of their lives, but comparatively few farmers
have a visit from the sheriff. Although many
city men who go back to the land live in dread
of such a visit they rarely go to their neighbors
for advice. They keep on with their " modern
methods ' ' instead of owning up that their neigh-
bors know more than they do. If it pays to
add two tons of fertilizer to the hay-field, the
farmer will do it. If it doesn 't pay, the farmer
will not do it. The city man will try it out if
he can figure out a profit, but the bets are even
that his figuring is wrong, that he has omitted
4 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
some vital factor. He may figure in this
fashion :
Normal yield, 1 ton per acre . . $15.00
Forced yield, 3 tons $45.00
Cost of fertilizer 25.00 20.00
Net revenue from fertilizer . . . $5.00
His neighbor will tell him that he "hasn't
found it paid to put phosphate on old seeding. ' '
He doesn't always know why, but it doesn't
pay.
In the above figuring the city man has omit-
ted the charge for applying the fertilizer and
the harvesting cost of two tons of hay. These
items will make his use of chemicals an actual
loss instead of profit. He can even quote many
bulletins in support of his position; but, bulle-
tins or no bulletins, his neighbor was right.
The principles underlying the business of
farming are beginning to be understood. They
are as simple as any fundamental principles,
but because of the complexities entering into
INTRODUCTION 5
farm life it has been difficult to extract them.
One man may raise an acre of violets and sell
them far above the cost of production because
of some novel advertising scheme which con-
nects him with the wearer of flowers. His in-
come arises from his ability as an advertiser
and not as a raiser of violets. Moreover, if a
few more acres of violets were raised, the mar-
ket would be so flooded with the flowers that a
bunch would be given away with each copy of
a penny newspaper.
Special crops and special markets do not en-
ter into the discussion of general principles.
Competition will take care of the first in quick
order and will gradually suck the excessive
profit from the latter.
Farming is a conservative business, with
small chance of large loss. No man on earth
can change the economic law that the return on
the investment from such a business will be
small.
The itemized capital account of 759 typical
farms in New York will show just how conser-
vative is the investment :
THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
73%
Eeal Estate
16%
Live Stock
7%
Machinery and Tools
2%
Feed and Seed
1%
Produce (unsold)
1%
Cash
100%
Nine hundred and ninety-nine business men
out of a thousand, on simply looking over that
statement, would write across its face: "Slow
Returns."
And yet those very same men would buy a
farm for $100,000.00, one-half of which would
be for fine dwellings, magnificent views, fancy
barns and what not, and plan out a system of
farming which was to show a net profit of $10,-
000.00 the first year.
It cannot be done.
More than one man has built a dairy barn at
a cost per cow of a thousand dollars. Interest,
insurance, depreciation, will make an annual
charge of $100.00 per animal for housing alone.
Few cows bring in this sum gross in a year. A
INTRODUCTION 7
building sufficiently good for the production of
certified milk, with some thought for architec-
tural design, can be erected for a charge of
$100.00 per cow. This is the fair ' ' farm value ' '
of a barn for cows, unchanged by its actual cost.
We must differentiate clearly between the
business of farming and the purchase or mak-
ing of a home. Any expense which one can af-
ford is justified in the latter, but every last cent
should be counted in the reckoning of the for-
mer. When one selects a site for a manufactur-
ing plant, no report is made of the magnificent
sunset over the bay. The bay is spoken of in
terms of cheap transportation.
It was only when the investigators collected
the data from a large number of farms and
worked out their principles from facts rather
than deducing them from theories that they
found out how simple the fundamentals were.
The more capital, the bigger will be the re-
turns ; the larger the business, the more econo-
mies that can be introduced and consequently
the higher the ratio of profits ; the more hours
of the man's time profitably employed, the
8 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
greater the labor income; the greater the di-
versity of work (within limits), the better the
yearly use of labor ; the larger the farm, the less
per acre cost of machinery and the more effi-
cient its use. Every office boy can quote these
business axioms ; but farming did not seem like
a business and such rules were thought not to
apply.
Many a city man has written to an agricul-
tural college for help. He has announced that
he has saved five thousand dollars and wishes
to buy a farm. Until he is ready to undertake
the job himself he wishes to hire a graduate to
manage the farm. Will they please advise as to
farms and recommend a graduate capable of the
contract.
How many well-paid managers would a con-
servative city business of five thousand dollars '
capital support? And remember that in farm-
ing the capital is turned over only once a year,
at the best.
Gulliver proclaimed the benefit to humanity
of raising two blades of grass where but one
grew before. It sounded too good to be dis-
INTRODUCTION 9
puted, and has come down through the years
since as an agricultural gospel. Any engineer
could have told us about the cost of overcoming
inertia, and it would not have been hard to fig-
ure that it might be expensive to speed up the
land. Only nobody thought of it that way.
Every one who reads the magazines remem-
bers the tale of the minister who made fifteen
acres of land care for thirty head of livestock.
His books showed a profit, but his bank account
did not reflect the same ratio of prosperty. To-
day the Farm Management experts can show us
how this farmer would have made a much larger
income if he had taken his capital back to any
good farming section and used it in the regular
methods employed in that region. No pyro-
technics, no unprecedented yields, just a regu-
lar weekly profit would have been rolling in
fifty-two times a year.
These principles of agriculture, simple busi-
ness rules, are the factors that make success in
farming.
CHAPTER I
SIZE OF THE FARM FROM A BUSINESS STANDPOINT
When Abraham Lincoln was asked how long
a man's legs should be, he made his famous
reply that they should be long enough to reach
from the man's body to the ground. In like
manner a man's farm should be big enough to
supply him with work — steady, efficient, eco-
nomical work. His job is to raise food for the
human family as cheaply as possible. His busi-
ness is to make a profit for himself in doing it.
The world wants cheap food. Every cent
that can be cut from the cost of the twenty
million breakfast tables of this country leaves
so much more to be spent in other ways. If the
food of the family costs less, the children can
have warmer clothing, the talking-machine can
have a few extra cans of Caruso or Mme. Sem-
10
SIZE OF THE FAKM 11
brich, or the whole family can take an occa-
sional joy ride.
We have those things to-day because food
does cost less than it did generations ago. Then
it took the farmer's family and their united
efforts to raise enough food for themselves,
with very little to spare. It required weeks
for the New Hampshire farmer to haul a single
load of produce to the Boston market. It is
obvious that there was not much time to devote
to luxuries
The Chinese do not have these luxuries be-
cause they are too busy raising food to support
life. The production per man is so low that
seventy-five per cent, of the population are
farmers. Only one man out of every four is
left free to do other work, and that will not
supply an abundance of automobiles or build
many miles of railroad.
In a few years only fifteen per cent, of Amer-
icans will be farmers. That is, six out of every
seven will be free for other business. In China
each farmer has two acres of land. In America
each farm has one hundred and forty acres.
12 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
America has plenty of farm land. Labor
costs more than land. So the economic factor
in farming is not the amount of produce which
an acre of land will raise but the amount which
a man can produce. It is the man who raises
two blades of grass where man raised but one
before who is the benefactor of his race; not
the one who forces a given spot of ground to
double its production. That may cost too much
in human labor, and human labor is what we
wish to save.
In building up a farm business, then, we must
consider land in terms of labor. It is not good
business to have so little land that labor is
wasted or, for any reason, used inefficiently. It
is better to have a few acres of land idle at an
interest cost of a dollar or two an acre rather
than to have a three-hundred-dollar man sitting
around in front of the stove.
It costs nearly as much to keep a team of
horses as it does to keep a hired man. But a
horse will do ten times the field work that a
man can do. So, to adapt the size of the farm
SIZE OF THE FARM 13
to economical horse labor is even more impor-
tant than to adapt it to man labor.
If a man is alone on a farm he is working at
a disadvantage in numberless ways. The
horses are idle while he is doing chores. If he
takes a trip to town the whole machinery of the
farm stops, for horses, tools, and man are all
of? their work. There are a thousand and one
little jobs that two men can do in a minute that
would take one man fifteen to do alone.
A man is non-divisible; he cannot do two
jobs at once. But part of the cost of a horse
is the necessary oversight of its work by a
driver. That can be divided, for one man can
drive four horses as well as he can one. And
much of the modern machinery is made for the
use of a three- or a four-horse team. The re-
sult of this is shown in the census figures for
ten years. In 1880 a man cared for twenty-
three acres of crops, but in 1890 he was caring
for thirty-one acres. This simply meant that
by the use of four-horse teams a man was cov-
ering more land in the same length of time, for
during that period the amount of land that a
14 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
horse could care for was unchanged. The sav-
ing was in the time of the driver.
If one man tries to care for ten cows and
two horses, the team will be idle much of the
time while the man is doing chores. But if
two men care for twenty cows and four horses,
the team can be kept busy all the time and there
will be a direct saving in the time required for
the care of the cows, for it does not take twice
as long to look after twenty cows as it does to
care for ten. The economic unit of man labor
on a farm is not one man but two. The economic
unit of horse labor is not a two-horse team, but
a four-horse team.
This brings us to the unit of size for the
farm. It should have at least enough acres to
keep two men and four horses busy all the year
round. Upon this as a basis we can build until
we strike other factors which limit the profit-
able size.
Labor on a farm cannot be organized as can
that in a factory. It is of a character that re-
quires individual initiative and is rarely of a
kind so that a gang of men can work together.
SIZE OF THE FARM 15
One man, or two, work by themselves, perhaps
out of sight and sound of the next man. Exig-
encies of weather, insects, or other conditions
may cause a complete change of work at an
hour's notice and the whole organization be
upset. An overseer in a factory can inspect
the work of a thousand employees in thirty
minutes, but it would take him a year really to
inspect the work of a thousand men on a farm.
Moreover the distance to the fields from the
barn becomes a serious factor before we mul-
tiply that first unit of size very many times.
The biggest saving is between the farm too
small to be efficient and the first unit of size,
for the area farmed by one hundred dollars'
worth of labor is five times as great on a hun-
dred-and-seventy-five-acre farm as on one of
thirty acres.
Horse labor is more efficient on the large than
on the small area. On a fifty-acre farm one
horse cares for twenty-one acres of cultivated
crops, but on a two-hundred-and-sixty-acre
farm one horse will care for forty-nine acres of
crops. While a man will produce twice as much
16 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
on a hundred-and-fifty-acre farm as on one of
only fifty acres. On the larger farms, then, the
labor of horses and men, the chief items of cost
in raising crops, is cut in half.
The small farm cannot afford sufficient
machinery to do the work economically; but
neither can the farmer afford to be without the
machinery. He must overload his investment,
per acre, in tools, for the same tools that are
required to farm two hundred and fifty acres
are needed for a farm of fifty. But in the
latter case the investment, per acre, would be
five times as much.
The equipment for one hundred and twenty-
five acres of land — horses, men and tools — will,
with very little additional cost, farm one hun-
dred and seventy-five acres. It is not sur-
prising to find that the farmer's labor income
jumps fifty-eight per cent, with this additional
fifty acres. When the farm runs above two
hundred acres in size, some duplication in
machinery is required and the proportion of in-
creased return to the farmer becomes smaller.
At about three hundred acres, the duplication is
SIZE OF THE FARM 17
necessary all around and the limit of economy
under one management is reached.
The relative capital tied up in barns and
house is much greater on the small farm than
on the large one.
The records show that in one county in New
York State the average farmer having eighty
acres of land earned only $370.00 for his own
labor, while the one farming a hundred and
seventy-five acres received $635.00 for his time ;
and the farmer cultivating two hundred and
sixty acres received a labor income of $1,000.00.
Less than 3% of the farmers having only one
hundred acres made a labor income of $1,000.00,
but 33% of those using two hundred acres or
more earned $1,000.00. It is true that a man on
a large farm has a chance to lose more than the
one on a small farm, but he has, at least, a much
greater chance to make more.
We must not go to the other extreme and
decide that the larger the farm the bigger the
return. At a certain place complete duplica-
tion of equipment becomes necessary and the
distances between fields will more than offset
18 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
the economies practicable, and at this point it
is better to divide the large acreage up into
separate farms. But as between the farm of
fifty acres and that of two hundred the differ-
ence is not the difference of a few men and
many, but in half-time and full-time work for
the same number.
Profit is the difference between the selling
price and the cost of production. The pro-
ducer makes in proportion to the difference
between these two. The passerby is impressed
by the sight of idle land. The horses eating
their heads off inside the barn are not in evi-
dence. It is therefore a popular conception
that idle land means poor farming. Really it
is the fat, sleek, underworked, well-groomed
horses that mean poor farming and the men
spending their time around the stove in the
store instead of riding on a gang-plow behind
a four-horse team.
Land is only the vehicle for work. It is the
least part of the cost of producing crops. Labor
is the chief item. So land should be subordi-
nated to labor. The size of the farm should be
SIZE OF THE FAEM 19
that on which a given amount of labor will
produce the greatest result.
The figures given in this sketch are taken
from statistics published concerning New
York State conditions, but will hold, with due
allowance for type of farming and topography,
in any part of the country.
CHAPTER II
CAPITAL NECESSARY IN FARMING
The capital account of a farm is a measure
of the size of the business. If all farms carried
on the same type of farming and all farm land
was worth the same price per acre, we could
use the acre as a measure of size. But the flor-
ist, with a few acres of high-priced land under
glass, may have more money invested in his
business than the cattle raiser with a thousand
acres of range land, or the truck grower may
intensify until the cost of his crops from a sin-
gle acre compares with that of a whole cotton
farm in the South.
Analyses of farm accounts have shown that
the farmer 's return is in proportion to the capi-
tal invested, up to the amount where the size be-
comes unmanageable because of physical fac-
tors. That is, the larger the business, the big-
20
CAPITAL NECESSARY IN FARMING 21
ger the return, and not only that, but the big-
ger the percentage of the return, because of
economies in management which can be intro-
duced in the larger business.
Such a statement belongs in the primary de-
partment of finance. Yet how many men be-
lieve it to-day? How many deluded city people
go to the farm expecting big returns from lit-
tle capital? There will be less trouble in the
world when people have elemental facts clearly
before them.
If a man invests his money in bonds or stocks,
or puts it away in a savings bank he expects to
receive interest for that money. If a man goes
to an office every day he expects to receive a
pay envelope at the end of the week. If he in-
vests his money in the concern for which he
works he will expect pay for his money and pay
for his work. Capital is needed to provide an
opportunity for the man to work, but man's
work is required to give capital an opportunity
to earn interest. Each must pay the other and
any system of accounting must take cognizance
of this fact.
22 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
The farm owner puts both capital and work
into his farm business and he should be paid
for both — interest on his money and wages for
his time.
When we realize that farming is a conserva-
tive business, and the rate of return therefore
low, we begin to see why the small farm cannot
pay.
Because of unusual ability the individual may
be capable of earning a large wage, but that ca-
pability is very much more likely to bring re-
wards in a less conservative business than farm-
ing. There are opportunities for speculation
in agriculture. If the farmer devotes his whole
place to raising potatoes in a year when that
crop brings a high price he will receive the re-
turn of speculation.
Without sufficient money the farmer cannot
even earn interest on that which he has, let
alone earn a wage for himself. In the city a
man may run a business on other people's capi-
tal and be, in reality, an employee. The law-
yer is a clerk for his clients, the insurance agent
is an employee, the stock broker is working for
CAPITAL NECESSAEY IN FAKMING 23
his customers on commission which is merely a
euphonious name for wages. But the farmer
is neither an employee nor a broker; he is
working for himself and must supply all the
capital needed in his business.
The charge for the farmer's labor takes prec-
edent of every other. The money invested in
a farm cannot hope to bring in a return except
through a man's labor. It is illogical to expect
a small capital to pay a man three hundred dol-
lars a year and earn interest besides. Indeed,
it is asking dollars to be unusually nimble to
expect them even to provide a man with the
opportunity to earn day wages unless they are
present in sufficient numbers.
How does this theory work out in practice?
In one section in New York State not a single
man who had less than four thousand dollars
invested in his farm made a labor income of
$1,000.00, and only one made $800.00. When
we reach those with an investment of from
$4,000.00 to $6,000.00 we find one man in twelve
making three dollars a day for his time and
work. But when we look among the farmers
24 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
who have an investment of $15,000.00 we find
that forty-six per cent, of them made more than
$1,000.00 a year, over and above interest on
their investment. The mere use of that amount
of money in the business allowed them to pay
interest on it and to receive a good wage for
their time.
The small farms were not big enough busi-
nesses to pay. When the total income of a
man is $500.00 it is difficult to make much of a
net income. Even fifty per cent, profit will not
pay him the wages of a hired man, to say noth-
ing of interest.
The need for money is more pressing than is
the need for its proper distribution. A man
without capital is almost helpless, but the one
who invests it with poor judgment is simply
handicapped. The average cost for labor on
the farms of the country is somewhere in the
vicinity of forty per cent, of all costs, but we
have found that on the large farms one hundred
dollars ' worth of labor farms five times the area
that it will on the small farms. No wonder the
big farmer makes money !
CAPITAL NECESSAEY IN FAEMING 25
The most important factor in successful farm-
ing is the size of the business. The highest
profits are made when size, diversity, and good
production are combined in a well-balanced
business ; but it is almost impossible to make a
large profit unless one has plenty of capital
with which to work.
Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa are wealthy farm-
ing communities. The land is productive and
conditions are propitious. Yet when all the
farms in one county of each state were investi-
gated it was found that one farmer out of every
three was paying for the privilege of working
on his own farm. He had to work with his
money to make it pay interest. The family lived
well because the capital invested paid enough
to allow of good living but the head of the
household was working for nothing.
The farmer does not talk in terms of finance
but he knows more about the business of farm-
ing than people give him credit for. The Illi-
nois owner of a farm does not exert himself
to make a labor income, because he has enough
to live on without it, but the tenant farmer of
26 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
that state exerts himself. His books are bal-
anced for him each year. He must pay interest
to the landlord and have enough to live on
left over. His own investment is usually too
small to pay any considerable part of his living,
and there is little chance for him to misunder-
stand his position. The tenant farmer all over
the country makes more money on his capital
than does the owner.
The tenant farmer occupies a strong strategic
position in the business of farming to-day. He
has the advantage of the use of the combined
capital furnished by himself and his landlord
and he has the initiative furnished by the neces-
sity for earning a labor income over and above
the interest demanded by his landlord's in-
vestment.
The results found in Indiana, Illinois, and
Iowa are only typical of those found elsewhere ;
for wherever a community becomes so pros-
perous that the farmers can live on the returns
from their farm investment, the labor income
begins to flatten out. Necessity ceases to push.
A hired manager rarely makes a farm pay.
CAPITAL NECESSARY IN FARMING 27
It is seemingly impossible for one man to run
a farm for another and make it a business suc-
cess.
The city man who wishes to leave his present
position to take up farming should remember
that the average farmer, trained to the work
from his youth, does not make day wages unless
he has a capital investment of $4,000. And
after a full day's toil the wages of a farm hand
will not look very large to the man from the
city when he compares them with the weekly
check to which he has been accustomed.
There are various ways to decrease the farm
capital. A fancy barn that costs more than a
barn has any right to, judged by the capacity of
the animals housed therein to make returns, is
one way. A set of ' 'model' ' chicken houses will
cost more than the hens can hope to repay.
Running a farm on land that has been exploited
to more than its value for agricultural pur-
poses is another way. Equipping a place with
too many horses and keeping them sleek and
well groomed is another method adapted to re-
ducing the profits of a farm. Too many men
28 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
for the work is a certain way to the poor-house.
Few farmers make these mistakes, while most
city men make some of them.
There is a way td increase the capital and
that is to rent a place and so let the landlord
provide the real estate. Then all of the farm-
er's capital can be pnt into producing stock and
equipment. This is a thoroughly practicable
method and one that is being increasingly put
into practice by young country-bred farmers all
over the United States.
It is better to hire a good farm than to own
a poor one.
The reader may be discouraged by this list
of troubles in the way of the farmer. They are
given because the knowledge may save him a lot
of worry and any amount of tribulation if he
decides to try farming.
CHAPTEE III
DIVERSITY
There are three big reasons for diversity on
the farm.
Diversity is an insurance against crop fail-
ure, it is a method of equalizing work through-
out the season, and it almost automatically
provides a rotation of crops.
There are three little reasons against diver-
sity, and they are:
First, that the specialized 'workman becomes
more skillful than the one who does many kinds
of work. Second, a farm with one crop can
have a better supply of tools adapted to that
crop than can one with many industries. Third,
a small farm can do business on a larger scale
if all the product is in one specialty. It is
sometimes given as a favorable factor for spe-
cialized farming that it is easier for the farmer
29
30 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
to get a vacation, but this is merely another
way of stating that such farming does not pro-
vide work throughout the year.
Insurance against crop failure is especially
important, because the risks are many. The
manufacturer buys his raw material, makes it
up into the finished product and sells that com-
pleted product. His risk is the chance that the
selling price may be below the cost of the
raw material plus the expense of finishing it.
Weather conditions cannot prevent him from
turning the crude article into the refined, and
he can insure himself against fire and strikes.
The farmer puts his seed into the ground in
hopeful anticipation that weather and insects
will permit it to grow, that he will be allowed
to harvest the crop, and finally, that he will be
able to sell that crop at a price which will yield
a profit. Continued rains may rot the seed;
late frosts may kill the young shoots ; bugs may
devour the older plants; early freezes or hail-
storms may destroy the crop at the last mo-
ment; or wet weather may interfere with har-
vesting.
DIVERSITY 31
Elementary business prudence suggests in-
surance or a division of risks; and that is one
thing that diversity does for the farmer. Early
rains will help the hay crop and hinder certain
others ; hot days and nights will make the corn
grow but worry the cows ; late rains may give
an extra cut of rowen even while they cause
the potatoes to decay in the ground. The price
of any one crop may be abnormally low in any
given year, but the chance of hitting a wrong
market with many is reduced with every addi-
tional crop. It is better to have the income dis-
tributed throughout the year, for it is then
easier to make it meet the demands. If capital
is limited, money must be borrowed to meet the
expenses and then paid off at the end of the
season when the crops are sold. This is un-
pleasant, for one likes to have the "feel" of a
little money once in a while. If enough money
is within reach to pay expenses, then a lump
sum in the bank is dangerous, as it begets the
habit of spending. More than either of these is
the mental effect of having small amounts drib-
bling in throughout the year. It keeps up a
32 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
man's courage and makes him face the world
with a twinkle in his eye. This phase of the
matter is especially important for a man from
the city, accustomed to weekly or monthly
checks. Despise not the cow, with her daily
yield of milk and butter.
Diversity equalizes the farm work and
spreads it over a larger part of the season.
Even the cautious writers of the Bureau of
Farm Management at Washington forget their
habitual care when writing of diversity. One
of them says : "If the working equipment can
be all kept busy on paying enterprises, success
is almost assured.' '
Labor is the chief item of cost in farming.
Large area contributes to economy in labor;
therefore the size of the farm is important.
Capital is needed to buy the large farm or to
intensify the few acres of the florist or the
truck gardener so as to economize labor. Diver-
sity is as important as either size or capital,
because it contributes to economy of labor and
the utilization of equipment. It corresponds
in business to the use of the by-product which
often makes the whole profit of the concern,
DIVERSITY 33
while the main product is simply run at cost
or even a little below.
The hardest problem which the farmer has
is to plan tne various enterprises on his farm to
yield the greatest yearly return. It is easy
enough to pick out the one most profitable en-
terprise, but he must determine the combina-
tion which, taken together, will produce the
biggest profit, and that means very largely the
most persistent and profitable use of men and
horses.
The old-time farmer answered it with the
single crop of the dairy. Milking kept him
fairly busy throughout the year, and the har-
vest season found him overworked for a few
weeks. He could milk ten cows and have plenty
of time to drive to the creamery and stop a
while at the store. It was pleasant and profit-
able, but it was too simple and competition
entered into the game. The production of milk
and butter increased until they were sold at a
price that did not pay the producer full-time
wages for half-time work. This is the con-
dition on many farms to-day, for all of the
owners have not learned to change their ways,
34 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
and the average cow does not pay at the present
price of milk or butter. But the cow can be
the most valuable animal on the place. If she
is to be kept as the single crop of the farm she
must be unusually good to pay ; but if she is to
be used simply as the principal product, then
she is profitable to the whole organization even
if she herself does not produce a profit, for she
keeps the organization and the organization
can be used with small added expense to pro-
duce by-products that will yield a profit to the
farmer.
The simplest way to understand the results
of diversity is to study a couple of actual farm
accounts. These are not presented as typical
farms but are used simply to illustrate the point
in discussion.
FARM NUMBER ONE. 211 ACRES
Capital
4 horses, 31 cows, 30 sheep,
other stock $3,497.00
Land, tools, etc 11,562.00
$15,059.00
DIVERSITY 35
Receipts
Wheat $ 357.00
Oats 366.00
Buckwheat 20.00
Hay 110.00
Potatoes 1,797.00
Apples 12.00
Cabbage 118.00
Milk 3,841.00
Cattle 536.00
Eggs 69.00
Lambs 224.00
Wool 63.00
$7,513.00
Expenses
Labor and board $1,286.00
Seed 90.00
Feeds 1,193.00
Fertilizer 78.00
Machinery 93.00
Buildings and fences 150.00
Miscellaneous 319.00
$3,209.00
Farm income $4,304.00
Interest on capital at 5% 753.00
Labor income $3,551.00
36 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
If this farmer had sold only milk and cattle
his receipts would have been $4,377.00, which
would have left him a labor income of only
$415.00. Or, taking out all the expenses which
could possibly be charged against the additional
crops :
Extra labor $500.00
Seeds 75.00
Fertilizer 78.00 $415.00
Machinery (%) 46.50
Miscel. (y2) 159.50
859.00
Labor income $1,274.00
as against $3,551 for the diversified farm. In
business parlance this difference is the value of
the by-products.
FARM NUMBER TWO. 225 ACRES
Capital
6 horses, 30 cows, 20 heif-
ers, 3 "bulls, other stock . $5,036.00
Real estate, tools, etc 16,750.00
$21,786.00
DIVERSITY 37
Receipts
Milk retailed $6,400.00
Cattle 2,255.00
Miscel 641.00 (
$9,296.00
Expenses
Labor and board $525.00
Seeds 50.00
Feeds 570.00
Lime 50.00
Buildings and repairs . . . 500.00
Machinery and repairs . . . 85.00
All else 110.00
$1,890.00
Farm income $7,406.00
Interest 5% 1,089.00
Family labor 100.00
Labor income (father and son) $6,217.00
Apparently this farmer specialized on dairy-
ing, but in reality he diversified, for he (1) pro-
duced market milk, (2) raised pure-bred cattle,
(3) retailed milk.
38 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
Let us figure on the additional profit which
this diversification brought to him.
If his cows had done as well as those on Farm
No. 1 he would have received for milk at whole-
sale $3,900.00. If his stock had sold for the
same price as those on Farm No. 1 he would
have had a cattle income of $750.00. The mis-
cellaneous items would have remained the same,
giving total receipts of
Expenses $5,291.00
Farm Income 1,890.00
$3,401.00
Interest $1,089.00
Family labor 100.00
1,189.00
Labor income $2,212.00
The diversity of retailing the milk and raising
pure-bred stock made an additional profit of
$4,005.00.
These are extreme cases and must not be
taken as typical, but they serve to show the ad-
DIVERSITY 39
vantage of diversity in farm management. An
increase of 25% to 100% in receipts, with very
little added cost, is, however, fairly represen-
tative.
CHAPTER IV
BIG CROPS VS. NORMAL
Pliny quotes a maxim of the ancients:
" Nothing is so disadvantageous as to cultivate
the land in the highest style of perfection."
Modern theorists advocate intensive cultiva-
tion of the land. Back-to-the-landers have set
forth to prove this contention. They have
raised two hundred bushels where but one grew
before and have felt that they were teaching
the community a lesson in agriculture.
I remember the feeling of elation with which
I compared potato yields with the shrewdest
farmer in the neighborhood. At this moment
I can see the twinkle in his eye as he nodded his
head in approval and said, "Pretty good yield,
that. p ' The next year his potato yield remained
at the same old figure of one hundred bushels,
40
BIG CEOPS vs. NORMAL 41
He did not profit by the lesson ; but I did, for I
began to figure up the costs.
I raised two hundred bushels of potatoes and
sold them for seventy-five cents a bushel. My
receipts were $150.00. But the costs were
$148.00. I made a profit of $2.00 on the trans-
action.
My neighbor had one hundred bushels to sell
for which he received $75.00. His expenses
were $66.00, and his profit $9.00.
Neither of us got the best possible return.
If he had used imported seed and a little more
fertilizer, probably his returns would have been
higher, while it is quite possible that I could
have cut my fertilizer bill and my spraying costs
to advantage. But the point is not what might
have happened but what did. The way to make
money on potatoes is to have the cost per bushel
less than the price at which they are sold. My
neighbor beat me; his farming experience was
a better business asset than my imported ideas
of big yields.
The next year I raised my yield and inci-
dentally the costs. My land produced three
42 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
hundred bushels of potatoes, but I established a
market for my product at a higher price than
my neighbor could command. And I did it be-
cause of the confidence which the good yield
gave me. I became a salesman. I sold to the
best stores at a higher price and held a quantity
of potatoes for sale as "seed" at a price deter-
mined by the quantity produced per acre in my
field.
My neighbor was the better farmer, but I was
the better salesman. We each won out in our
own specialty.
Our section is not a potato region; neither
soil nor physical characteristics are adapted to
their economical cultivation, and so the cost
figures have no value save to illustrate a single
concrete instance of Yankee shrewdness vs. un-
digested "book learning.' '
The beginner is sure to overestimate the im-
portance of large returns per acre. He cannot
banish from his mind the image of the big crop
as a badge of success in agriculture. He will
point to the comparative per acre yield of pota-
toes in this country and Germany and conclude
BIG CROPS vs. NORMAL 43
that the American farmer does not know his
business, for "made in Germany' ' was once the
slogan of constructive ability.
Here are some of the figures taken from New
York farms :
Potatoes Oats Hay
Rent of land $4.42 $4.09 $3.78
Cost of man, horse
and equipment labor 42.19 11.15 4.49
Other costs 22.00 6.28 3.44
Total costs $68.61 $21.52 $11.71
The use of the land is about one-sixteenth the
cost of growing potatoes. It is less than one-
fifth the cost of the oat crop and a third that of
the cost of a hay crop. If the farmer troubles
himself about the cost of the land for the potato
crop he may overlook some other figures.
A man cannot plant more than an acre a day
by hand, but a man, a team, and a $50.00 ma-
chine can plant five acres in a day. A man can-
not dig an acre of potatoes in less than six days,
and he will be mighty tired at the end of the
sixth day even at that. But a man, a four-
44 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
horse team and a $100.00 digger will put the po-
tatoes from six acres on top of the ground
inside of ten hours.
Besides the direct saving in costs, which
amounts to many times the land rent, is the item
of insurance ; for, when a crop is ready to har-
vest, the sooner it is put under cover the fewer
the chances for loss from the elements.
The problem of Germany has been to be self-
sustaining on a given amount of land ; the prob-
lem of the American farmer is entirely differ-
ent. Each knows his own business.
The following table of costs of increasing the
wheat yield is taken from a report of Sir John
Lawes and covers experiments over a period of
fifty years. Wheat is figured at a dollar a bushel
and 43 pounds of nitrogen at $6.50.
Value Cost of
of
gain in
Yield Gain
gain
nitrogen Profit
Plot No. 5 15
Plot No. 6 24 9
$9.00
$6.50 $2.50
Plot No. 7 33 9
9.00
6.50 2.50
Plot No. 8 36% 3%
3.75
6.50 Loss 2.75
BIG CROPS vs. NORMAL 45
The practical farmer will figure on the net
cost before he concludes to add nitrogen to his
land. It will cost him fifty cents a bushel to
raise wheat; so instead of showing a profit
every bushel of increased yield in the above
table shows an actual loss. The old fellows
were right : it is ' ' disadvantageous to cultivate
land in the highest style of perfection. % 9
It is only when a shortage of land and an in-
creased supply of labor changes the proportion
between labor costs and land rent that it is wise
to begin to economize in land by putting more
labor on each acre to increase its yield. The
slow working of the factors controlling this
principle are to be seen in the crop yields in
this country to-day. Land is rising in value
while the productive cost of labor, thanks to
modern machinery, has fallen; therefore the
trend on production is upward. Man is con-
servative and does not keep up with the pro-
cession; so we have the result that the best
farmers are raising 25% more crops per acre
than the average. "Which is merely another way
46 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
of saying that the poorer farmers are lagging
behind the economical unit of yield.
In China land is high and labor low, so we
have the extreme case of transplanting separate
plants of wheat so as to get the highest possible
yield from the acre, a practice that is beyond
the conception of the American mind.
No rule, save the general one that 125% of
the average yield of this country is usually de-
sirable, can be given for the amount of crops
which land in the United States should produce.
Each farmer must work out the profit and loss
account for himself. His job is to make the
largest possible difference between cost of pro-
duction and selling price for his farm products.
If a special market raises the selling price, the
cost of production may rise correspondingly
and yet the producer not lose money despite his
uneconomic handling of his field costs. The law
of compensation is pretty certain to care for
most discrepancies, and the man who can sell to
the best advantage seldom has the ability to
produce in the most economical way.
A logical deduction is that in an era of high
BIG CROPS vs. NORMAL 47
prices the yield per acre increases. The higher
the price at which wheat can be sold, the more
fertilizer the farmer can afford to put on his
land, the more work he can give his fields, and
the bigger the yield to the acre. The reverse is
true in practice. The higher the price of wheat
the less the average yield per acre over a period
of years.
The reason is not hard to discover. I made
part of it myself. When the war put wheat over
the dollar mark I planted wheat on land that
was not adapted to it. My yield was away be-
low the average of the country. What I did on
my farm, farmers everywhere did. Farmers
know how to increase production, and the
cheapest way is to plant more land, not to spend
more money on land already in use.
The farmer knew more about the subject than
the economist, although he could not express
himself in terms of diminishing returns or van-
ishing profits. His bank account was less liable
to make errors than the theories of his advisers.
When cotton sells at five cents per pound it
can be profitably raised only on such land as is
48 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
especially adapted to its culture. The yield per
acre will be high because the land will be fertile.
When cotton brings ten cents per pound it can
be raised successfully on a still greater acreage
because it will not take as fertile land to keep
the cost under ten cents as under five. When it
can be sold for fifteen cents a large acreage is
given over to its production. The higher the
price, the lower the average yield per acre.
Long staple cotton was only successfully
raised on the Sea Islands of the Carolinas. The
suitable land was strictly limited. When the
price went up, the yield per acre went up too.
CHAPTER V
KOTATION OF CKOPS
The worth in dollars and cents of a good
system of rotation is suggested by some experi-
ments conducted at the Minnesota University
Farm.
One acre on which wheat was grown continu-
ously yielded a product worth $13.08 per year.
The cost, including rent of land, labor, hire of
machinery, etc. was $9.94, leaving a net profit of
$3.14.
On another acre wheat was grown in the
standard five-year rotation and the average
gross value of the crops for the five years
amounted to $15.89, produced at a cost of $10.02.
This left a net profit of $5.87 per acre, per year.
An analysis of the soil showed that the rota-
tion system had added both nitrogen and car-
bon, while the continuous cropping had reduced
50 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
the supply of both, and the soil was in better
tilth, or mechanical condition, because of the
various crops. In other words, the crops paid
the farmer for the privilege of adding fertility
to his soil.
When a business man discovers new mach-
inery that will add 87% to his net profits and at
the same time improve the condition of his
plant, he promptly scraps his old machinery and
installs the new style.
The rotation used at the Minnesota Farm did
several things. It raised the yield of wheat
from 17.8 bushels per acre to 26. It in-
creased the corn yield from 21.4 bushels to
50.9. It diversified crops by adding oats, hay,
and pasture, to corn and wheat. A further
profit, a by-product of the business, could have
been added by feeding these stuffs to live stock,
thus further increasing the benefit of rotation.
The use of labor was spread over a longer
period and the order of crops was so arranged
as to lower the cost of each. The grass seed
was sown with the wheat, thus one preparation
of the ground served for the two crops. Pas-
EOTATION OF CROPS 51
ture followed the hay and was merely another
crop gathered from the same planting. The
one-crop system belongs in the farm scrap-heap.
For planning a system of crop rotation the
farmer has need of a degree of intelligence that
is not often let loose in this world. He must
take the attitude that everybody is mostly right
but a little wrong. His neighbors have had the
practical experience with the local conditions,
while the scientists have collected a vast
amount of knowledge unknown to the average
farmer. A judicious blending of the two is pre-
sumably the best. But it is very risky to believe
the system in any region to be radically wrong.
The farm practice in Chester County, Pennsyl-
vania, has not changed materially in a century
and a quarter, and the experts have no radical
changes to suggest to the farmers in that region
to-day.
I went straight to my farm from a four
weeks ' course at an agricultural college. If ever
a smattering of knowledge is a dangerous pos-
session it is in farming. I looked at the milk
pails of the old owner, who had run the place
52 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
for forty-seven years, and I gazed at the steep
pastures. "Cows cannot pay on this place,"
was my off-hand decision. I watched the old
man handle his apple crop. His trees were not
properly pruned ; the orchard was sprayed at, if
the fishing season did not interfere; the pick-
ing was done carelessly by rough, uninstructed
help ; and the sorting and packing was carried
out in a medieval way. "Hiram is wasting
money every year right here," was my instant
conclusion. To get rid of the cows and devote
the time to the orchard was the obvious pro-
cedure. I learned all that in four weeks. It
has taken me a good many years to unlearn it.
To-day I have a dairy — not Hiram's cows, how-
ever— and I am running a general farm in com-
bination with a carefully conducted orchard.
Now I am making up the money that I lost by
overthrowing, instead of improving upon,
Hiram's system of cropping.
The odds are in favor of your neighbors '
being right. The experts at the colleges have
the general principles down pat. Draw cards
from both sources, but do not believe that you
EOTATION OF CROPS 53
have a royal flush if you have gone against the
advice of either.
There are so many factors entering into the
planning of any place that it requires the keen-
est perception to balance them properly. Dr.
Warren, one of the leading authorities on farm
management in the country, presents the case
for rotation thus :
" There are many reasons why crop rotation
is a good thing. The final factor that forces
farmers to change crops is usually either weeds,
insects, or diseases. Crop rotation (1) helps to
control these enemies; (2) may provide for
keeping up the humus supply of the soil; (3)
may provide for the growth of grass or leg-
umes on each field; (4) often saves labor; (5)
may keep the land occupied with crops a
greater part of the time; (6) allows for the
alternation of deep and shallow-rooted crops;
(7) may provide for a balanced removal of
plant food; (8) may control toxic substances;
(9) systematizes farming, ' '
These are self-explanatory to even laymen;
save, possibly, number eight. It is believed that
54 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
the roots of plants give off substances that are
poisonous to plants of the same species. By a
change of crops these toxines are neutralized
and the soil is made wholesome once more for
the original crop.
Plant food, to be available for the growing
crop, must be supplied in a soluble form in con-
tact with the roots of the plant. Plant food is
made soluble by the decomposition of organic
matter and disintegration of mineral matter.
Humus, or vegetable matter, in the soil hastens
this process. Moisture is usually present when
humus or partially decayed manure is in the
soil, and such material permits a free circula-
tion of air and prevents baking or packing of
the ground. Decomposition of vegetable matter
takes place as the result of bacterial action.
These bacteria can only work in the presence
of air and moisture, hence the necessity of
humus. This decomposition forms acids which,
in turn, disintegrate mineral matter.
The entirely supposititious case of the Stand-
ard Oil Company's throwing away aniline dyes
and purchasing coloring matter for their kero-
EOTATION OF CROPS 55
sene would be quite analogous to the case of the
farmer who decided against the use of a rota-
tion of crops and bought commercial fertilizers
to keep up the fertility of his land.
Diversity and rotation of crops tackle the
same proposition from different angles but they
arrive at much the same result. Rotation is
diversity to a degree, but diversity is not neces-
sarily rotation. Diversity, ipso facto, is a
purely business proposition. It does not take
account of the fertility of the soil or of its con-
servation or improvement. It divides the risks
of crop failures, and makes a profitable distri-
bution of labor. Rotation is designed, primar-
ily, to increase crops without corresponding
cost, but with it goes the corollary of increased
fertility. Incidentally it does produce diversity
with the consequent efficient use of labor.
When crops, per acre, can be increased with-
out additional cost for fertilization or cultiva-
tion, the profits rise more rapidly than the
yields.
The following figures are taken from careful
experiments :
56 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
ield of Wheat
Value
Cost
Profit
10 bushels
$7.42
$7.31
$ .11
14 bushels
10.39
7.43
2.96
16 bushels
11.87
7.49
4.38
20 bushels
14.84
7.61
7.23
The one additional charge against the higher
yield is the cost of harvesting. Land rent, tool
hire, labor costs, preparation of soil, are all the
same.
In planning a farm cropping system there
are certain general principles to keep in mind.
A regular rotation gives each year the same
number of acres to each crop, hence provides
more constant and efficient use for the machin-
ery. With a fairly constant supply of crops the
amount of stock which can be profitably kept is
more easily determined.
If each field is given the same treatment
through each series of years, the supply of
humus will be added at regular intervals and
an evenly distributed amount of decaying vege-
table matter be kept in the soil. Thus every
part of the farm will be working at efficient
speed.
EOTATION OF CROPS 57
As large an acreage as possible should be
provided each year for the most profitable crop
of the region. In Illinois, the maximum acre-
age possible should be devoted to corn, while in
New York and New England much attention
should be devoted to hay, and this regardless of
the main business of the farms.
In nine cases out of ten this is simply repeat-
ing what we have said before — follow your
neighbors but cut the production costs by every
practicable method.
CHAPTER VI
COMPETITION AND THE LAWS OF PKICES
Land is practically unlimited, and labor can
always be had at a price ; therefore competition
in farming will always be keen. Crops will be
produced at cost, giving the farmer but a fair
return for his work and the use of his capital.
The city householder pays 12 cents a quart
for milk for which the dairyman receives but
6 cents. If all delivery charges could be elimi-
nated the city breakfast tables would be sup-
plied with milk at 6, or at the outside 7, cents a
quart. Raise the price even a quarter of a cent
and the contributing territory would expand in
every direction. If the present limit of profit-
able haul is three miles, the additional price
would bring milk from the farm four miles from
the railroad. If the present longest run of a
milk train is one hundred miles, the additional
58
COMPETITION— LAWS OF PRICES 59
price would send the trains a hundred and
twenty-five miles after milk. A perfect flood of
milk would be diverted from the cheese factory
and the butter maker and flow to the city.
The problem of the middleman (or more
properly the middle charges, is a problem for
the consumer. With the abolition of all un-
necessary costs between the farm and the kit-
chen, the whole advantage will ultimately go to
the consumer. Every time that a housewife
orders a quart of potatoes over the telephone
she is paying for her own shiftless method sev-
eral times the value of the potatoes.
Competition will always limit the returns
from any simple conservative operation. If big
crops, alone, meant success, there would be a
flood of big crops; if big farms meant big re-
turns, small farms would be forced out of busi-
ness; if a lot of money assured the farmer a
high rate of return, capital would gravitate to-
ward the farm.
The owner of an orange grove was in the
possession of a fortune until the certainty of
the profit brought sharp competition. Prices
60 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
dropped until it was not worth while to pick
and pack the fruit on many groves. To meet
this condition, growers' organizations were
formed, which bridged some of the existing gap
between producer and consumer. Such share of
the additional price as rightfully belonged to
the grower went back to him. If this becomes
excessive, further competition will again re-
duce the price.
The Oregon apple orchard was reckoned with
Government bonds for safety and a gold mine
for yield. The owner sat at ease and his divi-
dends rolled in upon him. It was too easy; a
few years ago the apples were sold at less than
cost. Competition took away the profits and
put the orchards on the bargain-counter.
Land, labor, orange groves, apple-trees, cows,
sheep, can be had in any amount ; but alone they
do not make success. The supply of brains that
can organize a profitable farm business is
strictly limited, and the city can outbid the
country for them ; for, in the nature of farming,
it is a small enterprise compared with a city
business. The farmer needs the type of mind
COMPETITION— LAWS OF PRICES 61
that can utilize the by-product to the nth power.
The inherent weakness in the Western or-
chard was the one-crop system. The distance to
market was a further limiting factor, for only
high-class fruit could be shipped across the
continent ; and thus we have the orchardist lim-
ited not alone to one crop but to one grade of
that crop. Westerners are natural boosters and
the apple growers proceeded to advertise their
wares and to create a market for them. With
fine business they utilized the box pack and set
a standard in grading apples that put the
Oregon fruit on a pedestal. It is not especially
difficult to raise apples. Your neighbors and
the local experiment station can supply you
with all needful information. If there is an
organization for packing and selling the fruit,
anybody can raise high-grade apples. Inevi-
tably there was a rush to the apple field. City
men, without the first idea of agriculture, staked
out claims in this field of gold. " Apple land"
brought hundreds and even thousands of dollars
an acre. Competition was unrestricted ; but the
market for high-grade fruit was limited. When
62 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
the new orchards came into bearing the slump
occurred.
It took less time for the new orchards to grow
under the impetus of Western soil conditions
than it took the idea of apple raising to perme-
ate the consciousness of the Eastern farmer.
Apple land in New England costs ten dollars an
acre. There is a market for high-grade fruit
and a practically unlimited market for the lower
grades within reach. There is a saving in
freight of forty-five cents a box and in time of
five days, in favor of the New England grower
of apples. There is every opportunity for di-
versity of crops, from the dairy to the raising
of beans, open to the Eastern man. But it takes
intelligence to plan a diversified farm. The
supply of brains is limited. The orchard of the
general farm in the East is a factor of per-
manent importance.
There is no secure ground under the feet of
the specialist in selling. Special markets are
desirable, but the possessor of one must keep
paddling his craft or he will suddenly find him-
self in the trough of the sea instead of on the
COMPETITION— LAWS OF PEICES 63
crest. Other men will find ways to supply the
demand at cost. One man may possess the
ability to breed cattle of unusual worth. The
high price at which he may sell these creatures
is secured because of his knowledge and the
money price which it is worth. When other
men learn the trick the price will come down to
cost.
A big business is built up by attention to
details. A jitney bus, with a five-cent fare, is
likely to make more than the taxi-cab with a
dollar ante. The Standard Oil Company prob-
ably gets the larger part of its revenue from
once unconsidered trifles. Gasoline was at one
time a waste product, aniline dyes, paraffin, pe-
troleum jelly, and a multitude of other minor
products now swell the receipts.
When the orchard owner sandwiches the
work on the trees between the chinks of other
farm work, has his regular men prune through
the winter between milking jobs, and arranges
his crops so that the spraying of the orchard
comes after the planting of one lot of acres and
before that of another batch, he is beginning to
64 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
put the cost of his apples where it is hopeless
for the specialized orchardist to compete.
The Prince of Monaco has found that a cer-
tain percentage charged against each bet made
in his palaces will bring him in a fortune. The
deluded players look only for the big returns
and, in the aggregate, are sure to lose. The
wise farmer will work out the best system of
farming for his particular conditions and will
stick to it, knowing that in the long run he will
make more money by so doing than by trying to
hit the high spots each season. It is not suffi-
cient that his combination pays him a profit ; it
must pay him the best profit of any combination
of crops, to be the right one for him to follow.
After a year of good prices the newspapers
use up any amount of perfectly good paper in
urging the farmers to increase their crops, and
statisticians begin to figure on the added wealth
that would come to the State if the farmers
would only double up on production. Fortu-
nately it is only the city people who accept this
gratuitous advice, and so it doesn't matter. One
year cabbages may sell for sixty dollars a ton
COMPETITION— LAWS OF PRICES 65
and the next be so low that they are left to rot
in the field. The law of supply and demand is
not directed from editorial sanctums.
In 1891 the yield of potatoes was 94 bushels
per acre and the value per acre was $34.00. In
1892 the yield was 62 bushels but the value per
acre rose to $41.00. In 1894 the yield was the
same as in '92 but the value was only $33.00.
But the next year the yield jumped to 101
bushels and the price dropped so suddenly that
they were only worth $27.00, or one-half as
much, per bushel.
In the corn belt the oat crop is raised as a
by-product. It does not pay of itself but it fits
into the rotation and employs labor at a time
when it otherwise would be idle. Planting and
harvesting the crop do not conflict with the care
of the corn. A farmer can plant all the corn
that he can cultivate and at the same time have
many acres of oats. It is not a competitor of
the corn crop, any more than aniline dye is a
competitor of kerosene.
The local market is always the best so far as
it goes. It is often used by the man with small
66 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
capital, who retails his stuff until he has accu-
mulated enough money to go into the bigger
business necessitating a wholesale outlet. Many
small towns are short of vegetables and milk.
A dairy section is the worst place in the world
to get a household supply of milk. So long as
competition is avoided the retailer has a tariff
wall of two freight charges and two commis-
sions fighting for him. To ship his stuff to a
wholesale market he would have to pay one
freight and one commission. To have stuff
shipped in from outside, the purchaser would
have one freight charge and one commission to
pay. The producer who sells direct saves the
double charge. The climate of Alaska is not
adapted to the growing of vegetables, yet the
raising of garden truck in that land is profit-
able. A tariff wall of freight charges surrounds
the place.
Neither the ebullitions of editors' brains nor
acts of Congress control prices for farm pro-
ducts. The farmer must look further than his
daily paper or the city of Washington for the
laws which govern his business.
CHAPTER VII
FITTING SCHEME TO CONDITIONS
The man who makes the best financial success
of his farm is the one who best fits his system
to his individual surroundings. Rules are made
for average conditions, but the average is a
composite of variations. No two farms will
give the best returns from exactly the same
system of farming.
Butter making on the farm is generally a
losing proposition, but it is easy to imagine
many conditions under which it would be profit-
able. The dairyman who uses extra care to
keep his product clean is throwing away the
fruit of his labors if he sells his cream where it
is mixed with unclean supplies and thus brought
down to the lower grade. The man who pays
the creamery for making his butter while he
spends the equivalent amount of time on the
67
68 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
road hauling his product to the creamery or at
some other unproductive work is giving away
the price of the work done at the creamery.
Butter made from clean cream under sanitary
conditions is worth more than that made from
the average creamery cream. The farmer who
sells such butter receives more money for a
better product and does not simply ask an ad-
ditional price because the product goes out
under his name. In this sense he is not seek-
ing a special market. Whether or not the farm-
er's net income will be increased if he spends
his time in cleanliness in the dairy and in con-
verting his clean cream into a high-grade fin-
ished product is purely a matter of the indi-
vidual conditions.
The ideal condition, it goes without saying, is
the proper kind of cooperation between the
farmers of the neighborhood.
Climate and soil are the most important fac-
tors to consider in determining what crops to
grow. Freight and express rates to the best
markets have a big finger in the pie; and the
amount of land available to compete in produc-
FITTING SCHEME TO CONDITIONS 69
tion must be considered. But all of these may
be overcome if the price received for the crop
pays for the added expense. Tomatoes and
cucumbers are grown through the winter under
glass in New York and under the sun in Flor-
ida. The cost of the greenhouse is offset by the
transportation charge, and both are paid for by
the out-of-season price.
The value of the Connecticut tobacco crop is
surpassed by only four States in the Union, and
each of the four has eight times the area of its
New England competitor. The high quality of
the Northern grown tobacco, combined with the
limited area available for the growing of this
particular grade, permits the expensive culture
under cloth.
The Oregon orchardist met his heavy trans-
portation charge by additional labor in the or-
chard, which produced the maximum percent-
age of high-grade fruit.
If a farm has soil especially adapted to corn
but is so remote that the freight rate to a corn
market eats up the profit, this condition can
sometimes be entirely met by feeding all the
70 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAKMING
grain to live stock on the place. Pigs trans-
form corn into pork and at the same time con-
dense it. One pound of pork represents five to
six pounds of corn. But the freight rate on
pork is approximately only twice that on corn,
so the rate per pound of corn as represented in
pork is reduced to one-third what it would be
if shipped in its original shape.
Again, if the corn is sold as grain, the fer-
tility of the farm will decrease, and the yield
per acre be less than if it is fed to live stock.
If a field will produce 30 bushels of corn with-
out manure and this corn is sold at 70 cents, the
gross return will be $21.00. But if the same
field, fertilized by having all the corn fed to live
stock and the manure returned to the ground,
can produce 80 bushels, this corn can be fed to
live stock at a price of only 40 cents and yet
the gross return will be $32.00.
Uncle David Enoch was right when he said,
1 ' I get the profit in two ways when I feed stock
— the profit on my stock and the enrichment of
my farm."
If he thus builds up the fertility of his land
FITTING SCHEME TO CONDITIONS 71
the farmer is raising the productivity of his
farm and by intensive cultivation increasing the
size of his business.
The American farmer fits his scheme of farm-
ing to his conditions by increasing the yield per
man. The Oriental cultivator of the soil lives
by forcing the production per acre; for in
America there is plenty of land and in China
plenty of labor. It is not uncommon for a farm
of two acres to support a Chinese family of
twelve. Certain Western wheat farmers raise
a crop on one-half of their land each year and
plow the other half for the succeeding season's
crop, thus increasing the area which one man
can cultivate by extending the time of plowing
over the whole season. The Chinese rice farmer
raises the young plants in a seed bed, at the
last moment transplanting them into the fields
which have meantime been growing other crops.
He thus adds 30 to 50 days ' use of his land at a
heavy cost of labor. The American is a bull
on his own labor but a bear on land, while the
Chinese reverses the attitude.
Competition and a desire for the ultimate dol-
72 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
lar of profit have forced business men to rigid
economy in the details of work. Leaks that
would ruin the American manufacturer or the
Oriental farmer creep into every farm business
in this country. Neither the Standard Oil Com-
pany nor the Ford Automobile concern could
prosper if they wasted products as the farmers
of the corn belt did when they threw away fer-
tility by burning corn,- or if they permitted the
losses that the average farmer does in his han-
dling of barn manure.
It is well to realize the different problems
confronting the men who would plan his system
of farming with the same care that the business
man would use. The Bureau of Farm Man-
agement, before deciding on the desirability of
an enterprise, takes into consideration the fol-
lowing factors :
(1) Profitableness as determined by general
and local experience.
(2) The extent and distribution of the enter-
prises. This has much to do with the
stability of the supply and demand.
(3) Location with reference to markets.
FITTING SCHEME TO CONDITIONS 73
(4) Conditions existing in the market cen-
ters, especially combinations of dealers
which control prices.
(5) Soil and climatic conditions.
(6) Cost of equipment required.
(7) Amount and character of labor required.
(8) Seasonal distribution of labor.
(9) Extent and possible market for the prod-
uct and the probable effect of a con-
siderable increase in the supply on
market prices.
(10) Effect of the enterprise on the fertility
of the soil.
In studying any particular crop the Bureau
seeks to know:
(1) Kind and number of operations required
by the crop.
(2) Number of men, horses, and machines
that may or must be used for them.
(3) Dates between which these operations
may or must be performed.
(4) Amount of work each man, horse, or ma-
chine can do in a day.
74 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
(5) Proportion of days which will be lost by
weather, condition of soil, etc.
With such data at hand it is possible to work
out a system of cropping which will provide the
maximum amount of profitable work for men,
horses, tools, and land for the year.
There is work for the mathematician in figur-
ing out the additional cost of a field forty rods
distant from the barn if the crop is of such a
nature as to demand four trips between the field
and barn for a man and team each year. To de-
termine how much more expensive the distance
becomes if the exigencies of the crop demand
sixteen such trips is a problem which may tell
why farmers keep certain crops near the barn.
Compared with the selling of grain, the
agronomist must consider that a small propor-
tion of the fertility leaves the place when dairy
products such as butter and cheese are sold.
The economist can easily find that an inex-
pensive way to purchase fertilizing material for
the farm is to buy it in the form of feed stuff.
Good cattle will live on the purchased food, im-
FITTING SCHEME TO CONDITIONS 75
prove the fertility of the farm, and pay the
farmer for the privilege of doing it.
No wonder that Horace Greeley said: "By
and by it will be generally realized that few
men live or have lived who cannot find scope
and profitable employment for all their intel-
lect on a two-hundred-acre farm.,,
We must remember that ' ' the larger return is
won by the farmer who is qualitatively more ef-
ficient because he shows greater skill in per-
forming his work. He uses better judgment in
planning his farm operations, in regulating his
field system, in selecting seeds, in choosing tools
and machinery with which to do the work, or
in the breeding and feeding of live stock. ' '
CHAPTER VIII
COORDINATION OF ENTERPRISES
There are three hundred and thirteen work
days in the year. The farmer who wishes to
succeed must so arrange his work as to put to
profitable use as many as possible of these
hours.
The day laborer counts his time as well spent
when he works for and receives a wage for
every day of the year. If he does not work his
income ceases.
But the farmer's income apparently suffers
no interruption if he happens to spend a few
hours riding around the country in his automo-
bile or if from some cause beyond his control
he is compelled to stop work for a time. He
thinks that his cows work for him, or that his
fields raise crops without demanding a full re-
turn in work. It is an insidious line of reason-
76
COOKDINATION OF ENTEEPEISES 77
ing. Horace Greeley recognized it when lie
said : i ' The one great error that misleads and
corrupts mankind is the presumption that some-
thing may be had for nothing . . . the law that
requires each to pay for all he gets and reap
only where he has sown . . . will not submit to
defiance or evasion."
The farmer whose system of farming gives
him profitable work for only half of the year
will receive pay for only the time spent in toil.
Not alone is his labor wage reduced thereby,
but the capital invested in the business is not re-
turning its full value, for the wheels of the
farm machine are not revolving.
The machines in the factory working with
three shifts of men are never idle. The incom-
ing shift stands behind the departing one and,
at a signal, the men change places. The ma-
chines run steadily on and turn out their special
products in an unceasing stream.
The average horse on a Northern farm works
only three hours a day, and the average farmer
probably works less than two hundred days a
year. No factory in the world could survive un-
78 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
der such, conditions. The manufacturer often
makes his profit from a by-product and some-
times can better afford to make up goods at
less than cost rather than to close his plant even
for a few days.
It was merely applying this principle that led
the Chief of the Bureau of Farm Management
to say: "I believe that I can prove that if the
cotton farmer had half a dozen things on which
to lose money lie would make more profit than
he does."
Half pay for iull time brings in as much
money in the course of the year as full pay for
half time.
The keeping of cows persists in the face of
theoretical demonstration that they are kept at
a loss. If poor cows are kept and the farmer
has help in the milking he receives half pay for
full time, as the dairy provides steady work
during the winter as well as the summer. If
good cows are kept and the dairyman does not
have help in the milking he is working produc-
tively too few hours and is receiving full pay
for half time. The weakness in the dairy is the
COORDINATION OF ENTERPRISES 79
limiting factor of the few cows which one man
can milk. A farmer can raise the crops to feed
twice the herd that he can milk and the care
of the additional creatures, apart from milking,
is well within his capacity. As it is, he is kept
on half-work throughout the year because of
that one factor. The development of the milk-
ing machine may revolutionize the dairy.
While it is very easy to figure out that the
dairyman does not receive a full wage for his
time, it is more difficult to plan a system of
farming which will supply him with work that
will prove more profitable at the end of the
year than the day in and day out work in the
dairy.
Labor costs more than rent of land; conse-
quently it is more important to utilize the full
time of men and horses than it is to keep the
production of the land on high gear. An inter-
esting example of the necessity for efficiency in
labor comes from the cotton and wheat fields.
Each crop gives a fair division of labor
throughout the season.
The cotton farmer, who works without hired
80 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAKMING
help, is kept busy from the beginning of the sea-
son until his crop is harvested. But he is lim-
ited in the area of cotton which he can grow to
that which he and his family can pick. A man
and one mule can plow and cultivate this amount
of land. The farmer is kept busy all day and
every day but he is walking behind one mule.
He is like the dairyman who is not cultivating
more crops to produce more milk because he
cannot care for the cows. Both mark time be-
cause of a single limiting factor.
The wheat farmer in eastern Washington
keeps busy from one end of the season to the
other. The harvesting machine has removed
the one-time limiting factor of his work. Now,
one man can care for all the land which he can
plow during the year. The Washington farmer
extends this season by raising wheat on but
half of his land each year. The balance of the
land is prepared for next season's crop by plow-
ing part of it in the spring and part in the fall.
In this way the one-man wheat farm comprises
320 acres. But this man rides behind a team of
five or six big horses, in contrast to the one
COORDINATION OF ENTERPRISES 81
mule of his cotton rival. The net income of the
mule farm is $263.00, while the team of five
horses brings a net income of $1,563.00.
When the cotton is picked by a machine of
efficiency equal to the harvester, the cotton and
wheat farmers will meet on equal ground.
A system of cropping that makes admirable
use of the time of man and horse is the six-year
rotation: corn two years, wheat two years (fall
sown), and timothy and clover two years. None
of these crops competes with the others — that
is, requires attention at the same time. The
corn is planted and cultivated before the har-
vest of the hay begins. The wheat is garnered
before the corn is ripe. Each follows on the
heels of the others. This provides daily work
for the horses from early spring until the
ground is frozen up in the fall. It obviates the
hiring of extra teams and neither men nor
horses are overworked at one season and idle
at another.
The limiting factors are (1) the area of corn
land that one man can prepare for planting, (2)
the area of corn land which one man can culti-
82 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
vate, (3) the area of wheat land that one man
can prepare. (The timothy seed is sown with
the wheat.) One of the beauties of this rotation
is that these areas are equal. One man with a
good team can attend to forty acres of hay,
forty acres of corn, and forty acres of wheat.
This system of cropping distributes the work
and is a good rotation, providing a cultivated
crop, a small grain and a hay and clover crop.
Humus, nitrogen, and tilth are contributed to
the soil.
Theoretically the use of a four-horse team
would nearly double the production of the farm-
er using this rotation. For he could, by driv-
ing four horses, cover twice the ground in the
same length of time. Practically, I should like
the name and address of any man who is thus
cultivating the two hundred and forty acres.
These three crops do not interfere, the one
is not produced at the expense of the other. The
comparative returns yielded by the three do
not, therefore, enter into the calculation. If the
wheat could be replaced by some other crop
which would be as advantageous in the rotation
COOEDINATION OF ENTERPRISES 83
as regards soil fertility and yet not conflict with
corn or hay in labor while bringing in more
money, the other crop should be raised. If corn
could be correspondingly replaced, more profit
would accrue to the farmer. But because corn
brings in larger returns than hay is not a rea-
son for adding more corn land to the rotation.
The farmer is already producing as much corn
as he and his team can care for, and to add more
corn land would add to the labor cost on the
farm. To produce corn and hay is not to in-
crease the labor cost, but simply to use labor
which would otherwise be unproductive. This
principle of coordination, into which enters di-
versity, rotation, and, to a degree, size of busi-
ness, is the vital one for the farmer.
CHAPTER IX
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE INDIVIDUAL
The best chance for the individual is the cul-
tivation of personal efficiency.
We have been studying the general principles
underlying success in farming. The average
success is made by following these rules, with
only such changes as the immediate conditions
warrant. The farmer who wishes to increase
his income had best follow the methods thereby
suggested but add to his returns by becoming
more proficient in each controlling factor.
Of two farmers, side by side with apparently
the same general equipment of stock and ma-
chinery, one will grow rich and the other will
grow poor. It is the personal equation. The
factor that controls is the man at the head of the
business. It was this that the Chief of the Bu-
reau of Farm Management meant when he said :
84
OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIVIDUAL 85
"The man is 75% of the proposition and the
farm 25%. "
Yet the farm income is not increased because
a successful man is in charge, but because of
the way he does things. His live stock is better
than the average, his scheme of farming does
use to better advantage the time of men and
teams, his investment is larger than that of his
unsuccessful competitors.
The broadest and best opportunity for the
farmer is that which comes through this per-
sonal efficiency ; yet there are multitudes of spe-
cial chances in every community. Usually these
are in the nature of retail business, such as sup-
plying the local trade or the individual con-
sumer, or the production of a superior quality.
Readers of Country Life may remember the
story of Mike Trucker, who made $1,500.00 from
two acres on the shore of the Indian River in
Florida, Mike let his neighbors ship their pro-
duce to the Northern markets ; he looked after
the tourist trade right at hand. He received
fifty cents a quart for his strawberries and fifty
cents a dozen for eggs right within reach of his
86 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
own one-horse wagon. He planned his whole
system of farming so as to supply the winter
trade within reach of his own circuit. There
was neither freight nor commission to pay, nor
uncertainty about markets at the other end of
the journey, for everything was ordered before
it was grown. Mike was very optimistic as to
the opportunity for anybody on the shore of the
Indian River. He did not realize the limited
market, nor did he appreciate how much the
personal equation entered into the market which
he had established. People had acquired the
habit of trading with him because he served
them faithfully and well. The "good will" of
Mike 's clientele was worth much more than his
acres.
Out in the State of Washington there is a
man who raises eggs. His eggs are good, but
his reputation is better. He has never sold his
supply for less than 70 cents a dozen, but that
is because his trade would rather pay that price
for goods of the assured quality that come from
him than buy elsewhere at a less price. He
probably thinks that there is easy money in
OPPOETUNITY FOR INDIVIDUAL 87
raising eggs. And he is right, if a man can ob-
tain the reputation and market which will com-
mand such prices.
In a dairy section, about one farm in fifty can
profitably be devoted to raising high-grade
bulls. It is better for the forty-nine other farm-
ers to pay one of their number to study the
matter of breeding and become proficient in the
practice.
It is often profitable for one farmer in a dairy
region to make butter. The average farmer
does not care to add to the complexity of his
work by churning at home. Many of them do
not care to use butter that is made under condi-
tions too frequent in creameries. The profes-
sional butter-maker can turn out a good product
if he has the supplies of good cream, but in
nearly every community are a few farmers who
do not keep their cream up to the standard of
cleanliness, and this unclean supply is mixed
with the good, thus bringing down the quality
of the mass. Again, it often happens that the
little village, set within the midst of dairy
farms, is almost without milk for the house-
88 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
holder, for the farmers sell their supplies at
wholesale.
Each of these examples is of retail business ;
and it is true in practice that the average re-
tailer, as soon as he has accumulated sufficient
capital through retailing, prefers to embark
upon the larger business requiring a wholesale
outlet. It is thus often used as a means to ac-
quire capital. But it is financially successful or
it could not be used as a stepping-stone.
A well-known tobacco farmer in Connecticut
has made a reputation for the high grade of his
product and he has already sold next year's
crop for $75,000.00 But he knows that when the
buyer lights a bit of the tobacco leaf, if any ash
is left or it does not burn crisply, the buyer will
not take the wrapper at any price. He has
learned how to produce this quality and he
grows only that particular grade of stuff. His
opportunity is built on land peculiarly adapted
to this tobacco, in the first place ; but knowledge
and determination are contributing factors, for
without these his land would not give him the
high-grade tobacco.
OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIVIDUAL 89
A certain chicken farmer in New Hampshire
buys the unfinished fowl of his neighbors, fat-
tens them, and ships them to market. He fig-
ures his profit at 55% on the operation. He is
a specialist and reaps the reward of knowledge
properly applied. This same farmer sold his
fowl for 24 cents in the local market while he
was buying from his neighbors for 14 cents.
Probably the very housewives who were selling
him unfattened chickens were buying back their
own fowls after they had been fattened for a
fortnight. Imagine the Standard Oil Company
permitting a leak like this !
The story of a New England orchard in the
making illustrates several of the points which
we have discussed. The orchard was too large
for one man and not large enough for two. It
needed a team of horses but could not keep them
busy. It took several years for these facts to
reach the consciousness of the new city owner.
This man had read that "cows did not pay,"
and so banished them from his calculations, un-
til two or three winters of idleness forced the
matter upon his consideration. When be fig-
90 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
ured upon his fertilizer bills, he forgot to look
askance at cows. Idle time in the winter, and a
big bill for chemicals, began to make a differ-
ence in the calculations. He learned that fertil-
ity can be more cheaply purchased in the form
of feed than otherwise, and that half-pay for
winter time is much better than no-pay. He be-
gan to figure on using the time of men and
teams. The size of the orchard was increased
(for the future) by the planting of more trees.
But even this left big loop-holes in the time ac-
count. So he added small fruits, strawberries,
blackberries, raspberries, currants, and goose-
berries. To keep the horses at work he plowed
more land and soon began raising various crops,
such as potatoes, beans, wheat, corn, etc. He
started a nursery, for the sake of raising his
own young trees, and to have some for sale.
And just as he diversified in his crops, so he
divided his risks in the market. Other orchard-
ists in the State shipped by wholesale to the
glutted Boston market, leaving a vacuum be-
hind them. Our friend stepped into the breach
and kept many of his apples at home. Why
OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIVIDUAL 91
ship to Boston when a higher price could be ob-
tained within a few miles of the orchard ? Why-
ship second quality fruit to a market good only
for first grade, and why sell fancy apples to a
trade that wanted only sound number twos?
Why sell his cream to a creamery which dumped
it in with all the rest and paid him only the
price for inferior stuff? Why present the
creamery with the 17% overrun while he and
his man sat around the stove?
That city dreamer knew more about finding
markets than he did about swinging a scythe.
Finally it got pounded into his head that the
way to make money was to do the job that he
knew how to do better than the other fellow, and
leave to the other fellow that man's specialty.
To-day he is supplying the local trade with
barreled apples, the city consumer trade with
boxed fruit, and the wholesale firm with car-
lots. His pickers begin with the strawberry
crop, follow on to the raspberries, currants,
blackberries, and gooseberries. His trade begins
to look for the arrival of his strawberries, and
thereafter takes the following crops as a mat-
92 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
ter of course. The berries do not supply full
loads, so cases of eggs are used to fill in the
chinks. Chickens that may not pay as a single
crop, pay with him, because they fit into the
scheme of time and delivery loads. With the
need for speed and distance in delivering, the
horses are kept on the farm and a light truck
eats up the miles and enlarges the circle of ter-
ritory over which regular deliveries are made.
He found local firms buying potatoes from
other States and paying the freight to have
them shipped in. And he stepped in to help
supply the local needs. Freight and commis-
sion charges acted as a tariff wall to protect his
infant industry.
Mike Trucker did the same thing in Florida.
Reginald Cityman is doing it in New England.
Thousands of other men are doing it all over
the land. The opportunity for the individual
is to fit his scheme of farming to the condi-
tions in which he finds himself.
CHAPTER X
LIVE STOCK ON THE FARM
Animals are farm machines. They convert
the raw materials of the place into manufac-
tured products. Hay, straw, grain and other
feeds are converted and condensed into beef,
mutton, milk, butter, eggs, etc. Transportation
charges are cut and distant markets thereby
made available.
The manufacturer must watch the efficiency
of his machinery and when a given type proves
a losing proposition it must go to the scrap-
heap and be replaced by a better type. Most
farms have animals that belong in the scrap-
heap, and few dairy herds are without cows that
are kept at a loss.
There are certain risks in live-stock farming.
Disease may destroy the capital invested in ani-
mals ; tuberculosis may wipe out a dairy ; chol-
93
94 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
era may kill off a drove of hogs ; liver-rot may
devastate a flock of sheep. Scarcity of food
may put the price of hay and grain at a figure
that spells loss; for live stock cannot be held
indefinitely but must be sold as soon as they
are finished or they will eat their heads off.
But live stock is needed on the business farm
to provide continuous work for the men, to con-
vert low-grade food-stuffs into high-grade, and
to keep up the fertility of the land in as eco-
nomical a manner as possible.
Animals require more care in winter than in
summer. The winter care comes at a time when
the farmer would not otherwise be employed
and therefore may be considered as cheap la-
bor. Much of the summer "chore" time comes
before and after regular hours of work in cul-
tivating and harvesting the crops and so sum-
mer care of the dairy does not come into direct
competition with labor done within the ordinary
hours of the day.
Cows will eat hay that would not command
a market price and convert it into milk and
cream ; sheep will clean up what the cows leave ;
LIVE STOCK ON THE FAEM 95
goats will live on brush; while animals of all
sorts will live on pasture land that could not
profitably be used in any other way. Pigs and
chickens, if permitted to run at large, will
gather much of their living and act as scaven-
gers in doing it. Grasshoppers, bugs, windfall
fruit, weeds, and deleterious seeds will be trans-
formed into eggs, broilers, and pork. Skim-milk
will be converted by the same means into sala-
ble products.
The hens that are fed on these weeds, wastes,
and table scraps are looked after by the women
and children of the farm. Their food costs lit-
tle or nothing and the care is by unpaid labor.
Eggs raised under such a schedule of small cost
are sold at a low price ; and when one considers
that the main supply of eggs of the country
comes from these small farm flocks the difficulty
of the competition meeting the specialized egg
farm is apparent. The specialist must meet it
by improved breeds, systems of forcing egg-
laying, and higher-grade products. Fortunate-
ly for him, the owners of a few hens cannot af-
96 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
ford to ship eggs often enough to meet the re-
quirements of the " extra fancy' ' grades.
It is evident that live stock, under such con-
ditions, can be produced at a small margin of
profit; and it is nearly as difficult for the spe-
cialist in beef, pork, or dairy products to com-
pete with the main supply of the country as it
would be for the manufacturer to* attempt to
provide gasoline without taking into account the
products that come off in the same distillation.
The farmer who is figuring on the cost of fer-
tilizing his land can study with profit the fol-
lowing values, worked on an ante-bellum scale
of prices for chemicals.
The value of the fertilizing constituents of
the manure made in a year per thousand pounds
of live weight, if purchased, would be as fol-
lows:
Cow, $31.20
Sheep, $36.84
Pig, $64.48
Fowls, $54.52
If the farmer is wondering whether it is bet-
ter to sell his corn as grain, or convert it into
LIVE STOCK ON THE FAEM 97
pork, the matter of $64.48 for each half -ton of
pork (the equivalent of 6,000 pounds of corn) is
a decided factor.
When he sells a ton of timothy hay he sells
$6.00 worth of manure, but if he sells a ton of
pigs he takes away only $8.17 worth of fertility.
Thus, if he sells the hay for $15.00, he receives
$9.00 for his crop and $6.00 for his capital, as
represented in farm fertility. If he obtains 6
cents for his pigs, there is only $8.00 to be sub-
tracted from the $120.00 which comes to him.
The cost in farm fertility to be charged up
against the capital account on a 160-acre farm
runs as follows for three systems of farming :
Nitrogen Phosphoric
In Lbs. Acid. Potash.
All-grain farm . . 5,600 2,500 4,200
Dairy farm .. . 800 175 85
Livestock 900 150 60
G. F. Warren says: " There is no merit or
demerit in selling any particular crop. If one
sells everything that grows, including the straw
98 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
and hay, and gives no attention to the soil, he is
sure to get into trouble sooner or later. But
there are many ways of keeping up fertility.
The question is which way pays best. p p
In our study of the business of farming this
is the one point for us to consider — ' ' which way
pays best." Not alone in the immediate pres-
ent, but taking account of the future and care-
fully balancing the demands of to-day and to-
morrow.
As a rule it may be stated that the sale of
crops is more directly profitable than the using
of them for feed on the place. In part this is
because one sells the higher-grade stuff and in
part because one draws on the bank account in
farm f ertilty when selling crops instead of dis-
posing of animal products.
If the farmer raises only live stock, his ani-
mals are competing with those fed only on low-
grade feeds, while his consume both grades. If
he raises only crops, he is throwing away the
low-grade produce, which might be producing
low-cost live stock. A proper balancing of live
stock and crops is the proper farm management.
LIVE STOCK ON THE FARM 99
The specialist makes money, but he would make
more if he could combine successfully the two
types of farming.
The deduction from the foregoing statements
is quite plain that, under average conditions,
enough live stock should be kept to utilize the
low-grade products of the farm. By transform-
ing these into fertility for the fields, we are
raising the grade of our products. Moreover, in
many cases, the cost of harvesting may be wiped
out by turning the animals into the fields to har-
vest their own food. If the cost of harvesting a
bushel of corn is ten cents, and a pig turned into
the corn-field gathers the ear for himself, he
should be credited with the value of the labor
which he thus performs, in casting up the ac-
counts of the farm.
Investigation has shown that when produc-
tion of crops has reached about 150% of the
average yield the curve of profit begins to go
down. No top has been found to animal pro-
duction. The average hen lays, perhaps, 100
eggs per year. The 200-egg hen does not cost
twice as much in feed and care as her ordinary
100 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
sister, and she yields a correspondingly greater
profit. The 300-egg hen will not cost 50% more
to keep than the producer of 200 eggs. The cow
that fills the pail with rich milk costs more to
feed than the poor type which gives only half
as much, but the cost is not in proportion to the
additional yield. The calf from the poor cow
takes nearly as much food to grow as the young-
ster raised by the good cow, but it is sold for
$5.00 as against a price in proportion to its
mother's worth on the part of the pedigreed
calf.
The dairy farm which is large enough so that
the manager can take the time to properly test
the product of each cow has an advantage over
the small farm where a rush of work prevents
this keeping of records. No man on earth can
tell accurately the amount or quality of the
yield of any cow by simple inspection. Every
dairyman knows which are his best cows, but he
often knows wrong, unless the milk is weighed
every day and the Babcock tester used for the
butter-fat content. The least prepossessing
cow in my own herd gives a 7.40% butter-fat
LIVE STOCK ON THE FARM 101
test. In the rush of summer work it is impossi-
ble to take the time to test the cows as often as
it should be done, and we compromise by an
occasional test, together with a daily weighing
of the milk. The specialist will arrange his time
so as to make the opportunity.
The farmer who raises pure-bred stock has a
different proposition from the man who keeps
scrub cattle. It has been carefully figured out
that a $40.00 cow depreciates 4% each year,
while the $200.00 cow loses value at the rate of
12%. This, plus 6% interest on the cost, makes
the $40.00 cow worth $36.00 at the end of the
year, while the $200.00 cow has come down to
$164.00. To compensate for her increased cost,
the higher-grade cow must make a net return of
more than $32.00 over that of her $40.00 com-
petitor.
The man with small capital can best begin
with low-cost cows and improve his herd by
means of a good sire. Incidentally it may be
remarked that he can improve the offspring
from low-priced registered stock as rapidly as
102 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
he can from grades, and in the end he has good-
producing pure-breds, instead of simple good-
producers. The additional value has come with-
out additional cost.
CHAPTER XI
THE FAEM AS A HOME
Good farming is a means to an end. If suc-
cess is sought simply to gratify personal ambi-
tion, to supply a love of ostentation, or to give
luxurious ease, the fruit of victory will turn to
ashes.
Good farming should mean a good home, a
lasting home, founded upon a rock, not resting
upon the shifting sand. Agriculture is a first
principle; on it rests the life and happiness of
mankind ; it is the greatest and most important
of extractive industries, and upon these indus-
tries depend every method of getting a living.
The manufacturer would have nothing to manu-
facture if farmers, miners, lumberman, and fish-
ermen ceased to supply him with raw materials.
The merchant would have nothing to sell if the
manufacturer made nothing for him; and the
103
104 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FARMING
transportation companies would be idle if there
was nothing to ship. Strength comes from the
environment ; and a successful farmer is strong
and capable : his strength is refreshed because
he is dealing with the elemental facts of life.
A good home means a good family; and the
highest ambition which any man can hold is to
be the head of a family, strong in mind and b#iy
and righteous in deeds. To provide an estate
that will support such a family and develop in
them these qualities is a goal to appeal to the
best of us. The writers who urge us to go to
the farm because of the beauty of the country or
the peace of the life on the land miss the factor
that makes the farmer worth while. It is the
discipline of the farm, the insistence of its du-
ties, the certainties of its penalties, and the
great big fact that you are working with nature
in the things that make the world go, that make
the farmer a broad, self-reliant, forceful indi-
vidual.
Work is happiness and idleness akin to mis-
ery. There are more children who need to be
set to work than there are who need to be
THE FARM AS A HOME 105
protected by child labor laws. The city child
grows up in idleness. Out of school hours there
is nothing for him to do except to spend the
hours in play. The child on the farm, as soon
as he can walk, is given some light, simple task
to perform. Perhaps it is the wood box that he
fills for his mother, or the potatoes that the girl
pares for dinner. As they grow older the boy
can feed the calf and the girl the chickens. Both
chores are necessary and insistent. Because the
boy wishes to play is no reason why the calf can
go hungry. He learns early in the game that
life is real and earnest. And when he goes to
the city the urban-raised youth has small chance
against him in the battle of life.
Enthusiasm is the breath of life, and a com-
mon enthusiasm the strength of a nation. Bet-
ter war, with its united patriotism, than the
crumbling decay of individual, egotistical lux-
uriousness of living.
On a farm the family work together. In the
city it makes little difference to the rest of the
family whether the father is a broker, a butcher,
or a candlestick maker. His place in the econ-
106 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
omy of the household is to provide the money
to buy the things needed by it. There is no fur-
ther community of interest ; matters pertaining
to business policy are not discussed, and the
children do not know whether stocks are boom-
ing, veal is down, or the market for the silver-
smith at low ebb. The city dweller is amused
because the countryman talks crops and weather
signs, and he smiles in a superior sort of fash-
ion, as if these subjects were inconsequential.
Wall Street quotations are made by crops and
weather. The broker is dealing with the froth
of the game, while the farmer is on the ground
floor making the cake with which the former
plays. The philosopher who considers that the
greatest duty of man is to subdue the earth and
to make it a better place on which to live is likely
to give the farmer a pass to heaven.
The boy on the farm has the inestimable ad-
vantage of working side by side with his father.
From his early years he has been accustomed
to regular work — not a task evidently made for
him to mark time over, but one which is part of
the work of the place, one that contributes to
THE FARM AS A HOME 107
the support of the family, and on the well-doing
of which rests in some measure the success of
the farm. There is thus developed in the boy
a feeling of responsibility and self-reliance that
will equip him for his future life as armor
equipped the knight of old. He is early taken
into the family discussions of ways and means.
Not alone are the matters of spending money
brought before the family council, but also those
concerned with making it, the selling to the best
advantage. The boy learns the value of money
and the ways in which it can be made. He does
not simply draw an allowance and concern him-
self only with making the amount on hand last
over until next pay day.
The association with life, in the growing crops
and the breeding of live stock, gets the boy in
touch with the revolving wheels of this old earth
of ours and broadens his foundation until he is
not like a reed in the wind, bending before every
blast. He understands the comparative impor-
tance of things and is not so likely to be carried
away by false idols.
The farm family is more stable than that of
108 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
the city. The work on the farm is not subject
to such sudden ups and downs as is that in the
city. A farmer learns patience and faith, for he
does little that returns to him " to-morrow. ' '
His fields are improved by rotations that need
five years to cover the first round and two cir-
cuits to show results ; his stock is improved by
the slow process of replacement, daughters and
daughters' daughters, unto the fifth and sixth
generation, in his dairy. The city man puts his
accumulation in the bank in the form of money
or bonds, and sometimes in additional plant
which usually is readily salable ; but the farmer
stows away much of his growing capital in the
added fertility of the farm, the better live stock,
and the more successful farm management.
Financial panics have less effect upon farm-
ers than upon any other class of business men.
Food is always a necessity; wars may devastate
or panics bankrupt the nation, but the people
must continue to eat. Markets may be cur-
tailed and the demand for quality lowered, but
food will always be needed. The farmer will
ever have a sale for his produce.
THE FARM AS A HOME 109
The conditions of family life on the farm
make for stability. In the city the unmarried
man or woman is under no disadvantage in a
business sense because unmarried. But on the
farm the household works together and the unit
in the business is neither the man nor the
woman, but the whole family. The farmer must
have a wife, and the woman cannot live alone.
This community of interest, this need for each
other, is the surest bond to hold the family to-
gether. It makes for earlier marriage and it
makes for more care in the selection of part-
ners. In the city, the man may wish simply a
pretty face at the other end of the table, or a
showy partner to exhibit at the opera or the
exclusive ball, but in the country the man must
have a worthy mate. The mother of his chil-
dren must be of the best available type.
"No pure form of social or domestic life, no
high type of morality, has ever been developed
among any people except where it was organ-
ized around some kind of productive work. The
ideal of production for a common family pur-
pose ... of building a family and perpetuat-
110 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
ing a prosperous, productive family estate in-
stead of subtracting from the dignity of family
life, is really one of the greatest factors in add-
ing dignity to it."
Farmers, as a class, are independent because
they are so largely self-employed. Agriculture
is, and always will be, largely made up of small
units. For the high-spirited, independent man
this will always be a controlling condition.
Farming never will pay speculative returns, and
the man. who prefers to play with money had
best keep to the city. The weak and very strong
had best go to the city, for the farm is a place
for individual effort. The workman must over-
see himself, must supply his own initiative, and
must stick to his job until it is finished. The
man who finds it a trouble to decide what to do
next will accomplish more and be better paid for
it if he works under the eye of a foreman. The
man of great executive ability will find his place
in directing the business which can employ a
large number of men. The farmer rarely can
find employment for as many as half a dozen
men. He must rely largely on his own efforts ;
THE FARM AS A HOME 111
he must be self-reliant, adaptable, a naturalist,
a business man, an expert on feeding and breed-
ing, an agriculturalist, and a man always ready
to change his policy to suit changing conditions.
The farmer is a constructive worker. His
livelihood comes from making the land produce ;
he adds to the wealth of the world. His moral
fiber is thereby strengthened. Too often the
city man makes his living out of other people.
Oratory, a well-groomed appearance, and a con-
vincing manner are his stock in trade and by
them he induces others to part with their dol-
lars. "Instead of laboring to make two blades
of grass grow where one had grown before,
their business is to make two dollars emerge
from other people's pockets where one had
emerged before." A destructive business is
necessarily weakening to moral stamina, for
man is subject to his environment.
These moral qualities are the fundamentals
of civilization. Intellectual achievements can
be freely borrowed, agricultural machinery may
be cheaply purchased, and social efficiency can
be quickly developed by an acute monarchical
112 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
government. Morality is of a slower growth,
and the nation which becomes efficient at the ex-
pense of morality is in danger of falling into the
abyss. From the days of mythology the touch
of the soil has been recognized as the vital fac-
tor in the advancement of the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON FARM MANAGE-
MENT
Boss, Andrew — Farm management: Chicago, N. Y. Lyons
& Carnahan, 1914. $0.90.
Hunt, T. F. — How to choose a farm: N. Y. Macmillan
Co. 1906. $1.75.
Hunt, T. F. — The young farmer; some things he should
know : N. Y. Orange Judd Co. 1912. $1.50.
Warren, G. F. — Farm management: N. Y. Macmillan
Co. 1913. $1.75.
STATE AND STATION PUBLICATIONS RELATING
TO FARM MANAGEMENT
Anderson, A. C. & Riddell, F. T. — Studies in the cost of
market milk production: Michigan Agr. Exp. Sta.
Bui. 172. 1917.
App, Frank — Farm profits and factors influencing farm
profits on 370 potato farms in Monmouth County,
New Jersey: New Jersey Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 294.
Apr., 1916.
Boss, Andrew, Peck, F. W., and Cooper, T. P. — Labor
requirements of livestock: Minnesota Agr. Exp. Sta.
Bui. 161. Aug., 1916.
115
116 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
Burritt, M. C. — The income of 178 New York farms:
New York Cornell Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 271. Dec,
1909.
Cates, J. S. — Farm management : its applications to south-
ern New England conditions: Massachusetts State
Bd. Agr. Ann. Rpt. 1915, pt. 2, p. 58-67. 1916.
Cooper, T. P., Peck, F. W., and Boss, Andrew — Labor
requirements of crop production: Minn. Agr. Exp.
Sta. Bui. 157. March, 1916.
Filley, H. C. — Farm management studies in eastern Ne-
braska: Nebraska Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 157. Oct.,
1916.
Goddard, L. H. — Labor cost of producing corn in Ohio:
Ohio Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 266. Dec, 1913.
Johnson, 0. M., and Dadisman, A. J. — An agricultural
survey of Brooke County: West Virginia Agr. Exp.
Sta. Bui. 153. 1915.
Johnson, 0. R. — The distribution of farm labor : Missouri
Agr. Exp. Sta. Research Bui. 6, p. 53-88, fig. 5. Feb.,
1913.
Ladd, C. E. — Cost accounts on some New York farms: N.
Y. Cornell Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 377. June, 1916.
Peck, F. W. — Cost of producing Minnesota farm crops,
1908-1912: Minnesota Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 145. Dec,
1914.
Thompson, A. L. — Cost of producing milk on 174 farms
in Delaware County, New York: N. Y. Cornell Agr.
Exp. Sta. Bui. 364. Oct., 1915.
Warren, G. F., and others — An agricultural survey: Town-
ships of Ithaca, Danby and Lansing, Thompkins Coun-
ty, New York: N. Y. Cornell Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 295.
March, 1911.
Warren, G. F. — Agricultural surveys — N. Y. Cornell Agr.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 117
Exp. Sta. Bui. 344. Apr., 1914. (Pub. also as Presi-
dent's address, in Proc. Amer. Farm Management
Assoc, 1913, p. 9-26.)
Warren, G. F. — Cost accounting on farms: New York
Dept. Agr. Bui. 35, p. 921-926, 1912.
Warren, G. F. — Crop yields and prices, and our future
food supply: N. Y. Cornell Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 341.
Feb., 1914.
Warren, G. F., and Livermore, K. C. — Notes from the ag-
ricultural survey of Tompkins County: N. Y. Cor-
nell Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 302. June, 1911.
Warren, G. F. — Some important factors for success in
general and dairy farming: N. Y. Cornell Agr. Exp.
Sta. Bui. 349. July, 1914.
Warren, G. F. — Some principles of farm management : In
New Jersey State Bd. Agr. Rpt., 39th, p. 99-106, 1911.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICUL-
TURE RELATING TO FARM MANAGEMENT
Arnold, J. H. — Crew work, costs, and returns in commer-
cial orcharding in West Virginia : Dept. Bui. 29, 1913.
Arnold, J. H. — How a city family managed a farm : Far-
mers' Bui. 432. 1911.
Ball, J. S. — Waste land and wasted land on farms: Far-
mers' Bui. 745. 1916.
Bennett, C. M., and Cooper, M. 0. — The cost of raising
a dairy cow: Dept. Bui. 49. 1914.
BuRRiTT, M. C. — A successful New York farm: Farmers'
Bui. 454. 1911.
Cates, H. R. — Farm practice in the cultivation of corn:
Dept. Bui. 330. 1916.
118 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FABMING
Cotton, J. S., and Ward, W. F. — Economical cattle feed-
ing in the corn belt: Farmers' Bui. 588. 1914.
Cotton, J. S., and others. — Meat situation in the United
States. Pt. III. Methods and cost of growing beef
cattle in the corn belt states: Dept. Report 111.
Dodge, L. G. — Cropping systems for New England dairy-
farms: Farmers' Bui. 337. 1908.
Dodge, L. G. — Farm management in northern potato-grow-
ing sections: Farmers' Bui. 365. 1909.
Drake, J. A. — A corn-belt farming system which saves
harvest labor by hogging down crops: Farmers' Bui.
814. 1914.
Funk, W. C. — Value to farm families of food, fuel, and
use of house : Dept. Bui. 410. 1916.
Funk, W. C. — What the farm contributes directly to the
farmer's living: Farmers' Bui. 635. 1914.
Goldenweiser, E. A. — The farmer's income: Farmers'
Bui. 746. 1916.
Hays, W. M. and Parker, E. C. — The cost of producing
farm products: Bureau of Statistics Bui. 48. 1906.
(Pub. also as Minnesota Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 97.)
Humphrey, H. N. — Cost of fencing farms in the North
Central states: Dept. Bui. 321. 1916.
Humphrey, H. N. — Labor requirements of dairy farms as
influenced by milking machines: Dept. Bui. 423.
1916.
Ladd, C. E. — A system of farm cost accounting : Farmers'
Bui. 572. 1914.
McDowell, J. C. — Influence of age on the value of dairy
cows and farm work horses : Dept. Bui. 413. 1916.
Miller, G. H. — Operating costs of a well-established New
York apple orchard: Dept. Bui. 130. 1914.
BIBLIOGEAPHY 119
Mowry, H. H. — Machinery cost of farm operations in
western New York : Dept. Bui. 338. 1916.
Mowry, H. H. — The normal day's work of farm imple-
ments, workmen, and crews in western New York:
Dept. Bui. 412. 1916.
Parker, E. C, and Cooper, T. P. — The cost of producing
Minnesota farm products, 1902-1907: Bureau of Sta-
tistics Bui. 73. (Pub. also as Minnesota Agr. Exp.
Sta. Bui. 117.)
Spillman, W. J. — Factors of efficiency in farming: In
U. S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook, 1913, p. 93-108.
Spillman, W. J., Dixon, H. M., and Billings, G. A. —
Farm management practice of Chester County, Pa.:
Dept. Bui. 341. 1916.
Spillman, W. J. — Miscellaneous papers: The farmer's
income: Bureau Plant Indus. Circ. 132. 1913.
Spillman, W. J. — A successful hog and seed-corn farm:
Farmers' Bui. 272. 1906.
Spillman, W. J. — A successful poultry and dairy farm:
Farmers' Bui. 355. 1909.
Thomson, E. H. — Agricultural survey of four townships
in southern New Hampshire: Bureau Plant Indus.
Circ. 75. 1911.
Thomson, E. H. — Farm bookkeeping: Farmers' Bui. 511.
1912.
Thomson, E. H., and Dixon, H. M. — A farm-management
survey of three representative areas in Indiana, Illi-
nois and Iowa. Dept. Bui. 41. 1914.
Thomson, E. H., and Dixon, H. M. — A method of analyz-
ing the farm business: Farmers' Bui. 661. 1915.
Thomson, E. H., and Dixon, H. M. — Profits in farming on
irrigated areas in Utah Lake Valley: Dept. Bui. 117.
1914.
120 THE NEW BUSINESS OF FAEMING
Turner, H. A. — Systems of renting truck farms in south-
western New Jersey: Dept. Bui. 411. 1916.
PUBLICATIONS ISSUED SINCE OCTOBER 21, 1916
DEPARTMENT BULLETINS
No. 528. — Seasonable distribution of farm labor in Ches-
ter County, Pa. By George A. Billings. 1917.
10c.
560. — Cost of keeping farm horses and cost of horse
labor. By M. R. Cooper. 1917. 5c.
FARMERS' BULLETINS
No. 782. — The use of a diary for farm accounts. By E. H.
Thomson. 1917. 5c.
816. — Minor articles of farm equipment. By H. N.
Humphrey and A. P. Yerkes. 1917. 5c.
838. — Harvesting hay with the sweep-rake. By A. P.
Yerkes and H. B. McClure. 1917. 5c.
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY CIRCULARS
No. 67. — Measuring hay in ricks or stacks. By H. B.
McClure and W. J. Spillman. 1916.
YEARBOOK SEPARATES
No. 715. — Farm tenantry in the United States. By "W. J.
Spillman and E. A. Goldenweiser. 1917.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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