194 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE- 



the proprietor for his skill as a superintendent as well as for 

 the manual labor which he performs. With these items of 

 expense if the income equals the outgo, it does not mean that 

 the dairyman has made nothing — it means that the dairy has 

 furnished a home market for much home-grown produce, has 

 paid a fair rental on pasture and dairy buildings, has given the 

 farmer a reasonable salary, possibly has provided employment 

 for members of his family, and has returned 6% on the invest- 

 ment. What more could be asked? And yet such is the con- 

 fusion of thought relative to farm accounts that you will find 

 some very intelligent persons claiming that when, with the 

 items which I have named as expense, the account balances, 

 nothing has been made. At a hearing last winter in Massa- 

 chusetts one speaker claimed that the milk producers of New 

 England are ruined and do not know it. There is no such mis- 

 understanding in the bookkeeping of a manufacturing company 

 or in an investment in dividend-paying stocks. A writer in a 

 recent issue of the Saturday Evening Post says : "One may 

 search the files of the farm periodicals in vain for a farm bal- 

 ance sheet properly so called. Of all kinds of business done 

 in the United States there is none conducted in a more hap- 

 hazard way or with less knowledge of actual results than farm- 

 ing." 



Applying my classification as above to Professor Sanborn's 

 figures the result is as follows: 



COST OF cow PER YEAR. 



Feed $72 90 



Labor (including delivery of milk to R. R. 



station) 25 00 



Owner's managerial service 5 0° 



Housing 6 00 



Depreciation and risk on cows 12 00 



Incidentals i 75 



Total $122 65 



On this showing of expense, crediting 6,000 pounds of milk 

 per cow at 4 cents per quart, and the manure, there was $8.83 

 per cow to the good. If the dairy investment — not total farm 



