88 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



"Why, I have to know. The margin of profit is so small that 

 in no other way could we conduct our business. I must know 

 to a nicety." I ask the agent of a cotton mill what it costs to 

 produce a yard of cotton cloth, and if he knows what it costs. 

 He says, "Certainly, I have to know what it costs, when the 

 profits are so far down in the fraction of a mill in a given yard 

 that the slightest mistake on my part would cause loss and I 

 would lose my job. We must pay our expenses. We must have 

 dividends for our stockholders, and, therefore, I must know 

 what it costs me to produce." 



Mr. Bassett said that good business necessitates that condi- 

 tion, and that applies as well to the farmer as to the manufac- 

 turer. Are we ready to accept his statement, friends? Do we 

 believe that the same business relation, which governs in other 

 lines of industry, holds with the farm? Unless we do, it seems 

 to me that it is folly for us to discuss the question of the cost 

 of an apple. Because one thing is true, the same business law 

 which governs in the mill or factory governs upon the farm, or 

 else there must be a law peculiar to agriculture, as rigid, as 

 exacting, which we must seek and find the application of. Accept 

 one or the other, we must. I believe that it is the same general 

 law, and that for us to find success in our work we must first 

 determine the cost of production of the products we are getting. 



I have been trying to solve that problem for myself for a 

 series of years. There are things necessary for us to see — things 

 that we have not been seeing in the past. It is necessary to 

 take account of items which we have not previously been figur- 

 ing. I have been asking farmers, for years, as to the cost of 

 producing a barrel of apples. The answer has been invariably, 

 "It costs me fifty cents." The boom days have gone in orchard- 

 ing. So much we have to be thankful for. We have settled 

 down to business. No longer are men going out and buying 

 what they term deserted, neglected farms, and planting great 

 orchard propositions, and then going back to their city homes 

 and expecting to reap a harvest therefrom. 



Some of you know that for the past eight years I have been 

 upon a small piece of land, with a few trees, having a good time, 

 enjoying myself as I never did before, finding a life that I never 

 dared dream possible, and I have also been trying to solve the 

 cost, in the various experiments I have been carrying forward. 



