AN AGKICULTUIJAI. BUSINESS PKOHLEM. 



BY CHARLES S. DUNFORD. 

 I. 



The agitation for farm acconiitiug- in connection with progressive 

 agriculture is not a recent propaganda. Experimental methods 

 applied to agricultural production in the first half of the eight- 

 eenth century induced Arthur Young to write, "If this noble spirit 

 continues, we shall soon see husbandry in perfection, and built 

 upon as just and philosophical principles as the art of juedicine.'' 

 In the latter i)art of this centuiy, however, he complains, ''One 

 can not get the farmers to keep accounts." Much experimental 

 effort was expended by husbandmen during the eighteenth century 

 which resulted in an increase in the average yield per acre; at the 

 same time, accounting practice seems to have been neglected. The 

 imivlication in Arthur Young's conviction of the necessity for the 

 keeping of accounts in connection with the agricultural empiricism 

 of this period is that, in the end, agriculture as a business can not 

 be really scientifically conducted without the keeping of records 

 from wliicli may be deduced certain facts and upon the basis of 

 which imformation a better reorganization of the i)roduction fac- 

 tors may be made. 



However, anomalous it may seem, very careful records of the 

 farm business were kept during the thirteenth and fourteenth 

 centuries by English husbandmen. Referring to the latter part 

 of the thirteenth century, J. E. Thorold Rogers in his Economic 

 Interi)retation of History says, ''Nothing can be more cai'efully 

 and exhaustively drawn than the bailiff's account. He made rough 

 notes of his receipts and expenditures and from the notes, which 

 occasionally survived, the audit was based and the roll engrossed. 

 ****** Everything is accounted for, all receipts, includ- 

 ing those from the manor court, all rents and all produce. The 

 acreage sown, the seed required for the purpose, the live and dead 

 stock on the farm are carefully noted even to an egg, a peck of 

 tail corn or a chicken, all losses given, all allowances recorded and 

 the audit completed." According to Professor Rogers, these ac- 



