16 EIGHTEENTH REPORT. 



counts wero almost alwaj's in Latin and seemed for the most part, 

 to have been the work of the mendicant clerg}^ These crude single 

 entry records made jmssible the determination of the approximate 

 gain or loss upon the business of the year. 



From the standpoint of agricultural production, the character- 

 istic dilference between the periods of the thirteenth and the four- 

 teenth centuries and of the eighteenth century is in the state of the 

 agricultural arts, the prevailing condition in the former being 

 static and in the latter dynamic. Under the static condition of 

 agricultural arts the husbandman felt the pinch of the Law of 

 Diminishing Keturns. The exigency of his position impelled a 

 careful analysis of his business. The fairly exhaustive records 

 kept by him attest the premeditated extension of his productive 

 activity. On the other hand, by reason of the progress in agricul- 

 tural practices during the eighteenth century, less imperative de- 

 mands were made upon the husbandman for the careful utiliza 

 tion of his productive instruments. The advance in agricultural 

 technique together with the opening for cultivation of large fertile 

 tracts of land in all parts of the world in the period following 

 the Industrial Revolution, outstripped the accumulation of agricul- 

 tural capital. From a business standpoint this condition freed the 

 agriculturalists of the nineteenth century, in general, from the 

 demands made upon those of the fourteenth century by minimizing 

 the pressure of the Industrial Law of Diminishing Returns. 



It is not here implied that during an advance in agricultural 

 practices accounts are unnecessary^ for certainly a wiser use of pro- 

 ductive factors may be made if it be known what expenditures are 

 more profitable and what are less profitable. The keeping of simple 

 accounts in the industrial stage of increasing returns is advisable. 

 Many losses in labor income could have been averted after the 

 entire rent had been sapped by the extension of productive activity 

 to the better grades of land had the simplest kind of accounts been 

 kept by those occupying marginal land. These accounts certainly 

 would have averted some of the poverty of many communities by 

 inducing a redirection of the productive energies during the plastic 

 period of the husbandman's life. 



The first half of the second decade of the twentieth century 

 marks the beginning of a period of a comparatively static condition 

 in agricultural arts. Also, practically all of the better grades of 

 land are now utilized. In these resjx'cts the i)resent century, at 

 least temporarily, is similar to the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 



