122 STATE BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



be a failure. Don't try to keep an account with every field or witli every 

 crop. Not one in a hundred will bear up under such a system for a 

 twelve month, and I doubt the value of the figures after they are re- 

 corded. The only man I ever knew who did that sort of thing used to 

 publish his results in the agricultural papers, and he always managed 

 to figure out a handsome profit on every crop his farm produced and on 

 each kind of stock he kept upon his farm. I knew the man well and 

 I know he thought he was honest in his statements. But all these years 

 he ran behind from five to fifteen hundred dollars every year and he spent 

 the last years of his life a tenant on the four-hundred acre farm he once 

 owned free from incumbrance. A well kept cash account, giving items 

 and dates, with occasional memoranda, will afford the data necessary for 

 future reference and posting at leisure. It will afford a complete record 

 of the farm receipts and disbursements and sufficient collateral facts to 

 give you, with little work or trouble, almost any data you may desire. 



Make an inventory every year at the same time of the year. Make it 

 carefully. It is just as essential in farming as in any other lines of 

 business. Whether the results of the year's work have been favorable 

 or otherwise the facts should be known. The task is not a long one and 

 it will afford you great satisfaction in the years to come. 



And, last of all, the farmer as a business man cannot afford to hoard 

 the money which he makes. He owes it to his family, to society, to the 

 business world of which he is a part, he owes it to himself, to use that 

 money so that it will do the most good to his family and to society. 

 Even from a strictly business point of view he cannot afford to do other- 

 wise. A home full of dollars is not of necessity a home worthy of the 

 name, and he who thinks otherwise is poor indeed. Even in the early 

 years, when the debts look large and the future is not clear, no man can 

 afford to starve his better nature nor to dwarf the lives of those about 

 his fireside. The debts will be paid just as fast, and I think a little 

 faster, if we afford ourselves the pleasures, the recreations and the 

 food that both mind and body crave. A good constitution, an elastic 

 spirit and a healthy mind are all essentials to success. The man who 

 dwarfs either or all of these may win, but in the winning he will lose. 



It is the one thing in the institution with which I am now connected 

 of which I am most proud, that we are fitting young men and young 

 women for business success in life, for business success upon the farm, 

 for the building up and maintenance of farm homes and farm life upon a 

 higher level. The trend of college education is so often away from 

 practical things, away from the practical affairs of life. The' most 

 pathetic thing connected with the higher education of the past is the 

 great number of graduates which have been turned out into a practical 

 w^orld with no practical training with which to face that world. Let us 

 guard the future against the mistakes of the past. Let us teach the 

 gospel of practical things, the gospel of business success, the gospel of 

 money making if you choose to call it such. But let us not forget to 

 combine with it the gospel of judicious money spending. Let us teach 

 business habits and business methods, teach them on our farms, teach 

 diem in our homes, teach them in our. clubs and in our granges, teach 

 them in our schools, yes, teach them in our colleges and even in our great 

 universities, and, my friends, the world will be the better, infinitel}' the 

 better, because of this teaching. 



