Farm Accounts. 137 



In proceeding to consider the Labour Journal, you will see at 

 once how perfectly easy a matter it would be at any time to ascertain 

 the exact labour expended upon any particular item of a farmer's 

 stock, or crop, without the labour of a regular weekly analysis. 

 The book that we keep for registering the daily work of each man 

 is divided into two parts — the first and largest portion being ruled 

 so as to admit the men's names and their work each day, the 

 total number of days, the rate per day, and the total amounts of 

 each man's work ; the remainder being kept for the memoranda 

 of contract work, the amounts for which are entered along with 

 the day labour as they are paid. 



A man or company of men enter upon a job, say mowing 

 wheat ; every week they draw a certain sum on account, which is 

 entered against the names in the first part of the book, and when 

 the work is measured and settled for, all the particulars whicli 

 could not conveniently be entered for want of space in the Weekly 

 Labour, are carried to this part of the book, and are referred to by 

 attaching the folio of the page to the name of the man or company 

 in the VVeekly Labour. 



This will appear more clearly from the examples Ave proceed 

 to give. Each field, instead of having some long unintelligible 

 name, which it would take some time for students to learn, has a 

 certain number corresponding Avith similar numbers on a printed 

 pocket map. Size of Labour Book, 17 in. deep by lOi in. wide, 

 when shut. (See pages loS and 139.) 



I have not considered it necessary to fill up the whole of the 

 week, sufficient being done to show the nature of this important 

 book, which should be carefully filled up daily, otherwise the 

 memory will not retain the way in which the labour has been 

 employed. 



I Avould refer you for a moment to the form of Labour Journal 

 proposed by Morton in his article " Farm Accounts," in the 

 ' Cyclopaedia of Agriculture,^ and compare the relative advantages 

 of the two systems. The plan which he proposes is a very inge- 

 nious one, but open, I conceive, to serious objections. He adheres 

 to the plan of analyzing the labour and charging the various crops, 

 &c., with the results. In order to save labour, he substitutes 

 numbers for the various Ledger accounts, and thus against each 

 man's name, and under the different days of the week, we find 

 not an account of what work was done, but a number which 

 refers to the Ledger account which is indebted or Dr. for the 

 day's work. This will be more easily understood by an example 

 of a portion of a week. (See p. 140.) 



If we do keep double- entry accounts, and intend to charge each 

 item of stock and crop with the amount of labour, there is no 

 system which has yet been made public that will bear comparison 



with 



