100 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



kind, everything is down in black and white; and the corporation 

 owes its managers salaries just as definitely and has to pay these 

 salaries just as certainly as it has to pay for its raw materials, its 

 fuel, or its machinery. When it fails to pay all expenses, including 

 the salaries of all its office force, it is a bankrupt corporation and 

 must be liquidated. Too frequently the farmer does not hold his 

 farm to the same strict accountability as the business corporation is 

 held. The farm has to pay for its fertilizers and all its other ma- 

 terials with deadly certainty, but, in present practise, it is not required 

 to pay the farmer, the farm boy, or the farm wife definite salaries at 

 all. Too many of them go on working without any salary, or with 

 only half salary, and keep the farm going when it ought to be bank- 

 rupt and its affairs wound up. If such a campaign of education 

 could be carried through as would persuade every farmer to run his 

 own farm so as to pay a fair salary for himself and for all his family 

 who actually work, a good many of our less well managed farms 

 would be bankrupt and liquidated already. This would be largely, 

 of course, a matter of accounting. If the accounts were so kept as to 

 show exactly how much the farmer was getting for his work and 

 that of his family, and he were convinced that he could get more by 

 working for somebody else than by working for himself, and if he 

 were to wind up his business as promptly as the corporation managers 

 close the corporation that fails to pay salaries along with other charges, 

 it would be an excellent thing for the farming industry over the 

 entire country. These farmers would make more if they would give 

 up farming and work for wages; and the other farmers would be 

 relieved of the competition of a good many farms that are not now 

 paying operative costs. I suggest, therefore, as a goal to be striven 

 for, "Fair wages for every farm worker plus five per cent on the 

 investment." That is a goal that is attainable, and when it is attained 

 it will mark a very definite improvement in the economic conditions 

 of the farming population. 



