176 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



to be governed by inherited unprogressive routine, which keeps their 

 farming in an antiquated and certainly not over-profitable con- 

 dition. However, in these modern days the routine of our grand- 

 fathers will no longer suffice. Old landmarks have been swept 

 away ; old machinery has worn out. As money has become the 

 ruling force, so business methods have become its indispensable 

 weapon. The touchstone of business results is now applied to every 

 enterprise. It has taken some time for the new rule to assert itself 

 in agriculture, even so far as it is now at all practised. But its day 

 has come, or, at any rate, has dawned. 



The useful lesson, however, at any rate has not been lost upon 

 those who do the thinking for the tillers of the soil. A veritable 

 passion for calculation and " costings " has taken possession of 

 our statesmen, who now insist upon analysing the cost of production 

 of everything down to the minutest detail. That, as a matter of 

 course, includes book-keeping, thus far the very bogie of our husband- 

 men, a practice hard for men bred to handle the plough rather 

 than the pen to observe, but which we are now endeavouring to 

 make general in husbandry on the most approved commercial lines, 

 with double entry and all that. 



Now it deserves to be pointed out that there is " costings " and 

 " costings " ; and there is also " book-keeping " and " book- 

 keeping." " Costings " is to us a new thing, the passion for which 

 has probably been inspired by what we have heard of as going on 

 in the more forward countries of America, where it ranks, since some 

 years, as a recognised institution. However, the particular " Ameri- 

 can " kind of " costings," done for the most part under the authority 

 of the Bureau of Farm Management in the United States Department 

 of Agriculture, is a different thing entirely from that of which our 

 own statesmen have become enamoured, and which has suggested 

 our " Costings Committee " and the latest Royal Commission on 

 agriculture. The American " costings " stands in close relation to 

 the localised and nationalised method of education, of which I have 

 already spoken, by means of personal contact and mouth-to-mouth 

 tuition. There can be no denying that it would be in the highest 

 degree useful in this country, supposing that we were to brace 

 ourselves to sufficient effort to supply it. For in one respect the 

 farmer for whose teaching it is designed very nearly resembles our 

 own typical farmer, who badly needs instruction in the calculation 

 of profits derivable from his several crops — and, indeed, in a great 

 deal else besides. He is a small or, at least, a medium farmer, for 

 the average size of farms in the United States is under 150 acres, 



