182 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



guished farmer explained before the Royal Commission that he 

 never allows anything for the manure produced on the farm — though 

 he is otherwise a most meticulous book-keeper. He stated that he 

 just carried that item over unvalued from year to year, as a floating 

 asset. Now — be it remarked by the way — if people would deal 

 with their live and dead stock, the much spoken of " valuation," in 

 this way, rather than assess it at the rapidly rising and falling prices 

 of the market, as they are made to do for purposes of income- 

 tax, their balance sheets would keep much nearer actual fact. 

 As it is, in a rising market the valuation swells the profits to 

 an utterly false " paper " height, just as it is bound to show a 

 purely " paper " loss when prices go down again. In his little book, 

 " The Determination of Farming Costs,"* opportunely published in 

 1917, Mr. C. S. Orwin has pointed out that the current value of 

 horses has gone up by 50 and 100 per cent, in a single year. Farm- 

 yard manure, on the other hand, given to one crop in the four course 

 shift — or to two, if the shift be extended — represents a real money 

 value, the debiting of which should evidently be distributed over 

 all the crops which benefit by it. In truth it is not easy even to 

 value the manure as an item by itself. For there is manure and 

 manure, differing in value according to the food given to the beast, 

 and the amount of care with which it is kept. However, our distin- 

 guished witness's argument is perfectly sound in its general bearing, 

 as signifying that farming must be actuarially treated as a whole, in 

 which the different parts simply supplement and minister to one 

 another. Rotations are designedly so chosen as to produce this 

 effect. Carrying specialisation beyond its just limit in your 

 reckoning on paper, you may easily arrive at every crop showing a 

 gain, while your cashbox proclaims a loss, or vice versa. 



All this calculation of " costings," however, may claim this 

 merit, that it has imparted a perceptible impetus to the public 

 demand for better book-keeping among farmers and small holders. 

 Book-keeping, as we know, is the soul of business, and we are 

 avowedly anxious to make farming more of a " business." 



However, farmers, as we also know, as a class, have a name for 

 being about the worst, that is to say the least willing and the least 

 methodical, not to suggest the least expert, of book-keepers existing. 

 There are, no doubt, excellent account keepers among them. And 

 when we come down to the humblest grade of small cultivators, I 

 think one may say that, in contrast with empty or unmethodically 

 kept account books and ledgers, there is very accurate book-keeping 

 * C. S. Orwin, " The Determination of Farming Costs." 1917. 



