BUSINESS METHODS 183 



carried on in these people's heads. However, generally speaking 

 no doubt the charge is just. The man who works with his hand and 

 his head on practical problems, quite content to own that he is not 

 a " scollard," does not, as a rule, take kindly to " figures " mar- 

 shalled in columns, and having no direct bearing on some particular 

 practical problem. 



" No one," so says a bulletin published by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, " knows better than the practical 

 farmer that there is nothing of the cure-all in the keeping of accounts 

 on the farm. The practice will not of itself turn a poor farm into a 

 good one, nor losses into profits. Farm records, if accurately kept 

 and intelligently utilised, are an aid to a better understanding and 

 insight into one's business affairs, and are worth while in exact pro- 

 portion to the accuracy and completeness of their recording and the 

 pertinence of the use that is made of them. These are facts well 

 known to thousands of farmers who keep accurate accounts and 

 make good use of them." 



" There is not a business man in the country who would not 

 acknowledge, even insist, that a sound method of book-keeping is 

 a primary essential," so says Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, " of commercial 

 business. Scientific accountancy is at last coming to its own. Cost- 

 ings are a vital element in modern business procedure, and the 

 public departments can no more afford to neglect the precautions 

 which this method of accountancy provides than can any commer- 

 cial firm." 



But at this point the question arises : Of what sort ought the 

 farmer's and small holder's book-keeping to be ? We appear to have 

 " costings " and balance-sheets rather on the brain just at present. 

 We would " industrialise " farming — shape it on commercial lines 

 — just at a point at which it cannot well be assimilated to industrial 

 business, because conditions in it are so very different from indus- 

 trial, and which point, after all, means only its outward garb, while we 

 appear unwilling to " industrialise " it where it will well bear the 

 process, that is, in making, in essence, a " business proposition " of 

 it, rather than a tradition and prejudice-bound routine. We are 

 for the moment keen upon book-keeping and those famous balance- 

 sheets — which regard for the income-tax arrangements seems to 

 have helped to make utterly misleading, because they show 

 imaginary gains and illusory losses, as has been already pointed out. 

 There is to be double entry book-keeping, of course, which a large 

 number of our farmers of the smaller sort are quite unlikely to 

 understand, and which in their case plainly is not necessary, how- 



