BUSINESS METHODS 187 



answer well.* But profit-sharing absolutely calls for accounts — 

 full' accounts — and accounts so kept that labourers may have con- 

 fidence in them. On all grounds, accordingly, we shall do well to 

 encourage account keeping. 



Now the question is : What system of account keeping should 

 the farmer's be ? His business differs, as observed, from all other 

 kinds of business, for which the ordinary " Italian " double entry 

 account keeping has shown itself to be the best. There is so great 

 a difference in the business conduct of different farms that, as the 

 United States Department of Agriculture has put it, different forms 

 of book-keeping may be required for different farms. There is too 

 much variety for one sole form to prove everywhere acceptable. 

 And there is too much that wants to be accounted for in " kind." 

 When we come to the current balance-sheet, there is also too much 

 " carrying over " of doubtful value from one year to the other — 

 unexhausted manure, unexpended fertility in the soil and the like. 



Farmers, as a rule, are poor quill-drivers, and hate the regular 

 use of the pen and the thraldom of " columns." They are, on the 

 other hand, just as commonly capital rememberers of even minute 

 events, and to many of them their shrewd and retentive headpiece 

 is for a short time as good as an account book. Where they fall 

 short is in putting their facts, so remembered, together in a well- 

 ordered, actuarial statement. 



Let us, then, ask ourselves : What are the chief points to be 

 arrived at in agricultural actuarial calculations ? 



There are three entirely distinct purposes for which accounts 

 will have to be kept. 



In the first place — since we have begun by referring to the sub- 

 ject — there is that important, but rather scientific, innovation of 

 " costings accounts," which will have to stand entirely by itself 

 as a matter, not of direct interest to the individual farmer, but of 

 scientific inquiry, to enlighten farmers generally on the value of 

 their methods of farming, and so serve them as a guide in the choice 

 or correction of their system of husbandry. This is a matter which, 

 at any rate in the initial stages, the ordinary farmer will not be able 

 to carry out without expert assistance and tuition. Expert officers, 

 such as the United States dispose of in their army of "county 

 agents," "farm demonstrators" and " fieldmen," will necessarily 

 be required to direct that inquiry into the proper groove. But it 

 ought certainly not on that account to be neglected, since the 

 profitableness of future farming in a manner depends upon it — 



* See p. 278. 



