104 FARMERS' UNION AND FEDERATION 



"10. When you have ascertained what the sum of all the foregoing 

 items amount to, prove it by your books, and you will have your total 

 expenses for the year ; divide this by your total sales and the result 

 will show you the per cent it has cost you to do business. 



"11. Take this per cent and deduct it from the price of any article 

 you have sold, then subtract from the remainder and what it cost you 

 (invoice price and freight) and the result will show your net profit or 

 loss on the article. 



"Definite records will be necessary for some time to come. The 

 only way to have these records is to do your figuring as you go along. 

 The local assessor reports direct to the government ; the income tax 

 reports should agree as near as possible. It behooves every merchant 

 no matter how small, to be prepared to make a report to himself or the 

 government at any time." 



These would be good rules for the wheat growers' union 

 to adopt in figuring out the overhead expenses of raising 

 wheat when fixing its minimum price. 



Warning to Soldiers to Pass Up Farming. 



Unionized labor will do all in its power to steer return- 

 ing soldiers to homesteads on worthless government lands 

 where they will while away their time in poverty to keep 

 them from competing for the big wages in cities, and where 

 it is hoped they will produce great quantities of food for the 

 cities at the low prices of pre-war times. Government of- 

 ficials, also desiring cheap food, will readily unite with labor 

 to settle- the soldiers on land. In President Wilson's mes- 

 sage to Congress before leaving for Europe he says on this 

 subject : 



"I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans 

 which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report 

 and before your committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp and 

 cut-over lands which might, if the States were willing and able to co- 

 operate, redeem some 300,000,000 acres of land for cultivation. There 

 are said to be 15,000,000 or 20,000,000 acres of land in the West, at 

 present arid, for whose reclamation water is available if properly con- 

 served. There are about 230,000,000 acres from which the forests have 

 been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow, and which 



