CHAPTER IV 



MANAGEMENT AS A FACTOR IN AGRICULTURAL 

 PRODUCTION l 



The manager as the economizer. After all is said that can be 

 said regarding the economizing of land, labor, and capital in 

 agriculture, the actual working out of these problems in the 

 concrete is the task of the farm manager. Wise legislation, 

 efficient administration of the laws already enacted, and new 

 scientific discoveries may create favorable conditions or oppor- 

 tunities for agriculture, but upon the farm manager rests the 

 responsibility of making agriculture respond to these favorable 

 conditions, or of making use of the opportunities thus created. 

 However ingenious a new agricultural invention may be, unless 

 the farm managers have the wisdom, the foresight, and the 

 power of initiative to readjust their methods and reorganize 

 their farms, it will not be used, and the inventor will gain neither 

 fame nor profit from his work. However wise and efficient the 

 government may be in its agricultural policy, if the farm mana- 

 gers are unprogressive, if they are under the power and domi- 

 nation of a superstitious form of religion or of unscrupulous 

 demagogues, the work of the legislator will be in vain. His one 

 chance to benefit agriculture under such circumstances is to be- 

 gin at the bottom and provide such an educational system as 

 may eventually enlighten the people sufficiently to enable them 



1 By the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution the author is permitted to use 

 in this chapter some of the material included in a chapter on The Economic 

 Characteristics of the Agricultural Industry, which he wrote for the "History of 

 American Agriculture," which is being prepared under the direction of that in- 

 stitution. 



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