MANAGEMENT 225 



to throw off these hindrances to progress. Even then these 

 same unprogressive agencies may pervert the educational sys- 

 tem or prevent the people from profiting by it. 



The farm manager is preeminently the economizer. Upon 

 him more than upon any one else falls the burden of seeing that 

 the productive resources of the community are productively em- 

 ployed, and not wasted in useless or futile experiments. Though 

 he may be, and usually is in the United States, not only mana- 

 ger but landowner, laborer, and capitalist combined, his work as 

 manager is easily distinguishable from these other functions. 

 Whether he be merely a manager, renting land of another, bor- 

 row ing his capital from another, and hiring his labor ; or whether 

 he is manager, landowner, capitalist, and laborer, or any or all 

 these combined, he must perform three important functions : 

 first, that of deciding certain fundamental questions of invest- 

 ment ; second, that of pushing the work along and seeing that it 

 is properly performed ; and third, that of buying and selling, 

 thai: is, buying the necessary equipment seed, fertilizers, live 

 stock, etc. and selling the produce of the farm. It is seldom 

 that these three functions are separated or divided up among 

 different men in the same agricultural enterprise, though it is 

 sometimes done. That is, one man may perform the first func- 

 tion, that of deciding the fundamental question of the kinds of 

 crops to grow, on how large a scale to grow them, what kind of 

 equipment to use, etc. Another man, a foreman, may have the 

 task of pushing the work along, superintending the men, and 

 seeing that they do the work promptly and in a satisfactory man- 

 ner. Finally, a third man may act as a buying and selling agent. 

 But this subdivision of the functions of the manager is possible 

 only where the agricultural operations are carried out on a scale 

 which is very seldom reached in this country. We shall assume, 

 therefore, that they are all to be performed by the same man, 

 though, for purposes of discussion, they may be treated separately. 



