234 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



tenancy as a general economic system, provided the soil can 

 be safeguarded so as to keep the cash tenant from mining or 

 exhausting it during the term of his lease. 



Salaried managers. The question as to whether the farm 

 manager should work for a salary or not is merely a personal 

 matter. In general, the reasons are overwhelmingly against it. 

 But there are exceptional men who are really capable farmers, 

 so far as their ability to grow crops is concerned, but who have 

 so little commercial ability as to unfit them for what are called 

 " business dealings." They fall an easy prey to agents of all 

 kinds ; they cannot resist the temptation to buy things which 

 they do not need ; they can scarcely buy the necessary things 

 without getting cheated ; and consequently they are business 

 failures in spite of their skill in the real work of farming. Such 

 a man may do well to accept a salaried position under some 

 landowner, who will himself look after the commercial side of 

 farming. The author has known a number of cases of this kind. 

 But a salaried position is far from satisfactory in the long run 

 for any one who does not need the kind of protection which 

 it furnishes. It leads to nothing, and is likely to leave a person 

 stranded in his old age. 



What to produce. The question what to produce is sometimes 

 decided for the farmer by the location of his farm. To be sure, 

 he has to decide first upon the location, and, from his individual 

 point of view, that might be regarded as the most fundamental 

 question of all. But from the point of view of the country as 

 a whole, the land is approximately a fixed quantity and every 

 available piece of it is supposed to be managed if not by one 

 manager then by another. While the manager of any given 

 farm may not have many choices open to him as to what kind 

 of crops to grow, he usually has some alternative. The ques- 

 tion which will determine many other problems of management 

 is whether to grow staple products or an agricultural specialty. 



