MANAGEMENT 271 



greatest emphasis, and that is, that good accounting is the key 

 to all successful administration, whether in farm, store, factory, 

 or transportation company. This is a fact which farmers have 

 been slower than other business men to accept. Good account- 

 ing means, of course, much more than mere keeping of cash 

 accounts, or a record of receipts and expenditures. It means 

 such a record as will enable the farmer to tell exactly at the end 

 of the year how much every part of the farm enterprise has cost 

 him and how much it has brought in. By this means only will 

 he be able to determine just where the losses have occurred and 

 just where the profits have been made. Until he knows this 

 he is in constant danger of one of the commonest mistakes, 

 that of losing as much on one product as he makes on another. 

 Scientific management. Every farmer in the corn belt is fa- 

 miliar with the different ways of reducing such a simple opera- 

 tion as the husking of corn to a system. Each expert corn 

 husker has his own favorite system by which the number of mo- 

 tions involved in the husking of an ear of corn and throwing it 

 into the wagon is reduced to an absolute minimum. In the old 

 days when the binding of grain was done by hand, every expert 

 binder had his favorite system by which the motions involved 

 in the binding of a sheaf of grain were also reduced to the mini- 

 mum. Such examples as these furnish a basis, or a beginning, 

 for the scientific study of farm management on a broader scale. 

 Th( same problem is involved in the harnessing, hitching, un- 

 harnessing, and unhitching of teams, in the handling of hay 

 and grain, in the arrangement of farm buildings, in changing 

 from one kind of work to another. The problem of the man- 

 ager must always be that of reducing the number of motions to 

 a minimum and of saving every second of time possible in the 

 performance of any of these operations. There is a vast field of 

 study here and endless opportunities for the exercise of the inge- 

 nuity, originality, and scientific precision of the farm manager. 



