PITFALLS OF ACCOUNTANCY 23 



the original intention to produce only for home 

 use, we sell a good deal. We were forced into it. 

 As has been said it is almost impossible to regu- 

 late production exactly to fit your needs. The 

 measures that must be taken to insure sufficiencies 

 frequently produce surpluses which must either 

 be given away or be sold if they are not to go to 

 waste. Sometimes it is harder to give a thing away 

 than to sell it: the number of anyone's friends 

 who could accept a fresh cow or a prime pig as a 

 gift is limited; while to one accustomed to the in- 

 tricacies of modern, high-pressure selling, the ease 

 with which first-class farm produce can be sold is 

 almost terrifying. In either case the devotee of 

 the produce-for-use thesis enjoys an inestimable 

 benefit denied the producer for sale: he does not 

 need to worry about the production cost of the 

 goods he sells. Whatever the money crop may be 

 it is all velvet. My potato crop of 1936 is a good 

 example. 



Precisely the same quantity of the same kind 

 of seed potatoes, planted and cultivated exactly the 

 same way as any year for the last ten, produced an 

 unexpected bumper crop. Instead of the normal 

 twelve or fifteen bushels enough to last through 

 the winter into May or June we found ourselves 

 possessed of about thirty-five; which meant that 

 after setting aside our own supply we had twenty 



