THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 



shows himself to be capable of it. Persons 

 who employ a manager must be prepared 

 to give up the month-hand idea when they 

 engage him. 



There is still another phase of the sub- 

 ject to be mentioned: it takes time to bring 

 a run-down farm into profitable produc- 

 tiveness, and it is very frequently the run- 

 down farm that the employer desires to 

 put in the hands of a manager. No man is 

 able to overcome seasons, or to change 

 the underlying processes of nature. The 

 problems must be worked out gradually. 

 Farming is not the making of good crops in 

 some one year: it is securing the average 

 performance of a piece of land through a 

 series of years. A run-down soil cannot be 

 renovated and revived in the way that we 

 repair a house. I am convinced that the 

 time element is not enough considered by 

 many persons who employ managers, and, 

 as a result, the manager may be discharged 

 before a rational course of action can come 

 to natural maturity. 



216 



