Knowing What You Are About. 283 



had almost forgotten him, when he happened to come across him 

 again. Tom grasped his hand most heartily and says: "Nick 

 Ohmer, that little remark you made to me when we met last, that 

 I ought to know what I was doing, has been worth thousands 

 of dollars to me. It set me to thinking, and from that day to this 

 I have known and have been very successful, and I believe 

 largely because I followed your advice. ' ' 



These are both true stories, and they show the usual results 

 of knowing and not knowing what one is doing in mercantile pur- 

 suits. Is there any lesson for us farmers in this? Yes. Farm- 

 ing is not an exceptional branch of business which one can follow 

 most successfully in the dark, or without knowing what he is 

 doing. The farmer needs to use his pencil as well as the mer- 

 chant. He should know whether his farming pays or not from the 

 figures, and whether each crop pays on the average. One may 

 pay well and another lose him money. How is he to know about 

 this so he can act accordingly, except from accounts kept? He 

 cannot. He may give a fair guess, but we have had too much of 

 this guess-work farming. One winter at quite a number of insti- 

 tutes the writer asked all farmers who could tell, if at home, from 

 accounts kept, what their gross and net income was, to hold up 

 their hands. How many do you think went up? In one case 

 three, never any more, and sometimes only one. In one meeting, 

 the largest in the State, where there were, probably, 1,000 persons 

 in the hall, only one hand went up. I afterwards found that this 

 man had fifty acres of land, largely in fruit, and after taking out 

 his total expenses that year for help, taxes and everything ($i ,500) 

 and deducting six per cent, on his investment, he had fully $2,000 

 left to pay for his time. A salary of $2,000 a year on a fifty-acre 

 farm ! I have no doubt his figuring had helped him. I know it 

 had from what he told me, and I could repeat but for lack of 

 space. 



At the institute in my own county I found a dairy farmer 

 who knew just what he had done, and could give the figures to a 

 cent. For example, he sold milk from sixteen cows to the 

 amount of 106,717 pounds, or 6,669 pounds per cow on the aver- 

 age. This was $73.61 per cow. He paid $285.44 f r m iU feed, 

 keeps no regular help, milks all cows himself, knows just what 

 he is about, has a little farm and his name is A. D. Mills. By 

 the way, he has done better since. He got $107.26 more money 

 the next year. You may not know the above figures are more 

 than double the average. How much did figuring have to do 

 with it ? 



Some crops and some practices pay a farmer, and some do 

 not ; pray tell me how he is to work into the ways that pay best, 

 unless he knows from accounts kept just what he is doing? It 

 is simply impossible. It is impossible to do real business farm- 

 ing. I went home with my friend, Geo. K. Scott, of Mt. Pleas- 



