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The boy should be given opportunity for testing, under his 

 home conditions, the value of methods which have proved effi- 

 cacious in business. The school, to be effective, must teach 

 economic production in every phase of farm life for which it 

 gives preparation. Moreover, accounting is necessary to any 

 intelligent comparison of the effectiveness of the method advo- 

 cated by the school with that of the method previously followed. 



B. Projects as Business Enterprises. If the experiences 

 of the boy in the farming projects are to be educative to the 

 largest degree, it is believed that they should be conducted 

 strictly as business enterprises. Four methods of meeting the 

 problem of the cost and profit of these directed farming opera- 

 tions would be possible: (a) the parent might meet all the cost, 

 and give the boy all the profit ; (6) the parent might meet all the 

 cost, and retain all the profit; (c) the parent might meet all the 

 cost, and share the profit with the boy; (d) the boy might re- 

 ceive the net profit, after the cost of the project had been paid. 



From the educational point of view, the last method, by which 

 the boy, after conducting the given project as a business enter- 

 prise, should profit only to the extent to which his total re- 

 ceipts exceed the total cost of the enterprise, is believed to be in 

 every way preferable. By this method the boy would learn, 

 once for all, through his own experience, that there can be no 

 product without cost, and no profit without excess of receipts 

 over all expenditures. After such an experience, he would not 

 be likely to undertake a new enterprise without a serious at- 

 tempt to estimate accurately his probable profit. The boy would 

 be subjected to the prevailing economic conditions under which 

 the home farm must yield a profit, or a loss, at the end of each 

 year of work. 



The method by which the boy became on a small scale a 

 farmer or a business man for himself would give the project 

 which he was carrying on a reality not otherwise attainable, 

 that must heighten measurably his interest in the work and in 

 the related study of the school, and must fix better than by any 

 other device the training which he was receiving. 



Incidentally, it may be remarked that, as a matter of public 

 spirit, the citizens of the community might do much to further 



