106 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



success on the farm. The tasks of the farm must be done 

 at the right time. The farmer cannot drop out for a day or 

 a week and come back and pick up the work where he left off. 

 There is no place for the weakling on the farm. 



Skill in the variety of tasks of the farm is essential if one is to 

 earn anything farming. The man without skill often earns 

 less than nothing for the reason that he is associated with land 

 and equipments which possess potential powers of production 

 which may not be realized upon if not properly handled. For 

 example, four horses and a gang plow cost about 50 cents an 

 hour and should plow about half an acre per hour. If an un- 

 skilled plowman fails to plow more than one -third of an acre 

 in an hour, the loss in the utilization of horse labor is enough to 

 hire a skilled plowman. In feeding a calf, the unskilled feeder 

 endangers the life of the calf twice a day and often occasions 

 losses much greater than the amounts required to hire a skilled 

 calf feeder. 



No premium is usually paid for ordinary skill in farming over 

 what the unskilled worker gets in other lines, for the reason 

 that farmers of ordinary skill are abundant, and there is no 

 alternative use for such skill. More people are trained in 

 agriculture than are needed for the farms. What is not scarce 

 has no value, and yet the young man without farm rearing who 

 undertakes farming has before him the problem of acquiring 

 skill at a time in life when it is expensive to acquire. No 

 time is lost when a small boy picks up one by one the " tricks 

 of the trade " and the skill of hand needed on the farm, but if a 

 grown person has this skill to acquire he should not hope to se- 

 cure very high wages while he is acquiring it. In fact, the farmer 

 can scarcely afford to take a man without farm experience 

 without charging him for the privilege of acquiring skill. It 

 usually happens, however, that there are unskilled tasks about 

 the farm at which the workman can earn something, although 

 at the more important tasks he may be earning nothing or even 

 losing money for the farmer. 



The workman should be capable of making suggestions which 

 may improve the quality of the work he is doing. Ingenuity 



