THE SIZE OF FARMS 1 65 



It has been said that certain kinds of farming lend themselves 

 more readily than others to large-scale operations; that wheat 

 farming, for example, is especially suited to large-scale opera- 

 tions, but that as this one crop system gives way to diversified 

 farming, the advantages of smaller farms assert themselves. 

 The owner of young stock takes more pains with them than he 

 would if he were a hired laborer. It is certainly true as a general 

 rule that the man who owns the lambs or pigs will lose more 

 sleep and go to more trouble than will a hired man. " He 

 that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep 

 are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth : 

 and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The 

 hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the 

 sheep." 



The management of a farm is something which must be dif- 

 fused through the details of the work. There is a withdrawal of 

 the efficient manager's ability from the details and a concentra- 

 tion of it upon the general supervision of the farm as the size 

 of the farm increases. As more and more of the details are 

 delegated to hired men these details are not looked after so 

 well as they might be if looked after directly by the master. 

 Cato, a Roman agricultural writer, says : " Neither the assi- 

 duity and experience of the hired manager, nor the power and 

 willingness of the master to lay out money in improvements, 

 are so effectual as this one thing, the presence of the master; 

 which, unless it is frequent with the operations, it will happen 

 to him as in an army when the general is absent ; all things will 

 be at a stand." And again, Pliny says: " The ancients were 

 in the habit of saying that it is the eye of the master that does 

 more towards fertilizing a field than anything else." 



The question of the most desirable size of farms, when viewed 

 from the standpoint of the most economic use of the productive 

 energies of a country, is a matter of determining the point at 

 which the advantages of the more efficient general supervision 

 as to crops, field-systems, intensity of culture, etc., are balanced 

 by losses in the execution of the details of the work with less 

 skill and personal interest. 



