362 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



the milk pails, care for the chickens, go to town on errands. They 

 very frequently take the place of a man at these light operations, and 

 also very frequently help with farm work. In Delaware County, on 

 210 of the rather large dairy farms, 20 per cent of the milking and 

 caring for cows was done by women and children. On the smaller 

 farms, the proportion of such labor is much more. All this labor is 

 directly interested. When men are hired to run large farms, it is 

 exceedingly difficult to produce farm products at the same cost at 

 which they are produced by the family-farm system. 



More conclusive than the reasons for failure are the results. 

 Literally hundreds of successful business men scattered from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific have tried running large farms with hired 

 managers. Most of these men have demonstrated their ability to 

 make money in cities. The writer has seen many such farms in a 

 number of states, but has not yet seen a case in which a man who made 

 a fortune in a city has ever added to his accumulations by running a 

 large farm with a hired manager. There are many cases in which 

 the live stock has taken premiums innumerable and the crop yields 

 have been all that could be desired, but the profits have always been 

 book profits. No farm is a success that does not pay all expenses, a 

 reasonable rate of interest, and good wages to the operator, and have 

 enough money to provide for depreciation. Many college graduates 

 have undertaken the management of such farms. Formerly the 

 writer recommended some of them for such places, but so far the writer 

 has never seen an instance when such a farm paid. Yet these same 

 college graduates have by the hundreds demonstrated their ability to 

 make their own farms pay. Part of the difficulty is the erroneous 

 attempt to apply the factory system to farming operations. 



117. THE DEMAND FOR INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION IN 

 AGRICULTURE 1 



BY ROY HINMAN HOLMES 



The very evident desire of so many country people, both young 

 and middle-aged, to get away from the farms, coupled with the impos- 

 sibility of an influx from without to fill the places of those who leave, 

 indicates clearly that the system of farming, as we know it, cannot 

 indefinitely continue. At the present time so many of the farmer 

 families have left the land that in many localities those who remain 



1 Adapted from "The Passing of the Farmer," Atlantic Monthly, CX, 517-23. 



