PREFACE xiii 



performing various accounting operations. The logical 

 reason is brought out for each step taken. However, 

 definitions or important statements of fact are presented 

 occasionally as a means of summarizing logical conclusions. 

 Such definitions or important statements of conclusion are 

 shown in italics. 



It is quite common for a farmer to say that he has no 

 time for keeping accounts. As economic conditions are 

 causing more intensive farming, higher land values and 

 higher rents, it will not be possible much longer to farm 

 in the extensive fashion that has characterized United 

 States farming in the past. It will become necessary to 

 plant those crops, or raise those animals, or use such fer- 

 tilizer or rotation of crops as prove most valuable under 

 the conditions. A knowledge of what pays best can be 

 most accurately determined by keeping proper accounts. 



When economic conditions have so changed as to make 

 it necessary to keep accounts on the farm, the farmer who 

 says he doesn't have time to keep them will be about as 

 well off as if he told the elevator owner to destroy the grain 

 check, as he didn't have time to call for it. In either case 

 he is undoubtedly not getting all that he should from the 

 operation of the farm. The difference is that in one case 

 he knows just how much he is losing (the amount of the 

 grain check) ; in the other case he does not know how 

 much he is losing. 



The changing economic conditions are very well illus- 

 trated in a quotation from Dean Eugene Davenport 1 of 



Annals of American Academy, Vol. XL, pp. 45-50. 



