336 FARM ACCOUNTING 



tural College, when he states in Circular 43 of the College 

 Experiment Station that: 



"A careful study should be made of each account and 

 of the business as a whole in order to learn how to improve 

 it. Farm accounts, as stated before, are of little value un- 

 less they teach how to organize the business so that greater 

 profit will result. The outcome of a year's record-keeping 

 often furnishes many surprises. Frequently some enter- 

 prise that was looked upon as a mainstay of the business 

 returns a loss, while some more common enterprise to which 

 less attention was given is the source of the real profit. 

 Caution, of course, must be exercised in interpreting re- 

 sults. It must be borne in mind that the figures are for 

 one year only, and that weather, crop, and market condi- 

 tions may not all have been normal. The normal cost and 

 the normal value of the product must be kept foremost in 

 mind, and if the average market price for a number of 

 years is not above the normal cost of production the en- 

 terprise should be discontinued. 



"Besides the satisfaction in knowing the cost and profit 

 from each enterprise, the records are valuable in oilier 

 ways. They may be used to study the seasonable distri- 

 bution of labor as a whole and on separate enterprises. 



"By keeping such records one is sure to gain a better 

 idea of the value of labor. He sees that it is just as im- 

 portant to save an hour's work by man and team on an 

 acre of oats as it is to get a yield of an extra bushel per 

 acre, and that it is more wasteful to have a team idle than 

 to have a man idle for the same length of time." 



Labor Incomes of Landlord Operators. A Farm-Ma n- 

 apement Survey of three representative areas in Indiana, 

 Illinois and Iowa 1 has brought out some very interesting 

 facts concerning the labor income of landlords and tenants. 

 The survey includes data from about 700 farms, some be- 



1 Bulletin 41 of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



