THE COMMUNITY IDEA 151 



of successful competition with other industries* and 

 therefore it will have to be treated more and more as 

 a community affair. There is no other way out. 



Accounts. It may appear rather chimerical to some, 

 but we may find the community idea extremely success- 

 ful in a field that at first seems to be purely a question 

 for the individual farmer, namely, that of keeping 

 accounts. Theoretically, every intelligent farmer be- 

 lieves in the value of a good system of bookkeeping and 

 accounting, but nine out of ten of these same intelligent 

 farmers find it an extremely difficult thing to do. The 

 time, the labor, the annoyance involved in any thorough 

 system are almost prohibitive. Why not put accounts 

 on a community basis? The community accountant 

 might be an employee of a local bank or the business 

 agent of the local cooperative system, or a farmer's 

 daughter who has the training and the time. Rules 

 safeguarding the privacy of accounts could easily be 

 made. The farmer would turn in his slips of record 

 and results would be tabulated and returned to him. 

 When divided among a community of reasonably pros- 

 perous farmers, this would not be at all an expensive 

 affair. What is referred to here is not so much the 

 routine business connected with buying and selling and 

 paying bills the private accounts as it is that form 

 of accounting which determines the profits or losses of 

 the farm business as a whole or of any part of it. True 

 accounting, as applied to farming, means a method by 

 which the farmer can account for or understand what 

 is actually happening to him as a business man. The 

 principle is good everywhere and for all kinds of farm 

 business. 



