322 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



VALUE OF A REGULAR SYSTEM OF FARM ACCOUNTS. 



The subject assigned your Committee, viz., " On the value of 

 a Regular System of Farm Accounts," is one which, perhaps, 

 has not received the attention which its importance demands ; 

 but before expressing any ideas directly upon the subject, let us 

 glance for a moment at the position the farmer occupies in the 

 community. 



It is undoubtedly true that no department of business is more 

 independent and honorable than that of agriculture. The farmer 

 occupies a little world of his own, out of wliich he is not neces- 

 sitated to go, either for the necessaries of life, or for a practical 

 knowledge of the various departments of business which make a 

 busy, thriving world. He may find on his farm manufacturers 

 more wonderful in the textures which they weave, and more 

 delicate and beautiful in the machinery which they employ, 

 and more various in their products then can be found in all the 

 artificial life of the world outside of it. The farmer is a manu- 

 facturer on the grand and yet simple plan of nature. The pro- 

 ducts of his mills, too, are reliable. He can warrant the article 

 which he throws upon the market to be what it purports to be ; 

 no shoddy constitutes a portion of his merchandise ; hence, he 

 needs blush before no man who chooses to examine the texture 

 of his goods. He knows that his looms and all his machinery 

 are perfect. The Superintendent or Overseer is infinite in 

 wisdom and power, and the materials from which his products 

 are made such as to enable him to say, this is an unmixed prod- 

 uct. The farmer is also tlie merchant to dispose of the prod- 

 ucts of his manufactures, both wholesale and retail. A part he 

 turns out upon the market to be carried far and wide, to be 

 again retailed by the vegetable merchant to the consumer ; a 

 part he retails to himself to be consumed in his own family, or 

 in his own yards, among his fowls, his cattle or his swine. The 

 farmer is his own carrier ; while the merchant employs the com- 

 merce of the sea or the land to transport his merchandise to and 

 from his warehouses, the farmer has his transportation all in 

 his own hands or under his immediate control. The farmer, 

 too, is his own day laborer, while he is an extensive manufac- 

 turer, employing an infinity of machinery, and a stirring, busy 

 merchant, driving a brisk and complex trade, and an earnest 



