240 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



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3d. It gives him a positive knowledge of his own business, 

 and assists to make all parties with whom he is doing business 

 correct and honest in their dealings. 



4th. It enables him to decide upon those branches of farming 

 which pay the best, so that he may direct his energies accordingly. 



5th. It gives him a judgment which amounts to positive 

 knowledge, whereby his opinions take preference to those who 

 guess at conclusions. There is an old adage, that " figures 

 won't lie." 



6th. By examining his accounts, he is enabled to see when he 

 has spent money that he need not, and where he could have 

 saved money which he did not. 



One reason why farmers are so little inclined to keep accounts, 

 is because they have never been educated to it. Book-keeping 

 should be a branch taught in all our district schools. Its study 

 would be vastly more useful than the study of algebra and 

 higher mathematics. When a scholar has mastered the common 

 school arithmetic, book-keeping should come next. To be able 

 to add, subtract, multiply and divide rapidly and correctly, and 

 a knowledge of keeping accounts, together with a thorough 

 knowledge of fractions, is of vastly more importance to the 

 practical man than to be able to solve the puzzling examples of 

 a national arithmetic, or perform examples in algebra. 



We have our business colleges, (and, by the way, I think 

 the- word college, in their connection, is humiliating to the 

 word,) where young men are fitted in book-keeping ; but only a 

 few of those who should practise book-keeping attend those 

 (colleges,) and the rush to those institutions helps to show that 

 our district schools might, with propriety, include book-keeping 

 in their prescribed list of studies. We are all reluctant to take 

 upon us labor with which we are not familiar, and to this may 

 be attributed the reason why farmers neglect to keep accounts. 

 • It is not expected, in urging the advantages of keeping farm 

 accounts, that one should do more than to present a general 

 system, which will lead the farmer to a^ correct knowledge of 

 results. We had thought of writing out a short process of 

 keeping the details of a farm account, but think it may be 

 enough to indicate the several heads under which they should be 

 made. 



