No. 4.] MAKKET GxUiDENING. 51 



speaker, but I want to express 1113^ very high appreciation 

 of the paper as a whole. I do believe that in this pres- 

 entation of the market-gardening business as conducted by 

 Mr. Howard, in his advocacy of keeping accounts, he has 

 put agriculture upon the same basis on which all other kinds 

 of business have to be conducted. I believe that is the 

 chief value, the great value, of the paper this morning, — 

 that he has put forth here a basis upon which agriculture 

 should be conducted, knowing the profits and losses in the 

 business. 



Following the last speaker carries me back to my own 

 experience in trying to keep accounts with a dairy. I re- 

 member the first day that I hung the scales in my stable and 

 prepared sheets for each man to record on a morning the 

 amount of milk he had taken from the cows which he had 

 milked. There was a protest at first upon the jiart of the 

 men, and I had to inform them that they Av^ere paid for mak- 

 ing those records just the same as for milking the cows, and 

 that it should be exacted of them. They thought that it 

 would make them extra trouble. I said, "I am paying you 

 for all the trouble you are put to." The result was that in 

 a short time these same men became more interested in their 

 work than they ever had been before. They began to watch 

 every day to see why there was a decline of 1 pound or 2 

 pounds of milk in their daily record. Whenever I reached 

 the stable I always went to those records, and if I saw 2y2 

 pounds short, I wanted to know the reason why. These men 

 soon found that if they let the cattle out in cold weather, 

 exposed to a low temperature, down went their record on 

 the sheets in the stable ; and if a cow failed to give her usual 

 accounting, they ascertained the cause in some other way. 

 In this wa}" the very men who first objected became the most 

 interested in vying with each other to show the biggest record 

 at the end of the month. So it not only has a good effect 

 upon the farmer himself, but has just the same on the men 

 he employs ; and that helps to raise the standard of agricul- 

 ture and makes it a dignified business, puts it on the same 

 basis as other kinds of business, and that is what we have 

 wanted for a good many years. Agricidture has been con- 



