No. 4.] FACTORS IN SUCCESSFUL FARMING. 57 



Most Important Factors affecting Profits. 



The four most important factors affecting profits have 

 been found to be size of business, crop yields, production per 

 cow or other animals, and diversity of the business. So 

 strikingly do these four factors stand out that if we know 

 them we can guess the labor income with approximate ac- 

 curacy in about 95 per cent of the cases. Only in a few 

 cases do practical farmers make other mistakes of so serious 

 a nature as to prevent them from getting a good labor income 

 when these four factors are favorable. 



Farms not balanced. — Farmers are like other people, — 

 they have hobbies. There is practically no relationship be- 

 tween good cows and good crops, or between size of the farm 

 and production of crops or cows. 'We find that the farmers 

 who have the best cows average very little above their neigh- 

 bors in crop yields. That the crops are good gives no indi- 

 cation of whether the cows are good or bad. On the average, 

 there is practically no relation either between the size of 

 the farm and quality of the crops or cows. As a result we 

 have all kinds of combinations of the factors of profits. 

 There are very few farms that rank well in each of the four 

 respects. 



Size of Business. — There are many ways in which the 

 size of the business may be measured. Farms may be com- 

 pared on number of days of work done, number of men kept, 

 amount of capital invested, number of cows or other animals 

 kept, number of work animals, number of acres of land, or 

 acres of crops grown. So long as we are dealing with fairly 

 uniform conditions each of these comparisons will give about 

 the same results as an average of large numbers; but when 

 a particular farm is considered it may be placed in a dif- 

 ferent class when the method of sorting is changed. 



Relation of Capital to Profits. — Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6 

 show the relation of capital to profits. The farmers in 

 either of these counties who do not have a capital of at least 

 $5,000 are not doing as well as hired men. In Tompkins 



