FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OP CHESTER COUNTY, PA. 89 



The next largest item is for concentrated feedstuffs, in this case 

 the expenditure being somewhat greater on tenant farms than on the 

 others. We have already seen that these tenant farms are somewhat 

 more heavily stocked with dairy cows than owner farms are. 



The third most important item is for fertilizers, in this case the 

 larger expenditure being made by owner operators. The slight dif- 

 ference in this item on the two classes of farms may be due in part to 

 the larger number of cattle kept on the tenant farms. 



The expenditure for hired labor increases materially with increase 

 in size of farm. The smaller the farm the larger the proportion of 

 the work the farm family is able to do. The only other item of ex- 

 pense which shows a noticeable increase on the larger farms is that 

 for baling hay and straw ("pressing"). This is because of the fact 

 that the larger farms sell a somewhat larger proportion of their hay. 

 On the other hand, many of the items are seen to decrease in relative 

 amount as the size of the farm increases. It is quite natural that the 

 item of family labor should thus decrease, for reasons already stated. 

 Expenditures for repairs of buildings and fences, for horseshoeing, 

 insurance, and taxes decrease relatively as the size of farm increases 

 because of the relatively larger proportion of capital invested in the 

 items concerned on the smaller farms. Purchased feed decreases 

 on the larger farms because of their ability to produce a larger pro- 

 portion of the required feedstuff's. 



The largest item in the expenses of the cash tenant is of course rent, 

 which amounts to about 27 per cent of his total expenses. The only 

 other considerable items' are for labor, concentrated feeds, and fer- 

 tilizers. These farms are considerably smaller than the farms of 

 share tenants, and hence the expenditures for hired labor are smaller. 

 The percentage of expenditures for labor on the cash tenant farms is 

 reduced because of the fact that the rent is included in this column, 

 and hence is not directly comparable w T ith the figure in the last col- 

 umn of the table where the rent is not taken into account. If we omit 

 the rent in next to the last column the figure for hired labor would 

 be about 25 per cent, which is about what it should be in comparison 

 with the expenditures of share tenants when the relative size of the 

 two classes of farms is taken into consideration. 



It is interesting to note that share tenants have relatively a very 

 large amount of unpaid family labor. These are rather large farms. 

 Amongst owners the only two groups of farms which have as large a 

 percentage of family labor as the share tenants are the two groups of 

 smallest farms. 



On the special farms two items of expense overshadow all others. 

 They are for labor and for the horse manure which is the basis of the 

 hothouse business as here conducted. 



