VALIDITY OF THE SURVEY METHOD OF RESEAKCH. V 



from memory. The record from the manager gave a labor income of 

 $3,688, that from the overseer $3,656, a difference of $32, which is 

 less than 1 per cent of the quantity involved. It should be remem- 

 bered that records of this kind are used only in averages, so that 

 errors in them are for the most part eliminated by the law of aver- 

 ages. (See p. 9.) 



ACCURACY OF THE FARMER'S KNOWLEDGE. 



The opinion prevails quite widely, even among farmers them- 

 selves, that the average farmer knows very little of the details of his 

 business. The results given in the foregoing pages indicate that this 

 opinion is not consistent with facts. During the past decade the 

 Office of Farm Management has analyzed the business of nearly 

 20,000 farms. The experience gained in this work indicates that the 

 average farmer does know the details of his business with a fair 

 degree of accuracy, the discrepancy in his knowledge being relatively 

 small in the case of the larger and more important items, but in- 

 creasing as the importance of the items decreases. One reason for 

 this is the fact that in a year's business on the average farm there 

 are relatively few business transactions, most of them being fairly 

 large items. The principal product of the farm is, in many cases, 

 disposed of in a single sale, and the farmer remembers the details of 

 this sale quite accurately until the corresponding figures for a new 

 year replace them in his mind. In many other cases a product, such 

 as eggs, milk x etc., is sold in fairly regular quantities from month to 

 month, and the farmer remembers with a fair degree of accuracy the 

 usual monthly income from such sales, as well as the variations in 

 this income. 



But though the farmer does know fairly well the details of his 

 business, he is not always aware of this fact ; and it requires no slight 

 skill on the part of the investigator to reduce his questions to the 

 terms in which the farmer carries the information in his head. Un- 

 less this is done, the answers given by the farmer are mere guesses 

 and are of small value. Thus, if we ask a farmer how much profit 

 he made on a certain field of corn he will usually not even hazard a 

 guess at the answer, because he realizes he does not know ; but if we 

 analyze the cost and income from this field into its elements we find 

 the farmer has very definite knowledge of these elements. He knows 

 the operations, such as plowing, harrowing, planting, etc., done in 

 raising the crop. He knows the amount and value of the fertilizers 

 applied. He knows how much corn was secured and its market value. 

 The trouble is not that the farmer does not know the facts necessary 

 to arrive at the profit made from the field, for he does know them; 

 but he does not know how to use these facts in calculating the profit, 

 because his knowledge of cost accounting methods is meager. The 



