54 BULLETIX 1034, U. S. DEPARTMEI^T OF AGRICULTURE. 



Tables 30 and 31 are designed to permit comparisons as to organ- 

 ization and management of groups of small, medium, and large- 

 sized farms, getting poor, medium, and good yields, and to show the 

 changes in farm organization that took place in the various groups 

 between 1913 and 1918. While it is not expedient in this discussion 

 to analyze these tables fully, they affect certain indications as to the 

 factors of success or failure in this area, which have an important 

 bearing in this connection and which will be discussed briefly. 



These tables show how wide is the range of possibilities for many 

 of these farmers of increasing their earnings by following better 

 business methods in the management of their farms. For 1913, of 

 the farms with 100 acres or less of crops, 24 got 225 pounds or le^s 

 of cotton per acre, while 37 got over 300 pounds to the acre. These 

 37 farms with the higher yield of cotton also had higher yields of 

 other crops, they devoted more attention to the production of second 

 and interplanted crops, had more and better utilized labor, better 

 work stock, more working capital, used more fertilizer and better 

 seed, and as a result had an average farm income of $668 and a labor 

 income of $284, while the group with the poor yields and practicing 

 the less efficient methods had an average farm income of only $262 

 and a labor income of only $7. The same comparisons may be drawn 

 for the two groups of larger-sized farms, and the difference in results 

 is even greater than for the group just cited, because the size of busi- 

 ness gives a wider opportunity for success and greater risk of failure. 

 The group of largest farms (over 250 acres of crops) with the highest 

 yields made an average farm income of $6,585 and a labor income 

 of $2,577, while the same-sized group with the lowest yields and 

 weakest organization made a farm income of only $1,662 and no 

 labor income, and lacked $491 per farm of paying for the use of 

 capital at 7 per cent. 



In 1918 nearly all these farms profited by the higher prices, since 

 for that year the price of the products for sale had made greater ad- 

 vances than costs. A comparison between the returns for each group 

 shown in Table 31 with those for the similar group in Table 30 will 

 show a marked advance in earnings in 1918 over 1913, but that the 

 difference in returns between well-managed farms and inefficiently 

 managed farms was even more marked in 1918 than in 1913. Again, 

 taking the farms with 100 acres or under in crops, we find that the 

 farms with over 300 pounds of cotton per acre show an average farm 

 income of $1,861 and a labor income of $1,101, while the same-sized 

 group with the lowest yields (225 pounds or less) averaged in farm 

 income only $726 and in labor income $321. The largest farms with 

 the highest yields showed an average farm income of $12,636 and a 

 labor income of $7,537, while the same-sized group with weak organ- 



