Did It Really Pay a Profit?— By Addison P. Foster, 



A NEW METHOD OF FARM BOOKKEEPING THAT TELLS EXACTLY THE 

 PROFIT ON ANY CROP; SOMETHING THAT TOO 'MANY MERELY GUESS AT 



New 

 York 



VERY few farmers or gardeners really 

 know what was the actual expense 

 of raising a given crop. One of the most 

 important and yet one of the most difficult 

 things to do in the line of farm-bookkeeping 

 is to make such an accounting of the crops 

 as to show whether or not they have been 

 raised at a profit. The two accompanying 

 "loose leaf" forms have proved compara- 

 tively easy to fill out and furnish reasonably 

 accurate information on the profit or loss 

 of crops. Everything that is complex or 

 unnecessary is avoided, such as charges for 

 interest on the value of land, for the appre- 

 ciation of land, or for the use of tools. 



The first table, entitled "Labor Record 

 of Oat Crop," is easily prepared from a sheet 

 of quadrille paper. Such paper should first 

 be ruled with red ink on the top to obtain 

 places to write in the months and days when 

 the work on the crop was done. Two perpen- 

 dicular red lines should be added, one on 

 the left hand side to separate the headings 

 of the horizontal lines from the rest of the 

 page, the other on the extreme right of the 

 page to mark a place for the footings. The 

 other red lines should be drawn subsequently 

 as the record of each month is finished. As 

 the work on the field goes on, ascertain the 

 number of hours spent in plowing, harrowing, 

 fertilizing, etc., and record them each day. 

 This done, the number of hours spent in 

 different forms of work on the crop is footed 

 up and thus accurately known. The cost 

 can then be readily calculated. 



In case a machine is hired to do a certain 

 piece of work, such as drilling or reaping, 



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Keeping IracK of the labor cost. The time is entered in hours on the sheet and later on the other form 



the cash value is recorded. 



the sum paid for it appears by itself in the 

 second table and so should not be entered 

 in the first table as labor. 



The second table, entitled "Oat Crop," 

 is designed to receive an account of every 

 sum of money paid out in securing the crop. 

 Such items as fertilizers, seed, the cost of 



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A page from the ledger which shows that the net profit 



was less than fifty cents an acre! Did it really pay? 

 71 



hiring machines for drilling, reaping, thresh- 

 ing and pressing, are all taken from the farm 

 account. The items involving the cost of 

 labor came from the first table. In this second 

 table, however, are indicated with care the 

 fact whether a horse or a team of horses 

 was used in the work. A man's labor in 

 this section ordinarily costs $1.50 a day or 

 15 cents an hour. The cost per hour of a 

 pair of horses depends, of course, on whether 

 they are hired for the occasion or are your 

 own. In the former case the usual charge 

 in these parts is forty cents an hour for a man 

 and two horses. This means twenty-five 

 cents for the horses. But I can keep my 

 horses for far less than this. Hereabouts 

 oats on an average are fifty cents a bushel 

 and fair hay $12 a ton. A horse eats about 

 nine pounds of oats and from twenty to 

 twenty-five pounds of hay a day. This 

 means for two horses 205 bushels of cats and 

 nine tons of hay a year, or $123 for the first 

 item and $108 for the second. Add to this 

 $20 for shoeing and sundries and $40 a year 

 to cover the cost of the labor spent in the care 

 of the horses. All this averages eighty cents 

 a day or eight cents an hour as the cost of 

 keeping two horses. Where the letters 

 "HH" occur in the table this means that 

 two horses were used in connection with one 

 man's work, increasing the cost from fifteen 

 cents to twenty-three cents an hour. 



It is my policy not to own expensive ma- 

 chines which can be used only one or two 

 days in the year and which get out of order 

 easilv. 



