226 The Control of Faem Management. [June^ 



producer worked to supply not only his own wants but also those 

 of the open market, in which he had to compete with other 

 producers, so the need for controlling production increased. 

 Every enterprise working to supply a market has two sides — the 

 technical side involving technica] skill in the various processes, 

 and the managerial side, which controls the technical skill so that 

 offort may be applied economically and the final product-cost 

 reduced as low as possible. As a business grov/s so does the 

 tendency to separate the functions of the technical and the mana- 

 gerial staff increase, until in the great industrial organisations of 

 to-day we find a fairly complete division between them. This has 

 given opportunities for individuals who, knowing little or nothing 

 of the technica] side of a business, are yet able to control it 

 successfully by a system of management based on records of cost 

 in every process. " A man who is 100 per cent, efficient as the 

 manager of one particular business will prove to be 90 per cent, 

 .efficient as the manager of any business " is the dictum of a 

 certain successful manufacturer, who thus appears to value tech- 

 nical knowledge in a manager at no more than 10 per cent, of 

 his total equipment, and it is certainly true that most large 

 industrial enterprises of our day are controlled by men who are 

 experts in management and in analysing the processes of pro- 

 duction rather than in technique. 



In agriculture, such specialisation has not gone so far, except 

 in a few cases. Men of proved ability in industrial organisation 

 not infrequently turn their attention to farming, but do so 

 generall}^ as a relaxation or for social considerations rather than 

 as a business proposition. There are, however, conspicuous cases 

 of men who, knowing nothing whatever of farming, have made 

 a great success of it, and it may be surmised that the direction of 

 any large agricultural venture would be better in the hands of the 

 man who had proved himself competent to run a big productive 

 organisation of any kind than in the hands of one who had 

 merely shown good technical ability in running a small farm. 

 Although large-scale production in agriculture is rare, and the 

 manager and the technical expert usually " wear the same hat," 

 this detracts in nowise from the importance of management and 

 the means of directing it, and probably the greatest weakness 

 in the agricultural industry to-day is the reliance of the farmer 

 on his technical knowledge to the more or less complete exclusion 

 of the study of management. The farmer must come to recognise 

 that his skill as a practical man requires direction, and that he 

 can never be sure that he is making the best use of the factors 



