26 
BULLETIN" 1338, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
farms of a locality than with the different localities. (See Table 10.) 
For all of the farms in the last two columns of Table 10 the value of 
the family lving from the farm equaled or exceeded the farm income. 
In other words, the cash spendable income from these farms amounted 
to no more and usually to less than the value of the family living 
from the farm. 
FAMILY INCOME 
More or less farm labor was performed by members of the family 
other than the operator himself in all of the localities under study. 
The estimates of the worth of this type of labor varied from an average 
of less than $100 per farm in some localites to over $200 in others; 
the extremes being $18 per farm in Polk County, Fla., in 1922, and 
$318 on those farms with negro operators in Sumter County, Ga., in 
1918. The value of this labor was less than one-third as much as 
the value of the family living from the farm in most localities, ap- 
proached or exceeded one-half as much in some localities, but did 
not equal the value of the family living from the farm in any locality. 
The unpaid family labor when added to the farm income more nearly 
represents the amount available from the farm business for owner 
farmers and their families to spend and save than any of the other 
incomes discussed herein, and it is termed the family income. The 
family income was but a negligible increase over the farm income in 
a few localities, as in Polk County, Fla., but in localities with com- 
paratively low farm incomes or relatively large amounts of family 
labor it sometimes represented an increase of 20 per cent or more 
over the farm income, as in Washington County, Ohio. It some- 
times represented in a given locality a small relative increase over the 
farm income in some years and a large increase in other years, as in 
the Palo use country of Idaho and Washington in the years 1919 and 
1921. 
Table 11. — Value of the family living from the farm and labor income 
Year 
Labor in- 
come more 
than value 
of the 
family living 
from the 
farm 
Labor in- 
come less 
than value 
of the 
family living 
from the 
farm 
1918 
Number 
farms 
977 
627 
301 
401 
334 
Number 
farms 
111 
1919 
586 
1920. 
873 
1921 
1,701 
1922 
1,161 
Totals 
2,640 
5, 098 
LABOR INCOME 
After allowing interest on the farm capital the returns for the 
farmer's labor, above his family living from the farm, is the labor 
income. It is the farm income less interest on the farm capital. 
In the prosperous years, 1918 and 1919, the labor income averaged 
over $1,000 per farm. (See Table 6.) In the less prosperous years, 
1920, 1921, and 1922, it was theoretically a minus quantity, meaning 
