FARMERS EARNINGS IN SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA 
19 
Whether mushroom production will continue to be as profitable 
as it was in 1922-23 will depend upon how much the demand for 
mushrooms can be expanded and how large a supply of manure or 
other suitable materia] for growing the mushrooms can be obtained 
without raising the cost too much. So far the demand for mushrooms 
has seemed very elastic, taking all that were offered at remunerative 
prices. Only experience can show what is the limit. 
There were so few farms in each of the groups not shown in 
Tables 10 to 16, that the details of their financial records were not 
significant. However, it is of interest to note in passing that the aver- 
age operator's earnings on the truck-crop farms was $2,177, and on 
the potato farms $1,549. (As will be seen from Table 9, these were 
really dairy farms with the specified enterprises added.) The 
operator's earnings on the poultry farms averaged $1,602 and on the 
small poultry farms $627, and the beef farms showed average earn- 
ings of minus $96. Of course several of the small poultry farms were 
only part-time businesses, and the average cash value of the opera- 
Fig. 5. — Steers on pasture near Doe Run. Only on those farms with unusually large areas of rich 
pasture like this did steers prove profitable 
tor's labor on them was only $543. From this it appears that when 
some special enterprise, such as truck crops or potatoes or a large 
poultry flock, is combined with dairy farming, good returns may be 
obtained, particularly if the farm is very favorably situated with 
regard to the production or the marketing of the special product, as 
was the case with most of these special farms. On the other hand , when 
no dairying was done, and the crops were fed to steers or hogs instead, 
not only were no profits made, but heavy losses resulted. Of course 
both steers and hogs were at low prices in 1922, but even had their 
prices been at the usual relation with milk prices, these farms would 
not have paid. The Iowa type of corn, steer, and hog farming can 
not compete with dairying on the Atlantic coast. 
On some farms, where there was much more permanent pasture 
than could be used to advantage by the dairy cows, steers were run 
in addition to the dairy animals. In these cases the steers made a 
satisfactory and profitable means of utilizing the surplus pasture, 
but that was apparently as far as it paid to introduce beef cattle on 
farms in this region. 
