The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1872-02-24
FARM IND HOUSEHOLD.
Agricultural Bookkeeping

How many of our ordinary farmers know
anything about profit and loss at the years
end? And yet why should they not? We
have heard them remark: "It is great
bother. We know how much money We had
at the commencement Of the year, and how
much at the end, and what difference does
it make?" 1t makes just this difference.
You know just how you stand. Just who
owes you, and to whom you are indebted.
By your books you may tell just what each
crop cost. Nay. what each individual
item in the crop costs, and therefore are
enabled to find at any time and for any
series of years the profit or loss ON each
crop, and consequently what crop pays
best for one year or series of years. On
large estates bookkeeping is very compli-
Gated, because the farmer, having three
fold professionalism of producer, manu-
facturer, and merchant-his dealings are
large and necessarily morse complicated
than that of the ordinary farmer. One
quarter of one per cent. of the gross sale of
any farm would pay for keeping the books,
and this cost would be decreased proper
tionally with the increase of the size of
the farm, until the estate became large
enough to employ the entire time of an
accountant, and the saving would pay the
cost ten or twenty times. We have before
us, at this writing, detailed statement of
the cost of raising a crop of ITO acres of
wheat, Including every item, from blowing
the land to the threshing, cleaning and
delivery of the grain to the buyer, show
ing each individual action connected with
the crop. The average profit was 1888 AZ
100 per acre. If the farmer should keep
such an account from year to year. he
would soon see what crop or animal pay
the best, and be enabled to give his atten-
ton exclusively to that class of crops or
animals. There is No doubt but the wants
of proper farm books costs as much as they
would the business man, even in this one
direction alone. One trouble has been that
the books prepared for the farmer, under
so-called appropriate headings, have been
faulty and intricate in the extreme. For
the ordinary farmer, to begin with, all that
is wanted is simple account book, with
space for a complete inventory, with values
of everything on the farm, from the land
down through the improvements, stock,
fixtures, to the most simple implement on
the premises. The value of these is the
capitol employed. Now everything that
costs money the farm is debtor to, and
what brings money must be carried to its
credit. If this is done on separate pages
balance may be shown at any time
whether debtor Or creditor, and soon it will
become easy to separate this into different
heads, showing what the family receives
and produces, the cost and production of
each field and CROP and by little practice
the farmer will soon be enabled to know
what anything and everything costs about
the farm, even to the minutest details.
Book keeping is the groundwork to sue
cess in trade, and in no industry in life is
it more necessary than to the farmer, and
no farmers son should be considered COM
petent to manage farm until he under
stands this important part Of farm econ
my Western Rural