Watertown Republican

Farming Is Business.—Too many forget this. There is poetry in farming, to be sure, if it is rightly managed; but there is no poetry in it if it does not pay—if there are no satisfactory material results. But farming is business. It is a dollar-and-cent transaction to produce and market a crop—from the turning of the first furrow to the delivery of the last bushel, money is involved. Farming should accordingly be conducted in a business manner. Each item of expense, each moment of time, all expenditures of labor, should be charged the crops, and if the market price does not cover this cost and leave a balance, that kind of husbandry had better be abandoned.

Most men acknowledge the force of the above position, but say—“Why, we have not the knowledge necessary to systematize our business, keep a book account with a farm, and do things as we see it is only profitable to do.” Very well. Suppose you are not capable. Grant it. There is something which can be done. Your children may be so educated that they shall not follow in your footsteps per force—be obliged to submit to the yoke your ignorance imposed upon you. See that they secure that knowledge, and insist that they put it in practice as they obtain it. Give over the farm accounts to their keeping.—Furnish the girls as well as the boys with the faculties for acquiring this knowledge. It is as essential to one as the other. Let the girls keep the household accounts.—Interest them in this. Let them learn the lesson figures teach when used to designate receipts and expenses. They will thus learn economy—to calculate. Do not fear they will become sordid. This process will give greater powers to indulge in poetic fancies and poetic employments. And they will be really poetic, for they will be based upon facts.—Prairie Farmer.