Common Sense Farming
BUSINESS METHODS NEEDED
As farming is our principal business, it follows that those who conduct this vast and varied enterprise should be business men.
The farmer is a producer of goods, and so might be regarded as a manufacturer,--the original meaning of the word is one who makes things by hand. He is also a seller of his own products, and a purchaser of the products of others, so that, to some extent, he may also be regarded as a trader or merchant.
Enterprise and business skill are the requisites of the manufacturer and merchant. Can the farmer succeed without them?
No business can prosper without method, economy, and industry intelligently applied.
No man works harder the year round than does the American farmer, yet too many are going back instead of advancing. In such cases it will be found that there is enough hard work for better results, and that the cause of failure is that the industry has not been properly applied, and that economy has had no consideration.
Economy does not mean niggardliness, or a determination to get along without tools that your neighbor has purchased. A neglect to secure the best tool needed might be classed as an extravagance, a waste, if the tool in question could have added to the quality and quantity of the output, without the expenditure of more labor.
Business common-sense is taking the place of old-fashioned conservatism and scientific methods are no longer sneered at as "book-farming."