Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1913 — COUNTING THE COST [ARTICLE]

COUNTING THE COST

Is It Worth While to Follow the Example of Large Corporations in Studying Efficiency? By L. E. Goodyear. [National Crop Improvement Service.]' * The correct computation of the cost of production is at the bottom of farm profits. It takes only a little time to enter costs when they occur, and finally to compute them. When this is done, the farm manager knows the cost of what he sells. Almost all farmers and business men do more or less unprofitable work because they are not sure of their costs. When they know they quit the unprofitable work, and do profitable work. An accountant some time ago announced that he could show the railroads of the country where they were wasting $1,000,000 a day. Instead of telling this accountant to mind his own business (the old-fashioned way for disposal of ideas), the iailroads asked for and -got his ideas, and are already making more money. Unquestionably the farmers of the country could gather milliops of added profits if their attention were focalized on the matter of computing exact production cost. SIC worth of time and a few cents worth of cost sheets will show farmers opportunities worth all the way from hundreds to thousands of dollars.