Excerpt from Farm Accounts: A Manual for Farmers and Those Desiring a Simple Method of Keeping Accounts Ever since the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the Venetian traders, the greatest merchants of their time, evolved a system of double entry book keeping, the subject of accounting has grown in breadth and importance until to-day no business of any extent is successfully carried on without the aid of a perfect system of accounting. Even the small trader in the country village recognizes its importance, while the farmer has hardly begun to appreciate the benefits that may be derived from a thorough understanding of his transactions gained only by a system of accounts. Most of the efforts to adapt or improve the various methods of keeping accounts have been along lines employed by the great business concerns in our large cities. The tendency of the modern book keeping development has been to reduce the labor of the dealer who employs clerks and special book keepers to look after the details of his business. With the soil replete with the food for vegetable life, there seemed to he little necessity for careful husbandry; hut as successive years of tillage depleted the earth of its richness the need for more knowledge of farming became apparent. With this depletion came man's determination to know more of nature and with the progress of civilization he has had better opportunities for advancing. He is learning that business success depends upon the ability to act at the proper time; that this ability is only acquired by gaining a complete insight into every detail of his affairs. He must, therefore, keep accounts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.