Show DAILY DAIt Y HASKIN LETTER RURAL CREDITS I. I The Needs of the Farmer I Just now V there is coming to fruition a a. movement to assist the tho farmers of the Un United ted States financially It started with the southern commercial congress and may end with a farmers' farmers bank in eV every ry community whore farmers farm ers can borrow money from themselves at low rates and thus put themselves on an equal footing with the th industrial and commercial world Of late lato years the American people have spent so BO much time listening to stories about farmers who ride rido around I in automobiles I who send their sons Bons and daughters to college and who make pilgrimages to the city to attend the tho opera that thoy they have begun to regard I them as M a Q sort of twentieth century edition of Midas And thoy they have hoard heard so much about tho the worth of products tho the farmers annually produce that they have havo not stopped to con consider Bider how much that means to each farmer As a matter mattor of fact there are 12 12 farmers in the United States thoy they own worth ot of farm property and and annually produce e worth of crop crops Those figures sound exactly like the popular impression tho the farmer a farmer a man with witha a sixty horsepower car with a son Bon at Harvard and a daughter at Vassar Vassar- but wait until they thoy are analyzed Divide Di DI- vide vido the total farm wealth among those thoo farmers and you will find wealth is their theu avera average e i and then divide divid that annual farm yield among them theta and you will find that the avera average e farmers farmer's gross annual income in c come me is Out of t this is he must feed and clothe his family educate his biB children children chil dren find his pleasures pay his Interest interest inter Inter- est et and his his' taxes and lay by for his rainy day Majority Have Hard Struggle It is truo true that there thero are millions of I farmers who measurably come conic up to I the popular picture of the automobile buying farmer perhaps farmer perhaps of th them m but there is another t whose struggles les are hard and who can can barely eke out an existence nce To illustrate illustrate illus mus- Suppose ose there thero are arc farmers in the tho United States worth au an aV average rage of 1000 each that each that would make a total of so 80 that tho the other be worth only 1500 An Aria And suppose tho the products of the tho farms of those farmers amounted an to 1500 each each that that would make 6 and leave the other otherS S farmers to divide divido gross prof prof- its of 3 among a them beggarly a year income out of wl which cb must be pal paid fertilizer bills and tho the keep and education of the family interest taxes and th the like So it willbe will wilt willbe be seen after all not all is automobiles and colleges an and operas with the farmer It was as a realization o of this actual situation of the small farmer that l led d the southern commercial congress ress to father a movement mo to see se it ii there ini might ht not bo be found some somo method of helping him to solve his problem to enhance his financial well wen being and 1 to increase his contribution to the welfare of tho the nation That organization or saw that the tendency tendency ten ten- dency o of the times is is away from farm ownership and toward tenant farming It saw in iu tho the census returns that one ne occupying own owner r out of or e every seven even has left the farm since ISSO 1880 and recognized recognized that there was something fundamentally fundamentally funda funda- mentally wrong wrong eke elec e such an increase of oC tenancy and such a decrease in ownership farming could not have hwe taken place It looked to the tho city and saw the number of home owners increasing increasing in in- creasing as rapidly as tho the number of farm owners on ori the land were in lag ing It saw the city cit artisan able ablo to buy bu his house on a small cash fl payment and ana the balance as aR rent while tho the farmer must pay a third down a nT the balance in a short hort period of li German Gennan Ownership Increases Hero was a clue due A A. look ook further showed that other othor countries had solved the problem and md that there home ownership on the farm was on the in in in- crease creMe It showed that in Germany the farmers had solved the question of meeting their own needs b bv by lon lone time payments nail and that cooperation tion in money matters hail had led lel to co in buin buying and in selling and that consequently con can the German farmer was vas enjoying enjoying en eu an economic independence out of nh nil nn proportion to the size sire of his land holdings Step by step the tho Ip lesson was wan learned learnel that the American farmer fanner mi might bt con cony European ideas of financial co with great reat profit That wa was why wh a ana na nation na- na tion commission ow was appointed to fo co go coto goto o oto to Europe un under er the JI of the th southern commercial t. t anti and with the tIlt indorsement of lie lio O rut to rural co cn with rc rd to credits The American Amerian farmer lo nv luc Jape borrowed hot bor rowed capital of over ocr G MO nd according accordine to President ox-President TAft fares fres an annual interest char charge e of 10 on this Counti Counting commissions and renewal charge 4 fI he i is paying pa iD over tr 8 per cent interest on the money he has borrowed in a D. country where commercial commercial commer commer- cial interest rates are aro low while tho the German farmer pays about 4 per cent in a country countr- where commercial interest rates are high The rhe farmer must pay nearly twice wico as much for tho mone money r ho he borr borrows ws as do the railroads the thEt in industrial industrial in in- dU corporations and the municipalities municipalities around him in spite of the fact that his land is the basis oasis of all aU values and his products the foundation of all aU wealth This is attributed to the fact that he ho has bas no financial machinery behind him for the conversion of h his s sI holdings into negotiable credit I That such machinery machinery may be provided I is shown bv by tho the experience in German Germany I Through all the changing conditions of ofa a century tho the soundness and practicability of such machinery based upon tho the J peculiar credit needs of the tho farmer furmer has bas been tried out there and an so successful sue suc has it been in operation that in times of stress mone money has been taken out of the tho commercial banks of the empire em em- I pire and placed in tho agricultural I banks for safekeeping I Credit System Will Vill Help Farmer Fanner It is pointed fainted out that a proper system of rUTa rural credits not nol oril only will help tho farmer but that it will reach tho the consumer consumer con COD sumer as foil feU Under such a system German Germany 1 with an nil area area smaller than Texas Texas Texas-it it would take a n. German empire and an Alabama to make mako a Tex Texas sup s-sup- sup supports ports port a population of nearly OOOO people and produces all aU but one of their foodstuffs If the American Amer Amer- ican farmer could do as well Vell as the German farmer in feeding the people Texas and Oklahoma alono alone could raise all the foodstuffs needed in the Un Unit Unit-A t States The rent great Teat necessity which prompted the cst establishment of operative co-operative credit systems in Europe was that of checking the rapidly increasing cost of foodstuffs brought about by the tho inevitable increase increase in crease rease in consumption and aud the failure of the soil to meet the demand The I same reason now obtains obtain J. J if in a smaller I degree in the tho United States In Europe Eu ropo rope as soon as a method of financing the farmer was found acreage production tion began to rise and anit in its wake came camo operation co-operation in buying b and fie selling selling sell sell- ing with as great benefit to the consumer con con- sumer as to the tho farmer And the thing that is kept first and foremost in tho European success in co co- farm finance is the tho fact that it is is not a government business Rather it is is the result of a sort of government supervision ision the efforts of farmers to help themselves The Jess lesson n of European Eu En- experience is that all aU of the numerous needs which the farmer has are met in duo time as soon as his greatest n need elt is supplied that supplied that of ready capital to do the things that ought fobe to fo tobe be ho done dODe Monday RURAL CREDITS n. n Helping n.-Helping Helping the Tanner Farmer In the tho Past |