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Show War Bonds as Investment for Farmers by Warren W. Hawley, Jr., President New York State Farm Bureau Federation IN CHECKING figures of the Farm Credit Administration, I find that farmers are paying off mortgages faster than at any other oth-er period in the history of the Federal Fed-eral Land Bank. At the same time, farmers are building up cash reserves, but the wise investment of this money is an extremely hard job for farmers farm-ers to undertake. The temptation is to try and obtain as high an , interest rate as possible. Many of us see no reason why we should not get as much inter- 1 est on our money now as we had to pay the bank when we were forced to borrow during the depression. de-pression. The answer is that today money is cheap "expanded", as the I bankers express it. Therefore in-1 in-1 terest rates are low except in very speculative securities. Naturally Nat-urally no farmer wants to risk losing his hard earned cash. We farmers know our own business busi-ness and we can invest money in it safely because we understand it. However, when we branch off into other fields, especially the highly technical field of investments, invest-ments, most of us encounter sad experiences. In these days it is virtually impossible im-possible for farmers to put their surplus cash back into the farm. War-time conditions prevent us from repairing buildings, and buying buy-ing new machinery, automobiles, trucks and other equipment we must eventually have if we are going to stay in business. So the smart thing for farmers to do is to invest their surplus money in War Bonds where it is as safe as a dollar bill. These bonds increase in value the longer they are held; they can be cashed after sixty days in case of need, and they will provide a reserve for investment in-vestment after the war in the business the farmers know best the business of farming. I confidently predict that if farmers will do this, the dawn of peace will signalize a new day for agriculture. U. S. Treasury Department |