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Show CHEAPER MONEY FOR FARMERS Canadian railroads, cities and other oth-er big concerns have borrowed in England and the United States during dur-ing the last'half dozen years probably probab-ly more than a billion and a half dollars dol-lars at about five per cent interest. With this money great permanent improvements im-provements have been made and incidentally in-cidentally a great number of farms opened for settlement and cultivation. cultiva-tion. The farmers, however, complain that they have been unable to borrow bor-row money except on rather burdensome burden-some terms. In the new Northwest the rate of interest on farm loans have nominally ranged from eight per cent upward; but it seems that the agricultural borrower has usually usual-ly paid, including expenses, about ten per cent or at least twice what the big corporate borrowers paid. Farmers, we hear, have willingly paid this high rate, giving the good security of their land at half its market mar-ket value; but even so they have found It difficult to get money, applications appli-cations for loans outrunning the supply sup-ply of funds. Now this is simply the difference between good organization and no organization. Certainly, under proper prop-er conditions, a loan on the land itself it-self is as good security as a loan on the railroad, the prosperity of which mostly depends on the land; but the big borrowers were organized, while the small borrowers were not. Hence a very interesting project by the Saskatchewan Provincial Glovernment to organize cooperative farm-mortgage association. The laea is, in brief, for the farmer members of each association mutually to guarantee on another's loans, while the association itself raises capital for farm loans by issuing bonds guaranteed by the province. An investor, in-vestor, in buying a bond, would not look to a particular mortgage on a particular farm, but to the whole resources re-sources and credit of the association, backed by the Provincial Government's Govern-ment's indorsement. Such bonds, no doubt, would be as readially marketable market-able as a railroad bond. There is no question that farmers can borrow as readily and as cheaply as railroads do by organizing and offering equally attractive securities. Saturday Evening Post. |