STATE POMOLOGICAIv SOCIETY. 25 



obtain better credit facilities. That will give to the farmer 

 very great return indeed. 



Now the principle that underlies this matter of combined 

 credit is simply the point that a number of people by guarantee- 

 ing their combined capital, by guaranteeing their combined 

 warranty, are able to obtain capital when they want it at a 

 smaller cost than any of them are able to do individually. That 

 is the underlying principle of the matter of combined credit. 

 This may not seem to be at first thought a particularly im- 

 portant matter. It may not occur to us that it matters a great 

 deal whether the ordinary farmer is obliged, as he is, to pay 

 on an average over eight per cent interest, taking into account 

 the cost of commission and renewal, on his ordinary loans, 

 instead of as low a rate as three and one-half or four per 

 cent, as the ordinary German farmer, the ordinary French 

 farmer, the ordinary Belgian farmer, the ordinary Italian farm- 

 er, is able to do. And yet when we realize that the farmers 

 of the United States are today operating on a borrowed capital 

 of over eight billion dollars on which they pay an annual inter- 

 est charge of over eight per cent, we perhaps get a better con- 

 ception of the significance of this. 



The possibilities that lie in this matter of cheaper credit, 

 as a consequence enabling the farmer to utilize in a better way 

 his land, are significant not only to the farmer, enabling him to 

 get a larger net profit out of his activity, but they are of course 

 of great significance to those of us who are not actively engaged 

 in farming, — the consuming class. The outcome of this finally 

 cannot fail to be, as a consequence of the larger production 

 from the more economic processes that will be made possible, 

 a cheaper food supply, cheaper articles of consumption in the 

 case of commodities of an agricultural character than we have 

 had thus far. 



Now I want to briefly describe one or two of the general 

 methods of cooperative agricultural credit that have been in 

 highly successful operation for a long while in a number of 

 foreign countries. There are, I may say, a variety of these 

 organized credit associations which differ among themselves in 

 some rather important respects, but chiefly in detail. Sub- 

 stantially these credit associations are all alike, and on account 

 of the limits of time I shall not undertake today more than 



