Seventy-Third Annual Repokt 1237 



members are of tlic poorest classes. But where cooperation 

 lias flourished and met its greatest success and development, 

 no government subsidiary has l)een asked ov received. Some 

 societies in France have preferred to go independent of the 

 government aid ; and in Denmark government aid is re- 

 pudiated on the ground that the banks standing on their 

 own resources inspire greater confidence and attract more 

 deposits and easier credits than they would if subject to 

 the suspicion that they could not stand alone without government 

 aid. With our great farm resources we need no government sub- 

 sidiary, and ask none. If proffered, I for one should oppose the 

 acceptance of it. We ask the government to do for the farm system 

 of finance even less than it has already done for the system devised 

 for other business interests. We ask it only to give us the legal 

 machinery by which we can mobilize and standardize our own 

 forms of credit and market the evidences of our wealth for pur- 

 poses of credit. We ask less because in times of stress the govern- 

 ment places treasury deposits in the banks devoted to other busi- 

 ness interests. We do not ask this, but the present banking sys- 

 tem is under government control and supervision and we ask even 

 more stringent supervision and control of our system. Let us 

 make our system safe and secure in the confidence of the people 

 through rigid inspection and frank publicity, and our problem 

 will not be to get funds but how to wisely use them. 



Cooperation is no Aladdin lamp. Wealth will not spring out of 

 it spontaneously. It is merely a means by which the people en- 

 gaged in an industry may conduct their business more efficiently 

 and economically than they can do it individually and inde- 

 pendently. Through the credit banks if a man has property in 

 any shape and moral worth, the system will enable him to use it 

 as credit for productive purposes at a profitable rate of interest; 

 liut every member is under the constant review of his neighbor 

 who has a personal interest in the transaction and the man who 

 thinks to get something for nothing will be disappointed with the 

 cooperative credit system. 



Cooperative credit banks encourage thrift in a neighborhood 

 by oft'ering a reward for the use of the savings of the people. Tt 

 encourages system in business and promptness in meeting obliga- 



