1286 New York State Agkicultukal Society 



cooperative agTiciiltiiral societies, the farmers market their 

 products direct to the retailers and consumers. 



The middlennm, the johber or the trust have no standing in 

 Europe and coukl not get a foothold if they tried, because they 

 could not get possession of any part of the farmers' products. 



OUR SYSTEM TOO LIMITED 



The present system of rural finance in this country is too lim- 

 ited on the one hand, and is expansive at only one period of the 

 year. 



We have expansion of our currency in the South during the 

 spring months of planting and cultivating the crops, while we 

 sulfer from contraction during the fall and winter months of mar- 

 keting the farm products. 



The eastern banks lend millions of dollars to southern banks 

 during the spring to aid in financing supply merchants and such 

 farmers who are able to secure cash advances. But these loans 

 are made payable in October and the eastern banks call this money 

 promptly from their southern borrowers, hence the local banks 

 call the supply merchants, and these in turn call the producers, 

 and the cotton crop, the only security for southern credit, is forced 

 from the fields to the market as rapidly as it can be harvested, 

 ginned and baled. 



This system of business cuts both ways. It means enormously 

 high rates of interest which the farmers must pay for supplies 

 bought on credit to grow the crops, and it further means the 

 exaction of a tremendous penalty from the farmers in the fall 

 and winter months in being forced to dump an enormous over- 

 supply of cotton on the markets, the price of which is oftentimes 

 unmercifully hammered down by speculative manipulation. 



I am not familiar with the methods employed in your farming 

 operations in this section, but I assume that your experiences are 

 somewhat similar to those prevailing among the agricultural popu- 

 lation of the South. Southern farmers are progressing and suc- 

 ceeding even with the handicaps I have outlined, but their 

 advancement and development would bo far greater if their 

 financial opportunities were made more liberal and attractive. 



The farmers must be free from the controllinc; influences of 



