Seventy-Tiiikd Annual Report 1289 



federal banking laws 



American farm lands have been outlawed under the Federal 

 Banking Acts, denying landowners the right to secure loans, or 

 make liquid the most valuable asset and the best security in the 

 nation. 



This may have been caused by the fluctuations in land values 

 due to the continuous opening up of great government reservations 

 in our western territory. But these open lands have now become 

 homesteads, and improved farm lands have reached a stable value 

 which must become dearer in price as time rolls on. The incentive 

 for refusing to recognize land as a safe and valued asset for capi- 

 talization in the modern business of agriculture no longer exists. 



The present valuation of improved farming lands in the United 

 States is thirty billion dollars, and of this amount, over seven 

 hundred millions is in this state. The total amount of bonds and 

 stocks in circulation in the United States is thirty billion dollars, 

 and our total circulating medium of gold, silver and paper money 

 amounts to three billion dollars. 



The landowners of the United States therefore possess landed 

 securities in valuation ten times in excess of the entire circulating 

 capital of the nation and safer than any government bond or other 

 class of securities deposited in the vaults of the federal treasury. 



To liquify this great asset, as it has been so successfully done 

 in European countries, will forever solve the problem of agri- 

 culture in this country, and enable the farmers of this and other 

 sections to control the production and marketing of their crops 

 with profit to themselves and satisfaction to the great masses of 

 the people. It will mean the rapid multiplication of small land- 

 owners ; a more advanced system of agriculture, and a higher type 

 of progressive and thrifty citizenship in rural life. 



The best efforts of our state and federal governments, and the 

 varied interests of industrial and financial life in this country, 

 should be directed for the next quarter of a century toward reform- 

 ing and revolutionizing our present system of farming, because the 

 farm is the foundation of all prosperity in every department of 

 human endeavor, and the greater the success of the farmer the 

 greater will be the standing and position of our country among 



