REPOKT OF THE SECRETARY. 25 



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AGRICTJLTTJIIAL CREDIT. 



SURVEY OF LOCAL CONDITIONS. 

 INVESTIGATION IN RURAL COUNTIES. 



Agricultural credit is a subject that is attracting much attention 

 and exciting a great deal of discussion. The information with 

 regard to what has been accomplished in cooperative credit and in 

 the service of great mortgage banks under governmental supervision 

 must necessarily be derived almost entirely from foreign countries. 

 In addition to this, little is known in regard to local conditions in 

 all parts of this country pertaining to agricultural credit. In view 

 of the possibility of legislation concerning the subject, and more cer- 

 tainly to provide information useful in discussion, the effort was 

 made early in the autumn to collect data of a descriptive sort. 



A schedule of questions was sent to 9,000 persons in all of the rural 

 counties of the United States. There were about 3,000 country 

 bankers, about the same number of prominent farmers, and also 

 about the same number of country merchants and men of other 

 occupations taken from the list in use by the Bureau of Statistics to 

 collect monthly reports of the prices of farm commodities. It thus 

 appears that the whole country was thoroughly covered by the 

 schedule. The nature of the questions will appear upon examining 

 the tenor of the answers. 



Three classes of correspondents were chosen in order that if any 

 class bias appeared it would be recognized and allowances made for 

 exaggeration or deficiency of statement. It was hardly discoverable 

 that class bias entered considerably into the answers given. AVhere 

 differences appeared among the classes of correspondents they were 

 probably quite as much due to differences of thoroughness of infor- 

 mation as to bias, and perhaps differences in point of view influenced 

 the answers. At any rate the three classes of correspondents reported 

 remarkably well and intelligently, and, no doubt, with faithful and 

 sincere desire to contribute to a truthful description of local rural 

 conditions bearing upon credit. 



The questions were so worded as to call for answers in numerical 

 form in order that they might be consolidated and treated arith- 

 metically. A set of tabulations was given to each class of corre- 

 spondents, and also the three classes were combined after it was 

 observed that the differences were not usually too great to be har- 

 monized. Probably, on the whole, the combination of the returns 

 from the three classes of correspondents into one set of results is 

 often nearer the fact than is indicated by any one of the three classes. 

 However that may be, the chief results of this investigation are here- 

 with presented with the hope that they may be of service. 



