EURAL ECONOMICS. 487 



Agricultural credit and its reorganization, Teosien (Der Landwirtschaft' 

 liche Kredit und Seine Durchgreifende Verbesserutig. Berlin, 1911, pp. 

 VII+8J1). — The results of an economic study of agricultural credit and its 

 reorganization in Germany are presented and discussed. It is pointed out that 

 the increase in running expenses in agriculture has exceeded the increase in 

 the amount of money available for loans on land, thereby making more neces- 

 sary the freeing of agriculture from debt. The privileges of mortgage holding 

 are discussed and the necessity of their removal to the advantage of agricul- 

 tural personal credit is explained. 



Adaptation of the European credit system to meet the needs of the Ameri- 

 can farmer, D. Lubin {U. 8. Senate, 62. Cong., 2. Sess., Doc. 855, 1912, pp. 14). — 

 This document presents a report made to the International Institute of Agricul- 

 ture on the conference held at Nashville, Tenn., April 1-6, 1912, looking to the 

 appointing of a select committee from the various States in the Union to go to 

 Europe and investigate rural cooperative credit systems in operation there 

 with a vievp to adapting them to the needs of American agriculture. 



A number of suggestions are offered as a solution of the rural finance 

 problem in the United States, among them the establishment of a system of 

 agricultural national banks. 



" One plan would be for the incorporation or cooperative association of 

 groups of farmers, when they could devise and offer as security for the money 

 they requii'e a negotiable bond on their collective assets, a bond at a valuation 

 and of a character which should make it acceptable in the world of commerce 

 and in so liquid a form as to require no lawsuit for foreclosure. This bond 

 could then be offered in the open market, and the funds for the cooperative 

 banking be thus obtained. These funds coutd then be employed, first, for the 

 use of the individual members of the cooperation, and, second, for the collective 

 use of the cooperation as a whole in swinging its product to market; in its 

 distribution." 



A modification of this plan might be had by the formation of rural national 

 banks, on the order of the existing national banks. " Let the cooperative 

 groups of farmers call on government bond owners to transfer their bonds to 

 these farmers' groups. Let the farmers pay the bond owners, say 1 per cent 

 per annum for the privilege of this transfer. Let them deposit these trans- 

 ferred government bonds, along with their own negotiable land bonds, in the 

 United States Treasury, where they would be held in trust for both parties by 

 the United States. On the security of these government bonds the United 

 States could issue national rural bank notes to these cooperative groups of 

 farmers, just as it does in the case of national banks. The United States bond 

 owner would then receive interest on his coupons, plus the 1 per cent per 

 annum extra from the farmers' cooperative groul)s. These groups would thus 

 have money at 1 per cent per annum, and the government bond owner would 

 have as security a negotiable bond on the collective property of the farmers* 

 cooperation, security which would exceed in value the United States bond 

 deposited in the Treasury. In substance, the negotiable bond for this property 

 and the government bonds would both be held in trust by the United States 

 Government, which would simply act as umpire between the bond owners and 

 the farmers, and thus this transaction would be free from any phase of 

 so-called socialism." 



A cooperative sugar factory in Holland, J. W. Robertson- Scott (Jour. Bd. 

 Agr. [London], 18 (1912), No. 12, pp. 1014-1017, pi. i).— This article notes what 

 is being done in the way of cooperative manufacture of sugar by farmers in Hol- 

 land. One of the first factories established was in 1909 with 3,000 shares and 



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