PROCEEDINGS IOWA FAIR MANAGERS ASSN. 179 



to constitute a sufficient measure of protection against the importation of 

 the same sort of tilings. We had a most unusual situation; while prices 

 here were ruinously low last spring yet we had a constant flow of stuff 

 into this country. Wool, for example, furnishes a very good illustration. 

 Wool was selling at a ruinously low price; we had a great surplus piled up, 

 notwithstanding that we were getting over sixty million pounds of wool 

 a month coming into the United States. The reason for it was simply 

 this, that this was the only country that had a market at all and these 

 people were sending it here because they could not sell it anywhere eL-^e. 

 So the imposition of the tariff duty did help some and it has helped I think 

 along other lines. The second measure was enabling joint stock land banks 

 to get into business by allowing them to spring their interest rate on the 

 bonds they sold without making the same advance in interest rate to the 

 borrower and the decision of the Supreme Court which allowed them to 

 get back into business, and this law which made their bonds more market- 

 able, because at that time bonds were not as marketable as they are now, 

 resulted in making large sums available as loans on real estate and helped 

 to that extent. Another measure was the provision for the increase of the 

 capitalization of the farm loan bank, authorizing the treasurer to spend 

 as much as twenty-five million dollars so as to bring that capitalization up 

 to the legal limit, and the farm loan banks as joint stock banks have been 

 functioning. Within the last three months farm loan banks marketed sixty 

 million dollars of bonds at par. Captain Smith of that board tells me he 

 anticipates no trouble marketing at least twelve million dollars worth of 

 bonds in a month, which means spending that much in loans on farm 

 mortgages. Then the act which amended the war corporation law cMid 

 which empowered that corporation to immensely extend its loans has been 

 very helpful. Up to last month some sixty-five million dollars, if I re- 

 member rightly, of money had been loaned for export purposes, and under 

 the new powers given by the law enacted by Congress probably seventy- 

 five million dollars — I am not undertaking to quote the exact figures, — 

 have already been loaned for relief within the state. Now I understand 

 that there is a feeling that that money has not gotten down to the indi- 

 vidual farmer as rapidly as had been hoped for. There is a feeling also 

 that the corporation might properly loan to the individual farmer. I don't 

 think that feeling is entertained by anyone who understands the difficulties 

 of such proceeding. It is simply out of the question for the corporation to 

 undertake to deal with the individual farmer here and there. It is impos- 

 sible to set up a machine short of years that could function in that way. 

 The money has been helpful in this way, that it has been gotten out to 

 relieve the stress of the banks in the agricultural districts, and the process 

 of getting it out is being simplified just as rapidly as possible. We have 

 got a tremendous organization back there now and putting in large num- 

 bers of additional men, and the machine is being brought into action more 

 rapidly than those of us who were in close observation of the work .lad 

 even hoped, and as time goes on, especially if the bankers themselves avail 

 themselves of the opportunities offered by that act the results cannot help 

 but be very helpful in relieving this whole situation of agricultural credit 

 stress. Those were the laws which Congress enacted looking towards relief 



