540 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



of our economic outlook now, he will make these very agencies a harm 

 instead of a service to his constituents. If he finds a man who has loaded 

 up during the war period and has hated to let it go, if he encourages him 

 to hold on and strings him along, kids him about the return of higher 

 prices, and that sort of thing, he is not really serving as a credit agency, 

 because one thing which is placed upon that man who assumes the re- 

 sponsibility of being adviser there, or determining when credit shall be 

 extended and when credit shall not be extended, is the duty that his judg- 

 ment shall be sound and good, not only as to the moral character of that 

 man, not only as to the local conditions in that community, but he is 

 bound to give that service on a professional basis and advise when to let 

 go as well as when to hang on. For instance, take an extreme case of a 

 banker who extended credit for the benefit of the farmer in saving his $3 

 wheat — he was actually doing harm rather than doing him a service; so 

 that it seems to me that the farmer can at the present time challenge the 

 banking system of this state to render that sort of service in the local com- 

 munity, and when or if it seems that the needs which reasonably should 

 be met within that local community exceed the amount which the bank 

 can borrow through its correspondents through the Federal Reserve Sys- 

 tem, that it should take full advantage, first, of the War Finance Corpora- 

 tion, which is in operation at the present time, and, second, should affiliate 

 with this state agency which aims simply to crown the development of 

 local banking in this state with an agency which will for the first time in 

 any state put on a permanent basis the sort of longer-time credit service 

 which the agricultural industry needs. We know that enough money will 

 be made available through the War Finance Corporation, so that in the 

 main I think we can say if we will only take advantage of it, it supplies the 

 means of improving that second great situation in connection with our 

 economic outlook. 



Then the third one — I don't know that it is necessary to say so much 

 about the third one, because of what Mr. McKerrow has said here has 

 illustrated in a particular case all that might be said in a more general 

 way. Possibly I might urge caution upon each one of those heads that I 

 have taken up. I cannot speak quite so broadly as some people do about 

 salvation by marketing agencies. You noticed a year ago when we had 

 committees with all of their old numbers attached to them there was a 

 good deal of talk when those committees had made their reports that what 

 had happened at the end of the war would be prevented from ever happen- 

 ing again? I don't think this is a job for any marketing agency to per- 

 form, any more than I think that any sort of credit agency could prevent 

 any friction or difficulty in periods of that sort. The world was ruined by 

 a catastrophe such as we trust, after those agencies which are in opera- 

 tion in the Arms Conference, and what will follow, have come to a head, 

 will never happen again, but if it does I will venture to say that no sort of 

 marketing arrangements, that no sort of co-operative agencies, could pre- 

 vent a considerable amount of the decline, the disastrous decline, which 

 took place at that time. It was something which had reference not to 

 the cost of marketing, but to the whole supply-and-demand situation which 

 ran back to the conditions of production and consumption over the whole 



