560 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



edented last spring. The case of wool is, peiTiaps, the most easily under- 

 stood and illustrated. We had an immense surplus of wool in this coun- 

 try. Many of you know that from your own experience. We had great 

 stores of it piled up. It was at a ruinously low price, and notwithstanding 

 that, wool was coming into this country at the rate of thirty to forty 

 million pounds a month. The United States was the only country that 

 offered a market at any price for wool; it was the only country that had 

 money to pay at any price, and much of that wool was brought in and 

 bought and simply stored away by the woolen mills against the time when 

 they could use it, and much of the rest of it was brought in and our credit 

 was applied to it, and it was shipped on overseas on a basis of credit pur- 

 chase. When you have conditions of that kind, a tariff of any sort helps 

 just that much. At any rate, congress promptly passed the tariff on the 

 theory that it would help. 



Then it passed three or four laws tending to make better credit con- 

 ditions. For example, it passed a law that permitted the joint stock land 

 banks to raise the rate of interest one-half per cent to make their bonds 

 more salable. It passed another act which made it possible for the farm 

 land banks to increase their capital to the limit fixed by law, making 

 $200,000,000 capital available for farm land banks, and within the past 

 three months those farm land banks have marketed $60,000,000 worth of 

 bonds at par. Captain Smith, of this state, as a member of this institution, 

 tells me that they have every expectation of being able to market at least 

 $12,000,000 worth of those bonds each month. Well, that has had a most 

 helpful effect in relieving the situation of many farmers who were not 

 able to get loans on their farms at a fair rate of interest. Then the amend- 

 ment to the War Finance Corporation act which makes it possible for the 

 War Finance Corporation to extend its loans both for export and for agri- 

 cultural production purposes at home to as much as $1,000,000,000. Many 

 people thought that that money should be made available to the Individ- 

 uals, and that there is a good deal of complaint that it is not reaching the 

 individual farmer. Well, when you consider the number of individual 

 farmers who would like to avail themselves of that, and the difficulties of 

 setting up an administrative machine sufficiently efficient to administer 

 that fund and deal with the individuals, you will see how utterly impos- 

 sible it would be. Not only because of the difficulty of setting up the me- 

 chanics of such an operation, but also because of the lack of knowledge of 

 that individual's other borrowings. If you are going to reach the indi- 

 vidual farmer, it must be through a local institution which is thoroughly 

 familiar with his condition, with his other borrowings, and with his proper 

 claims for credit. Now, it was to be expected that it would be rather slow 

 work in creating the machinery necessary to deal through the banks, even, 

 and I have been astonished with the rapidity with which that has been 

 created. If you could be in the office there a little while and see the great 

 number of applications that come in, and realize the necessity of care in 

 passing on all of those applications — because when all is said and done 

 the purpose is not to make a present of the money, but to loan It intelli- 

 gently and upon terms which give fair promise of its return. If you could 

 come in there and see all of those operations which must be gone through 



