FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 507 



get iuformation on a subject than it is here. "We found it pretty 

 generally true that you can't get a direct answer to a question as 

 you can in this country, but I think they have something like the 

 Torrens system of titles. That system is optional in Illinois. In 

 Canada they use it entirely, and in some states of the Union. If 

 you put your land under it 3'ou go through a certain process, and 

 after that you don't need any abstract. You can't put an instru- 

 ment on record unless it is correct and perfect in every respect, 

 and the certificate that you hold shows your title, with what en- 

 cumbrance there is. If you want to obtain a mortgage on your 

 farm, you take your certificate to the recorder's office and put the 

 mortgage on record and a new instrument is issued to you showing 

 your title subject to this mortgage. 



Mr. Oliva: You will agree with me that under our statute ten 

 years bars a great many of these defects in the title ; and yet if I 

 sell my neighbor a farm, he will take my abstract to an attorney 

 and he will find all kinds of objections back thirty or fifty years. 

 I have had experience in that, and w^e have had cases right in our 

 own toAvn where the best of abstract examiners have turned down 

 their own abstracts. They acted on it one year, and two years after 

 that the farm sold again, and they said the title wasn't good after 

 they approved it before. There is a big graft there; you will aU 

 admit that. 



Mr. Gregory : Do you think we could handle this any other 

 way except through the Torrens system? 



Mr. Hogan: Our titles are considered good at the present time. 

 This is not a government institution in any way ; it is no more a 

 government bank than one of the state banks in the state of Iowa is 

 a government bank. 



Henry Wallace : Will you kindly explain to this convention, 

 assuming they are all farmers who want to get this cheap money, 

 how they have to go about getting it? 



Mr. Hogan : I am advocating what are called in Germany the 

 joint stock landschaft and in France the Credit Foncier. My idea 

 is for a law to be passed authorizing the incorporation of state mort- 

 gage debentures, not much different from the loan and trust com- 

 panies at the present time. The only provision would be that they 

 would take the mortgages, and the entire transaction would be un- 

 der close government supervision. They should only loan up to 

 a certain value of the farm, and the mortgages should be kept with 

 the Auditor of State or some state official. No more bonds could 



