EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII 375 



ber of the association or a borrower; he is the only officer of the 

 association who is exempt from the privileges of membership. He 

 may be a local banker, the postmaster, a lawyer, or anybody the 

 board of directors may select. He ought to be a competent 

 business man; he has considerable business to look after. He 

 has to see that the collections of this interest are made and for- 

 warded, and that the money is properly disbursed when it is sent 

 out to the borrowers. He is an official who is under bond. This 

 one-half of one per cent which is authorized is his sole compen- 

 sation for handling that business, including the maintenance of 

 his office and his clerk hire. The rule stipulates that the borrower 

 shall pay that only once, and when he pays that fee, together 

 with the uniform membership fee of $5.00, which is paid into the 

 incidental fund of the association for incidental expenses, that is 

 all he has to pay for the handling of that loan for the period of 

 thirty-six years. That means the difference to the borrower of 

 saving about six renewals, six commissions, six attorney fees for 

 the examination of his abstract, six different appraisals of his 

 property. 



Q. How large an amount is loaned? 



Mr. Odell : We are authorized, under the present terms of the 

 law, to loan a maximum sum of $10,000 to one man. "We are 

 authorized to loan up to 50 per cent of the appraised value of the 

 land, and if the land is well improved and has good buildings, 

 an additional 20 per cent of the value of the insurable buildings. 

 Practically all of our loans run about the limit of $10,000. 



Mr. "Wilbur M. Fisk, representing the Federal Marketing Bu- 

 reau, with headquarters at Omaha, was then introduced, and ad- 

 dressed the convention as follows : 



GOVERNMENT MARKET REPORTS. 



Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Convention: What is my good 

 fortune in being able to attend this convention, I am somewhat afraid 

 will prove your misfortune, as I am certain that Mr. Hall, of the Wash- 

 ington office of the Bureau of Markets, whose place on your program I 

 have been asked to take, could have presented to you a broader and clearer 

 statement of the work and plans of the bureau than it is possible for me 

 to do. But urgent official business made it impossible for him to be in 

 attendance at this important meeting. 



I shall endeavor to give you briefly an outline of the -parlous phases 

 of the bureau^s work on the problems involved in the marketing of live 

 stock and meats, so far as they have been developed. This will be strictly 

 a plain statement of the facts which it is hoped will enable you to judge 

 the value of the work being done, the soundness of the theories upon 



