ORGANIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL CREDIT 47 



Another criticism put forward is perhaps that one which would have 

 most weight with regard to the improvement of the farmer's economic po- 

 sition. It is as follows. The Spanish farmer needs money for sowing and 

 paying for necessary work and for his livelihood until his harvest is gathered. 

 When once he has obtained this money he is preoccupied by the necessity 

 of paying it back, and as soon as his crops are ripe he is in a hurry to har- 

 vest and sell them. . In other words he sells immediately after the harvest 

 when everyone in the same situation as himself is also selling his produce, 

 that is when prices are lowest, and ]\e leaves to others the profit of the rise 

 in prices which always occurs a few months later. How then is it possible 

 that a perfect organization of agricultural credit should not take these 

 facts into account ? 



To these arguments the public authority answers that the establish- 

 ment of warehouses for the products of agriculture and stock farming, to 

 which the preceding objection implicitly alludes, is a co-operative function, 

 and that, like the purchase of the materials of agriculture in large quanti- 

 ties and the sale on commission of country produce, it cannot be organized 

 so that it fulfils its object except by means of central federations and lo- 

 cal co-operative societies. The latter must organize — and the State 

 must help them — the large groupings which will embrace the whole move- 

 ment of agricultural co-operation. The contrary course would be to 

 create a great commercial company in the form of an agricultural fund or 

 bank. As to the fact that warehouses excercise credit in that they can 

 grant loans on the security of deposited products, their working demands 

 an exclusive and special organization with which no organization of 

 personal credit, such as the Credit Fund under consideration, .should be 

 mixed (i). 



As regards the role of intermediary entrusted to the Central Fund, 

 the form established by the decree is approved, for general opinion recog- 

 nizes that in Spain contact must first be established between privileged or 

 free banks and the large agricultural associations which know the district 

 and smaller local societies and can introduce them to the banks. Thus the 

 machinery will be complete, and the organ created will be able to act in- 

 dependently and to use for the accomplishment of its task a network of 

 associations as serried as it is vast. 



The participation of the fositos in this new organization has also been 

 favourably received. In rural circles there is a conviction that these estab- 

 lishments could not be suppressed, in spite of the ills which have affected 

 them in the last two centuries. In order that they may again render the 

 services which were once their distinction it is only necessary, according to 

 the most generally received opinion, to complete the liquidation of their 

 property and their credit, and then to modernize their fmictions and en- 

 trust their administration to independent persons, technically compe- 

 tent. But until this transformation is effected, and in order to prepare 



(i) See in this connection the Boletin de la Associacion de Agricultitres de Espaiia for 

 October 1916, pages 283 et seq. 



