AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. 465 
really legitimate credit. It is consumer's, not producer's credit ; 
it is accommodation which is intended to cover expenditure 
already made, credit which is not intended to yield a profit. It is 
not a credit of which a man may be proud, and it hurts or ought 
to hurt the standing of a man to be known to receive it. This 
kind of credit the farmer may receive; but it is precisely this 
fact that requires a remedy. He, a producer, should be entitled 
to legitimate or producer’s credit, and should not be held down 
to that which non-producers, in an overdeveloped banking prac- 
tice, may be given. The farmer’s just ground of complaint is 
that, while he may share with the general public in the general 
benefits which a banking system confers, he is debarred, from 
one reason or another, from a perfectly legitimate producer's 
credit as a matter of business, although he may receive a limited 
amount of personal credit as accommodation. 
Our banking system is not specially adapted to the needs of 
the farmer as farmer. In so far as agriculture is a branch of 
commerce, that is, in so far as the farmer has finished goods to 
sell, he may be specially benefitted. He is then in almost as 
good a position as the manufacturer, who, too, like the farmer, 
markets his wares at second hand; and the whole process of 
exchange is facilitated by sound banking as much for the wheat 
from the farm as for the cloth from the factory. For commerce 
we have a most excellent system, eminently well fitted to assist 
in marketing goods of all kinds. It provides us with an elastic 
currency which maxes money easv at the time when most business 
isto be done. It facilitates the moving of the crops in the latter 
end of the year, and it is doubtful if the farming community 
realizes how much it benefits in this way, and how much harder 
the case would be if our bankiug system was less perfect than it 
is. Ina general way, there is a recognition of its excellence, 
because the banks have served the communit; so well that we 
have heard but the faintest echoes of a “silver question” in 
Canada. 
But we have to consider the farmer, not merely as having 
something to sell, but, in his wore important aspect, as a pro- 
