476 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. 
not know which of these was in the mind of those who moved 
for the committee which asked me to report. There is the 
question, which is rapidly becoming a very important question, 
of credit for carrying on the business of farming, with which 
question I have been dealing. There is the entirely different 
question of loans for the improvement of property. Last fall 
there was a great drought on the North Shore, and farmers had 
to sell their cattle because of lack of fodder to carry them through 
the winter. Co-operative banking is designed to meet just such 
cases as this, and positively to enable the farmer to extend his 
operations wherever there is a prospect of profit. These banks 
are not mortgage banks, though some of them do lend on mort- 
gage—a position which the apostles of the movement regard as 
illegitimate. There are in Europe, in addition to these popular 
banks, many institutions which exist for the purpose of lending 
money on mortgage for the improvement of land. These banks 
have more than a century of successful history, but their opera- 
tions are confined to the landlord class, and do nothing for the 
business of farming as such. We have had similar institutions 
in America, and in Canada in particular, although they are here 
called by another name. We know them as Loan Companies 
and Trust Companies, which do a very large business in lending 
money on mortgage, particularly in the province of Ontario. 
These are purely private undertakings, and are not backed, asin 
Germany, by the explicit approval of the state. In 1899 there 
was real estate mortgaged to these loan companies to the value 
of 216 millions for loans amounting to 111 millions, or 51 per 
cent. of the value. These companies are said by a very com- 
petent observer, Professor Shortt of Queen’s College, to 
provide an efficient and not very costly credit instrument for 
the farmer. Such institutions, however, are making loans for 
improvement, not for making the business of farming profitable. 
It is true that money is often borrowed on mortgage for other 
than improvement purposes, but such “calamity loans,” as the 
United States Census of 1890 called them, are not made to 
promote the business of farming. ‘“ People mortgage their real 
estate to get married, to obtain divorces, and to pay alimony; 
