Chapter VI 

 PROVIDING THE FUNDS 



Credit in respect of the carrying on of agriculture has occupied 

 a prominent place in our national agenda ever since the inquiry 

 into the state of agriculture by Royal Commission held in 1894. 



Up to the time of the great depression — roughly speaking, in 

 " the eighties " — which provided the call for that inquiry, agri- 

 culture had kept jogging on, generally speaking, at its old easy- 

 going trot. The land was the landlord's. And the landlord was the 

 Little Providence to his tenant. He would even sometimes, as I 

 have shown elsewhere, go the length of supplying his tenant, who 

 was to pay him his rent, with a loan on his " valuation." Supposing 

 that things should in any year go wrong, there was the landlord, the 

 monied man, as he was assumed to be, who could reduce rent or 

 remit it altogether. He was human and could be talked to. Rents 

 generally were not heavy, as we now fully understand. And for the 

 farmer in need of temporary help, assuming that he was generally 

 "good" in character and in financial status, there was the private 

 banker in the county town always willing to accommodate his 

 substantial customers with an occasional overdraft. Cultivation 

 had already made considerable advance beyond its condition in the 

 happy sixties. The call for outlay had become more pressing. But 

 claims upon the farmer's purse, for machinery, fertilisers, feeding 

 stuffs and the like, had not yet become anything like as exacting as 

 they are to-day. 



The " depression " threw the whole thing out of its old balance. 

 Black year followed upon black year. Through the farmer, and also 

 in other ways, the pinch came home to the landlord, whose situation 

 had not in any case before in all circumstances been a bed of roses. 

 On the top of that came the recognised necessity of " intensive " 

 farming with a big purse. Agriculture made more calls upon the 

 farmer's pocket, and between the two necessities emptied many a 

 one. Banks began to amalgamate. Private banks quitted the field, 

 being swallowed up by larger, as small fish are by sharks and whales. 

 Joint stock companies, whose board in London would not allow the 

 old easy cash credit— which never was a favourite with London 

 bankers, except as an accommodation to large commercial houses of 

 first-rate standing — took the place of the accommodating gentlemen 

 in county towns. 



