148 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



enough to justify the guarantee given on behalf of the nation ? 

 Again, as a later move, the State would lend money directly if 

 the county council in its turn would recommend the case. However, 

 that modification of the plan makes the task to be accomplished 

 only a little less practicable. How is the county council to make 

 sure that its applicant is a good man, that he will loyally employ 

 the money obtained so as to make it produce more in agriculture 

 than it costs, and that it will be conscientiously repaid ? 



Not to go into particulars, briefly put, these schemes have led to 

 practically no result. A few thousands have been advanced where 

 a good number of millions are required, and creditless agriculture 

 stands where it stood before. 



Meanwhile, on the top of the new demands of modernised hus- 

 bandry, the problem to be solved has still further grown very 

 materially in size. For we have embarked upon a policy of land 

 settlement. We are cutting up estates right and left, and are pre- 

 paring to cut up more, and inviting Tom, Dick and Harry to come 

 and settle on newly- formed small holdings. There are not a few 

 Toms, Dicks and Harrys willing to do so. Only the Toms, Dicks 

 and Harrys in question want to be equipped with money to be able 

 to do it. They possess precious little of that commodity of their 

 own. And we have gone further. Not satisfied with our civilian 

 Toms, Dicks and Harrys, we have asked discharged soldiers to come 

 and become agricultural colonisers. And the number of them who 

 respond is probably not a little swelled by the very unfriendly 

 attitude assumed towards the discharged soldiers by our trade 

 unions, which very patriotically do their best to keep them out of 

 civilian employment. But these soldiers are, if possible, in still 

 greater want of ready money to operate with than the poor civilians 

 already referred to. And, obviously, credit to these men involves 

 greater risk than credit to most others coming into account, because 

 the latter may be assumed when coming forward at all, to be coming 

 forward as knowing something about the cultivation of land, 

 whereas our discharged soldiers — differing in this respect materially 

 from their comrades whom Canada is treating so liberally to the 

 same end— are likely for the most part to be new men, unacquainted 

 with agriculture and not overcertain to remain in it. 



The question of credit has accordingly become not only substan- 

 tially larger but also essentially more difficult. For most of the 

 men previously thought of, whom we talk of as " farmers," are 

 pretty sure to have, at any rate, some of those possessions upon 

 the commend of which, under our banking and moneylending con- 



