242 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



inclined to say that it is the most deserving object permissible. 

 That adds another 59 per cent., making up two-thirds of the busi- 

 ness transacted as what is generally understood as mortgage busi- 

 ness. However, such conversion of hampering and usurious loans 

 into more convenient and cheaper ones is bound, sooner or later, to 

 come to an end, and in the Act land-improving purposes occupy the 

 largest space and the first rank. It may, indeed, be held that assist- 

 ance towards the purchase of land is really the main object of the 

 measure. It now figures, as shown, at a comparatively small per- 

 centage. The balance is all for construction of buildings, purchase 

 of live stock, of fertilisers, and so on — all of them either land improve- 

 ment or else purely temporary working purposes objects. Hence, in 

 all probability, the limitation of the time for which money may be 

 loaned from the seventy and seventy-five years usual under Euro- 

 pean systems — which makes the annual payment to sinking fund a 

 light burden — to forty years only, which is short for mortgages, 

 but much too long for the purchase of fertilisers and live stock. 

 Congress has certainly been wise in excluding from the list of per- 

 missible objects advances to municipalities and other public cor- 

 porations. The French Credit fonder, at the time of M. Haussmann's 

 vigorous beautification of Paris — and asphalting the streets so as to 

 prevent the erection of barricades — lost no less than 18,000,000 

 francs under this head. 



The American Farm Loan Act authorises mortgage business in 

 three different ways — one by National Farm Loan Associations 

 which are intended to be " co-operative," consisting of at least ten 

 members freely co-opted, which — if they can satisfy the Farm Loan 

 Board sufficiently to induce that supreme authority from which the 

 money comes to give them a charter — initiate their own local busi- 

 ness and make themselves answerable for the loans contracted by 

 their fellows and served by agents of the Federal Farm Loan Board 

 Banks ; secondly, agents, acting directly under the twelve Farm 

 Loan Banks chartered for as many districts of the United States, to 

 facilitate business in localities in which no " associations " have 

 been formed ; and, thirdly, by Farm Loan Banks, which raise their 

 own money, issue their own bonds, provide their own security, and 

 deal in credit on their own account as a matter of profit. Above 

 all stands the Federal Farm Loan Board at Washington, an official 

 body, supervising all, directing the whole business, ordering the 

 requisite drafts on Treasury funds, pronouncing its rulings on 

 doubtful points arising and holding all concerned vigilantly to their 

 duty. 



