250 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



successfully solved — co-operative credit of the type generally known 

 by that name coming in to help afterwards with credit raised on 

 personal security for working purposes. Wherever the institutions 

 here described exist, rural property is in the main occupied and 

 cultivated by owners and the evil of " running the farm for leaving " 

 is done away with, to the benefit of both cultivators and the country. 



We have, as already shown, for a considerable time back had the 

 methods of land credit here set forth held up to us as a matter 

 worthy of attention. There was reason in the admonition. For 

 the collective debt resting upon our rural properties is known to be 

 very heavy, and by no means diminishing. It is some thirty or 

 forty years ago that Mr. Hugh de E. Montgomery computed it as 

 £900,000,000. And our past methods of raising money upon land 

 are neither economical nor free from trouble, worry and in some 

 cases uncertainty. A new cause for coveting more convenient 

 access to land credit was added when the nation decided to embark 

 upon a policy of methodical creation of small holdings, on which 

 question a rather heated controversy has quite needlessly arisen, 

 as to the greater advisableness of ownership or tenancy. In that 

 controversy the advocates of ownership appear to have had the best 

 of the argument. But if the new holder is to be an owner, he will, 

 in the majority of cases, necessarily have to be helped with ready 

 credit, repayable by very easy means, in the course of a long period, 

 so as to be in the least possible degree burdensome to him and to his 

 operations. 



Now there is no earthly reason why we should not enjoy the same 

 easy and cheap credit, with similarly cheap and easy transfer — 

 without all the present trouble of investigation of title, preparation 

 of abstracts of title, affidavits to prove ownership, search for persons 

 qualified to make such, and the rest of it — if we will only place 

 ourselves on an equality with the people who now enjoy the said 

 credit in one important particular which is now lacking. Neither 

 our laws nor any other custom of ours stand in the way. Land- 

 schaften of the purely Prussian type would scarcely suit us. But 

 there is no reason why we should not have joint stock mortgage 

 banks, or else co-operative mortgage societies after the type of the 

 Saxon kreditverein or the Danish societies, which have all worked 

 exceedingly well. 



The one trouble in our case is the absence of easily accessible 

 proof of ownership and of the precise identity, boundaries, etc., 

 of the property to be pledged. 



A comparison of cases in my experience may help to illustrate 



