306 PROVISION or BORROWING FACILITIES. 



credit, or that based on a man's status and general position, his 

 character, his property and his reputation. 



Before proceeding to discuss the ' Credit Agricole ', it will be well 

 to rehearse once more the nature of the credit required by the farmer ; 

 it is impossible to discuss or devise systems for granting him credit 

 unless his needs are distinctly denned and grasped. For permanent 

 improvements then, whether of irrigation, plantation, building, level- 

 ling, and those lengthy operations which convert mere " anatJii farisn" 

 or neglected and possibly exhausted dry lands into fertile gardens, 

 long-term loans are needed, in which the capital borrowed may be 

 replaced by small annual instalments from the improved income. This 

 form of credit is based upon the security of the land itself, which 

 remains permanently as the guarantee for the loan. This is the Credit 

 Foncier. But the farmer, proprietor, or tenant, requires other classes 

 of credit; he needs money for cattle, manure, new implements, seed, 

 maintenance, wages, rent or assessment, etc., and for this compara- 

 tively short-term loans are necessary, varying in duration according to 

 the class of requirement, from (say) three months to three or four 

 years. Now, unless, as in Switzerland, mortgages are cheap and very 

 accessible, it is obviously absurd to pledge land for a mere passing 

 need. The crops, stock, and personal status of the farmer ought to be 

 amply sufficient for loans necessarily moderate and of comparatively 

 brief term ; if credit has been effectively organized in a country, 

 nothing can be simpler than for the farmer to seek his banker and 

 obtain a short loan either on his mere bill or note of hand, or as a cash 

 credit, or by a bill of sale, or in other simple ways. But this is 

 precisely what is universally wanting to the small farmer ; universally, 

 that is, on the continent of Europe, where " the ignorant peasants, 

 recognizing nothing save that money is necessary, rush into debt, and 

 fall into the clutches of men who, under pretext of helping them, only 

 desire to cause their ruin and to grow rich at their expense." It is then 

 the organization of this class of credit that remains to be 'discussed. 

 It will be useful, further to point out that discussions in France have 

 largely turned upon chattel credit, e.g., in giving the farmey a greater 

 borrowing value in his crops and movables by limiting the landlord's 

 privileges over them, in enabling him to pledge his stock, crops, etc., 

 without delivery to the pledgee, etc., while in Germany chattel credit 

 has never attracted much attention ; it is the development of personal 

 credit that has there occupied men's minds. 



