ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 145 



closed. These statistics do not indicate a thriving condition 

 for the farmers. None should brag about the prosperity of 

 the farmers until these mortgages are all paid off. And they 

 should not be paid off by the Federal Farm Loan plan either, 

 but by an increased price for their products. 



The Federal Farm Loan plan is the banker's device to get 

 a perpetual mortgage on all the farms and to hold all for 

 the security of each. Before the scheme was in working order 

 three months, over $7,000,000 had been loaned the farmers, 

 and over 5,000 farm-loan associations were being organized 

 throughout the United States. It was expected that over 

 $200,000,000 would be loaned to these farm associations 

 within the first year. The government aided the banks in 

 this scheme to get a strangle-hold on. the farmers, but will 

 not aid the farmers the least bit to get released. They 

 should unionize to release themselves through higher wages 

 to save mortgaging, and pay off the old debts. 



Governor Sees Conditions But Not Remedy. 



Excerpts from Governor Allen's message to the Kansas 

 Legislature on January 15, shows that he recognizes a de- 

 plorable condition in agriculture, but suggests false remedies 

 unless safeguarded by the minimum price system : 



"In my judgment, the most rapidly growing question in Kansas 

 today is that which concerns the increase in tenant occupation of farm 

 lands. 



"All countries have had their day with this menace. The Eastern 

 States have struggled with it for years. In Illinois it has grown so 

 alarmingly that something like 60 per cent of the best land of that 

 State is now owned by men who hold it for speculative purposes or for 

 what it will yield to them in rentals. For so many years in Kansas we 

 were free from the evil that we had grown into the easy habit of believ- 

 ing that we would always be exempt. It has been the boast of all 

 citizens who eulogize the State that we are 'a commonwealth of home- 

 owners.' Therefore it comes as something of an alarming surprise to 

 note that since 1880 the percentage of farms operated by tenants has 

 been increasing as rapidly in this State as in any^State in the Union, 



