THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 49 



Committee, or summoned to hearings held throughout 

 the country ostensibly to gather information as to its 

 desirability or method of operation. On the con- 

 trary, the men so called seemed to be selected from 

 among those most likely to favor the scheme, usually 

 job hunting politicians, land boomers, or impecunious 

 farmers or renters, who desired greater credit for 

 themselves. Nor, so far as I can learn, were the men 

 chosen to organize and control these institutions se- 

 lected from men of large experience and responsibil- 

 ity in the farm mortgage business. When the several 

 Federal Land Banks were organized, they were not 

 to cooperate, but to compete, with men and concerns 

 already engaged in the legitimate farm mortgage busi- 

 ness. The first bid for popularity was that they would 

 loan more money on the same security than the es- 

 tablished mortgage agencies and would loan to a class 

 of people whose credit was not satisfactory to those 

 established institutions. Who can conceive of the 

 chaotic conditions of our national finances at this 

 moment, had the new banking system been so organ- 

 ized, established and conducted, that it is not in coop- 

 eration, but in competition, with the established banks, 

 holding out as an attractive feature that they would 

 loan more money on the same basis of security than 

 the old banks had found safe, and to a class of people 

 who had not earned a credit with the older banks? 

 But that is just what the Federal Land Banks did. 



Before, during and ever since the farm mortgage 

 boom of thirty years ago, the farm loans were based 

 and restricted to one-third of the total value of the 

 land and buildings. The Federal institutions prom- 



