5O THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



ised to loan 50 per cent, of the value of the lands, and 

 in addition 20 per cent, of the existing or proposed 

 improvements. These promises as to liberal amounts 

 have been generously kept. 



During the farm mortgage boom of thirty to thirty- 

 five years ago, able men with abundance of capital, 

 high credit and years of business experience in other 

 lines, organized farm loaning concerns, such as the 

 Lombard Investment Company, the Equitable Trust 

 Company, the Jarvis-Conkling Company, and a mul- 

 titude of others. These had among their officers and 

 directorates bankers and merchants of the highest busi- 

 ness standing, and an abundance of capital and credit. 

 Practically every one of these companies have failed 

 or gone out of business the few that survived were 

 scarcely sufficient for " the exception which proves 

 the rule." These monumental failures were brought 

 about chiefly, if not solely, because men in whose 

 hands the management of these concerns fell were 

 without experience in the farm mortgage business, and 

 were ignorant of those fundamental facts and condi- 

 tions upon which farmers' credit should be based. 

 This is proven by the fact that scores of individuals 

 and corporations then in the farm mortgage business 

 passed through the panic of 1893, tne depression and 

 the delirium of 1896, with practically no losses; and 

 before the depression following that panic had entirely 

 passed away, resumed the farm mortgage business, 

 and have ever since continued with increasing vigor 

 and success. Among these might be named Pearson 

 & Taft, of Chicago; Burnham, Trevitt & Mattis, of 

 Illinois; Anthony Brothers, of Peoria, Illinois; R. E. 



