472 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. DAVIDSON. 



chattels as grain, cattle and implements. An assignment of 

 these, according to the form prescribed by the act, would not, 

 like a chattel mortgage, become notorious, and the basis of a 

 farmer's credit would be badly impaired, no creditor being able 

 to know whether the ownership o property is in the person 

 whom he is asked to trust or in some bank." (Breckenridge, 

 p. 348.) The principles of our banking system are so well 

 established and its practice so well approved by experience, that 

 the farmer has nothing more to hope for in that quarter. He 

 has still less to hope for from any tinkering and amendment of 

 that system which might destroy its present perfect adaptation 

 to our commercial and currency needs without being able to 

 improve the farmer's position in the slightest degree. 



But the problem still remains how the farmer is to be 

 accommodated with the capital and the credit his business 

 require. We may acquiesce in the political wisdom of rigidly 

 confining the banks to their proper function of providing com- 

 mercial credit, but must we acquiesce in the absence of credit 

 facilities for the farmer ? Agriculture is in all countries the 

 most important, and in most the dominant, industry, and its pro- 

 gress cannot be hampered and hindered without national loss. 

 We may ask, therefore, whether it is not possible to develope 

 credit institutions, under government regulation, it may be, to 

 supply this need, or whether it is possible for the government of 

 the country to supply the lack directly. Such attempts have 

 been made, and we now turn to a description of what has been 

 done, and is being done, in other countries, or among ourselves, 

 to meet the demand. There are two great methods, people's 

 banks and government loans. Both are of comparatively recent 

 origin, and both have the same aim of providing the farmer with 

 what the banks have not, and, in my opinion, cannot adequately 

 provide. 



The People's Banks of Europe were established to provide 

 farming credit, and it is difficult to realise the amount of busi- 



o 



ness that is done through them. They are of two classes : one 

 better adapted for providing credit to small merchants and pro- 

 ducers, the other distinctively agricultural. They aim at making 



