476 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. DAVIDSON. 



not know which of these was in the mind of those who moved 

 for the committee which asked me to report. There is the 

 question, which is rapidly becoming a very important question, 

 of credit for carrying on the business of farming, with which 

 question I have been dealing. There is the entirely different 

 question of loans for the improvement of property. Last fall 

 there was a great drought on the North Shore, and farmers had 

 to sell their cattle because of lack of fodder to carry them through 

 the winter. Co-operative banking is designed to meet just such 

 cases as this, and positively to enable the farmer to extend his 

 operations wherever there is a prospect of profit. These banks 

 are not mortgage banks, though some of them do lend on mort- 

 gage a position which the apostles of the movement regard as 

 illegitimate. There are in Europe, in addition to these popular 

 banks, many institutions which exist for the purpose of lending 

 money on mortgage for the improvement of land. These banks 

 have more than a century of successful history, but their opera- 

 tions are confined to the landlord class, and do nothing for the 

 business of farming as such. We have had similar institutions 

 in America, and in Canada in particular, although they are here 

 called by another name. We know them as Loan Companies 

 and Trust Companies, which do a very large business in lending 

 money on mortgage, particularly in the province of Ontario. 

 These are purely private undertakings, and are not backed, as in 

 Germany, by the explicit approval of the state. In 1899 there 

 was real estate mortgaged to these loan companies to the value 

 of 216 millions for loans amounting to 111 millions, or 51 per 

 cent, of the value. These companies are said by a very com- 

 petent observer, Professor Shortt of Queen's College, to 

 provide an efficient and not very costly credit instrument for 

 the farmer. Such institutions, however, are making loans for 

 improvement, not for making the business of farming profitable. 

 It is true that money is often borrowed on mortgage for other 

 than improvement purposes, but such " calamity loans," as the 

 United States Census of 1890 called them, are not made to 

 promote the business of farming. " People mortgage their real 

 estate to get married, to obtain divorces, and to pay alimony ; 



