FRENCH AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 89 



credit, purchases upon credit of cattle, stock and 

 farm necessaries, or for family maintenance, etc., is 

 known to be about ;/^66o,ooo,ooo — viz., 14^ milliards, 

 plus the mortgage loans (2 milliards) of the Credit 

 Foncier. The above estimate is made by most careful 

 economists and financiers, after allowing no less than 

 ;!^ 1 80,000,000 (4I milliards) for mortgages discharged 

 but not struck off the registration records, from which 

 the gross total of 21 milliards (^840,000,000) is derived. 

 It includes, however, all urban mortgages, and not 

 rural only. In the department of the Garonne, a 

 vine-growing tract, for which particulars are given 

 in an American Consular Report, the annual mort- 

 gages w^ere stated at 4'68 per cent, of the total value 

 of the land ; as mortgages are only given to one-half 

 the estimated value, it follows that each year about 

 9 per cent, of the land is mortgaged, while since the 

 mortgages are usually for a considerable term, it 

 follows that the bulk of the land is under mortgage. 

 As a matter of fact, actually existing mortgages amount 

 in that department to about one-third the estimated 

 full value, and therefore to about two-thirds of the 

 mortgage value of the land. 



* For Austria no complete data are available, but 

 in only a portion of Austria — a comparatively poor 

 country with only 160 persons to the square mile — 

 the mortgage debts in 1888 were ^^160,000,000 on 

 peasants' holdings only, and the increase between 

 1867-88 was 42 per cent. Of these debts the 

 " number of cases due to the issue of warrants of 

 execution" was 1576 per cent, in 1868 and 31 per 

 cent, in 1888, while the value of such cases was 4'34 

 in 1868 and 7'23 in 1888, showing a large increase in 

 the court-sales of small properties. About one-fifth 

 of the cases and one-fourth of the amount of the debts 

 were due to the purchase and inheritance of land, even 

 in this sparsely-inhabited country. 



' For Germany statistics are not available, but the 



