CHAPTER XI 



CREDIT 



Debt. "Many neighbors have sold out and quit farming," 

 writes a northwestern farm woman, " because they had to. We 

 will have to sell this fall, because we are so deep in debt it will 

 nearly kill me if we have to leave the farm. I do so want to keep 

 my husband and children there. I don't see how I can part with 

 the horses. I hate the cities and am afraid of them, so I hope that 

 the lawmakers will believe that ours is a real need. I am 25 years 

 old and our children are aged 6, 4, and 2J/ years. I don't belong 

 to the 'I Won't Works,' but would like a little pay." 



This letter is one from a collection of many received from farm 

 women in response to an inquiry on "How the U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture can better meet the needs of farm housewives?" 



It illustrates in a concrete way the very disagreeable fact that 

 the farmer's credit problem is, in certain cases, a real one. The 

 letter suggests that our lawmakers "do something" to meet the 

 credit needs of the day. 



New View of Credit. The attitude of the public mind has 

 undergone a tremendous revolution on the subject of credit. About 

 two hundred years ago a French king said, "Credit supports 

 agriculture as the rope supports the hanged." In our own history 

 the New England idea of thrift and the teaching of Poor Richard's 

 Almanac were both to the effect that debt is a disgrace and must 

 be avoided like the plague. Hence a mortgage came to be looked 

 on as a disgrace, a sort of skeleton in the family closet. There 

 was some excuse for this attitude in the days of free land, of home- 

 spun clothing, of homemade tillage tools. Farming then was really 

 an investment of labor on free land. But now farming represents 

 the balanced investment of three factors of production land, 

 labor, and capital. In short, agriculture is now on a capitalistic 

 basis. The land has a large cash value. The farm equipment has 

 a large cash value. Agriculture has come to be a business involving 

 the administration of capital. According to the 1910 census, the 

 average Iowa farm represented an investment in land and farm 

 buildings of $15,008, in farm machinery of $440, and in livestock 

 of $1811. In other words the Iowa farmer has a business invest- 

 ment of $17,259. The village merchant can no longer proudly 

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