226 THE BUSINESS OF FAEMING 



highways and public ditches became a necessity. 

 So the doing of all these things, and they were 

 done upon a most extensive scale, called for the 

 expenditure of large sums of money. The price 

 of farm products was low and so the average 

 farmer became burdened with debt and became an 

 easy prey to money lenders who took advantage 

 of his situation to promote their own interests. 

 The farmer seemed to be classed as legitimate prey 

 along the money lending line. Some were able to 

 weather their financial storms, but scores went 

 down under the cyclone of mortgage foreclosure 

 that followed as a result of their inability to meet 

 their mortgages. 



It may be safely stated that as a rule the aver- 

 age farmer can secure money or credit to carry 

 on a goodly portion of his farm operations, but at 

 the same time the author has come to the conclu- 

 sion from personal observation, study and inter- 

 views, that the business of farming is either seri- 

 ously lacking in the necessary capital to carry on 

 successfully its operations, or there is some other 

 cause responsible for many of the conditions that 

 obtain upon many of our farms. 



Nine-tenths of our farms do not have sufficient 

 buildings to house the necessary farm machinery 

 to run the farm and so enough farm machinery is 

 exposed each year to weather conditions that re- 

 sults in almost enough loss to pay the national 

 debt. No farmer would leave his implements ex- 

 posed if he had the proper buildings in which to 

 house them. He simply does not have the money 

 to build the buildings in which to properly care for 

 them and so does the best he can, or he fails to do 



