28 ' AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



The general purpose of these so-called Raift'eisen asso- 

 ciations is to enable the man who may not need a large amount 

 of funds, who is not in a position perhaps to mortgage his real 

 estate, but who could use to very good advantage more and 

 better utensils and could enlarge his activity in some such way 

 as that, — to enable him to branch out in that small way as he 

 may desire and thereby carry on his activity with a larger 

 efficiency than he had theretofore been able to carry it on. So 

 much for the present for the Raiffeisan associations. 



Another form that has met the strong approval of those who 

 have investigated it from this country is the so-called Lands- 

 chaften association which in perhaps all substantial respects is 

 similar to the Raiffeisen association, and yet in a number of 

 important ways differs from it. It is an association of a cor- 

 porate character and is based upon land mortgage, the mem- 

 bers of which are supposed to be people who themselves want to 

 mortgage their farms for the purpose either of acquiring more 

 land or for the purpose of making some large improvement. Now 

 ouly people who are borrowers of considerable amounts of 

 money belong to the Landschaften association. There is not in 

 this, as there is in the Raiffeisen association, any expectation 

 of dividends simply from the holding of stock. There would 

 be no special motive for anybody's ioining a Landschaften 

 association unless he expected to borrow a considerable amount 

 of money and unless he was willing to mortgage his real estate 

 for the purpose of so borrowing. Now in that connection I 

 desire to call attention briefly to a contrast which we may all 

 readily observe between the character of the credit furnished 

 by such an organization in this countn,^ as a railroad and that 

 furnished by the ordinary farmer. In the case of a railroad, or 

 an industrial plant, or a mine, you have a highly negotiable in- 

 strument in the form of a bond that anybody as an investor of 

 experience may readily recognize the character of and which 

 has, as we say, a very high degree of negotiability. It is a very 

 fluid instrument. It is a liquid instrument. The man who may 

 be uncertain as to how long he will care to keep a given bond 

 has no hesitation whatever in putting his surplus cash into that, 

 realizing, as he does, that he can dispose of it very readily at 

 any time he sees fit. Consider then, if you please, the difference 

 between that and the case of the farmer who like the railroad 



