30 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Contrast that with a typical case of the American farmer. I 

 am not so sure about the conditions here as I am in the Central 

 West with which I have been associated until very recently, 

 but I know that on the average out there the farmer would 

 carry the loan for twenty years, have paid over $15,000 and 

 have in addition not a cent toward the purchase of his land. 

 We have maintained seemingly a very haphazard system in con- 

 nection with our real estate mortgage business. The theory 

 seemingly has been that a mortgage ought to be drawn up 

 merely for a period of three or four or five years, whereas the 

 statistics show that the average life of a mortgage is vastly 

 longer than that in this country, causing very decided incon- 

 venience at times and embarrassment to the borrower as 

 well as the lender. Now a distinct feature of this Landschaf- 

 ten system is the sinking fund feature whereby in addition to 

 the low rate of interest that is charged as interest the borrower 

 is obliged to pay a slight additional rate of interest that grad- 

 ually accumulates as a sinking fund, so that at the expiration 

 of the given period, twenty, twenty-five or thirty years, he has 

 paid for the real estate that he has purchased. 



Possibly this is sufficient in general explanation of the 

 character of the two forms of local agricultural credit associa- 

 tions that have been operated with such great success in foreign 

 countries. There seems to be no doubt whatever that they 

 are, in substance at least, adaptable to American conditions. 

 There is no question whatever of the possibility of applying the 

 general principles of some of these local credit associations to 

 American rural life. It will certainly be necessary, as one 

 condition to this adaptation, that we have strict government 

 supervision of these associations ; that we proceed gradually. 

 The process ought to be one of building up locally. The Amer- 

 ican farmer has been a distinctive individualist heretofore. He 

 is now in contrast with the European farmer. And undoubt- 

 edly the movement of such organizations as this will be slow 

 because the American farmer hesitates to enroll himself in co- 

 operative efforts with others. The preceding speaker spoke in 

 brief upon the fact that the xA.merican farmer has lagged 

 behind in the adoption of up-to-date and improved methods and 

 in contrast with his industrial brother in other fields of activity 

 in this country he has remained altogether too distinctively 



