132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



farm wants his farm. He does not, as a rule, but at the same 

 time it appears so to the farmer. Now the mortgage was re- 

 new^ed and time went on, but years after, when I became the 

 head of a savings bank, I began to consider this question and to 

 try to understand why the decHne had come in agriculture in 

 our prosperous State of Ohio. It then occurred to me that that 

 very influence of not being able to finance beyond three or five 

 years must have a retarding influence in developing the re- 

 sources of the farmer's land. I believe that just that fact, that 

 the mortgages fall due within three or five years and that the 

 principal cannot be recovered, as a rule, out of the land during 

 that time, is a retarding influence on agriculture in the United 

 States. 



The rural credits movement has two separate and distinct 

 objects: (1) to introduce long-term mortgaging for loans on 

 farm lands; (2) to encourage co-operative banking among 

 farmers. At least these were its original objects. The auspices 

 at the start were propitious. Indeed, they could not have been 

 brighter, since three presidents in succession and the largest 

 political parties indorsed the movement and the entire country 

 united in giving it godspeed. But now public opinion is divided, 

 because the first object has been made the pretext for wild 

 schemes of government intervention, and the second object has 

 been obscured through a misunderstanding of the principles and 

 purposes of co-operation. 



The movement has been converted into a vehicle of experi- 

 mentation. Enthusiasts on land credit have conjured up the 

 dreams of mobilizing and "coining" the soil, and other vagaries 

 which were obsolete before John Law's Mississippi bubble burst. 

 They have revived plans which were tried out and abandoned 

 in the American colonies prior to the birth of the nation. 

 They have resurrected and unconsciously revamped as their 

 own nearly all the rejected ideas advanced in France during 

 the quarter century preceding her first law on agricultural 

 credit. In scurrying over Europe for models they have passed 

 by the German Landschafts and mortgage banks, the French 

 Credit Foncier, and other thoroughly tested concerns organized 

 simply for extending land credit, and have imported for adapta- 

 tion the antiquated institutions which the government some 



