No. 4.] RURAL CREDITS. 133 



time established for breaking up the feudal system, and the 

 bureaus and commissions which the government has recently- 

 established to distribute money obtained or appropriated for 

 ignorant and indigent peasants, or to meet problems arising 

 from absenteeism, city congestion, compulsory military service, 

 land reclamation and interior colonization. 



Existing methods and institutions in the United States have 

 been practically ignored. Originality of design, with any 

 defects in that design cured by State aid, appears to be the 

 hobby of the enthusiasts on land credit, and, in confusion of 

 precedents and disregard of actual conditions and necessities, 

 they have elaborated in their minds artificial structures which 

 needs must have extraneous support. So it happens that there 

 is now being proposed for American farmers a general use of 

 government cash and credit on a scale that has not yet appeared 

 in any country. American agriculture does not call for such 

 aid, but these things do, since without it the chances would be 

 slight of their ever being patronized by the farmers or the 

 investing public. 



* As respects co-operative banking, the enthusiasts have over- 

 looked the eminently practical character that it must maintaiti, 

 have exalted it into altruism, and have demanded for it far 

 more than the guiding hand and assistance of the government. 

 They have gone even beyond the idea of charity and alms- 

 giving, have forestalled the millennium and appealed to a 

 sublimated spirit of self-abnegation and brotherly love. They 

 have conceived Utopias in which human instincts and personal 

 ambitions may be suppressed, and the elysian fields may be 

 cultivated by perennially happy farmers, each renouncing his 

 individual good, sharing with his less fortunate co-laborers the 

 fruits of his toil, and devoting his spare time to organizing co- 

 operative societies in which producer and consumer, bondholder 

 and mortgagor, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor, all 

 may live and work in harmony, enjoying the best prices on 

 purchases and sales, and granting or receiving loans from 

 money obtained on their collective guaranty as cheaply as the 

 United States government can secure funds, or at rates always 

 lower than those current in the market. 



These appeals to altruism and demands for special privilege. 



