CHAPTER V 



Working Credit for Farmers 



The first requisite for successful Agriculture under 

 maximum production per acre — given, of course, the land 

 upon which it is to be produced — is Money. The days of 

 skimming the natural fertility off, with little labour, rude 

 implements and haphazard cropping, the plant food so 

 removed to be replaced by one or more years of unprofit- 

 able fallow, are past. We want more out of the soil now than 

 the scanty harvests of those days. Farming has become 

 a business. And in every business money, not only fixed, 

 but for working purposes, becomes the most necessary 

 factor. In our native Agriculture we are notoriously short 

 of such' capital. Our landlord has his funds tied up in his 

 land. Mr.' Prothero frankly admits that " Landlords have 

 no money to make the necessary changes. . . . Unless 

 impoverished landlords can obtain State aid" (query: Is 

 that the only credit obtainable ?) " their only resource is to 

 sell their land." Our tenant measures his holding — often 

 rather optimistically, and on an already obsolete scale — 

 according to his means, cutting his coat big, so as to leave 

 him little margin. However, to-day it is " money which 

 makes the mare to go." And such money need not neces- 

 sarily be the tiller's own property. It goes in and comes 

 out, as manure goes into the soil and comes out in the shape 

 of crops, like the rain which descends from heaven, -giving 

 " bread to the eater and seed to the sower," returning 

 " not void," but with profit. It is, according to the 

 French term,?^the " rolling fund " — fonds de roulement — 

 which is wanting and which may be borrowed, just as may 



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