2i8 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



be the steam plough or electric thrasher, so long as it is 

 judiciously borrowed and applied. 



The fact is now acknowledged everyAvhere — outside our 

 own country. And nowhere is it more so recognised than 

 among our kinsmen and cousins beyond the seas — although 

 relief is there sought by a different application of the 

 principle to what prevails in Europe. In Europe and 

 India it is co-operative credit societies which supply the 

 need, in veritable floods of money. Beyond the Atlantic, 

 in Canada as well as in the United States, it is the well- 

 developed banks — numbered in the United States by the 

 legion — which are trying to meet the requirement univer- 

 sally felt. In Canada banks have come to a special tentative 

 arrangement with farmers, which is now on its trial. In 

 the United States the various Bankers' Associations have 

 to a considerable extent openly identified themselves with 

 the cause of Agriculture — more particularly in its aspect of 

 small farming. Examination of prevailing conditions has 

 taught them that their own interest is wrapt up with that 

 of the farmers, that, on a national scale, successful farming 

 means successful banking. And accordingly we see them, 

 corporatively, pushing the interest of Agriculture, more 

 particularly in the matter of Education, and of financial 

 assistance, for the formation and furthering of educational- 

 economic young folks' societies, — cow and calf, and pig 

 and poultry and " canning " clubs — and scoring, for the 

 present in a small way, considerable successes. Not only 

 so, but it has come to be recognised that a competent, 

 pushing man, laying himself out for the agricultural calling, 

 should have ready means placed within his reach for pur- 

 chasing a holding entirely with borrowed money, to secure 

 him a comfortable existence in later age, when there 

 will no longer be the same amount of " go " in him, 

 and when credit will come too late. 



And if there is one fact which the various inquiries into 

 the condition of Agriculture instituted in this country during 

 the last few decades have made incontrovertibly clear, it 

 is this, that, if we are to have more highly productive Agri- 

 culture, such as the Nation at present seems resolutely 



