222 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



the accepted sense — meaning free borrowing of cash for free 

 employment, as a productive factor, to be returned after 

 it has rendered its service — just as it is the only calling 

 which has dispensed with methodical organisation — and 

 has suffered accordingly. Where — to instance only two 

 forms of brief investment already referred to — money laid 

 out on deep digging and heavy fertilising is known to pro- 

 duce a proportionate return, leaving a profit over, there 

 not only is it perfectly legitimate to borrow the requisite 

 cash for the purpose, but on reflection it would really be 

 difficult to understand why it has not been so borrowed 

 freely long ago — if one did not know of the obstacles hitherto 

 standing hinderingly in the way. 



One of those obstacles is engrained habit and characteris- 

 tic indisposition to move out of the accustomed groove. 

 And another is the absence of a congenial market for the 

 obtainment of the money wanted — which latter obstacle 

 is at the present time a peculiarity altogether of our own 

 country, inasmuch as everywhere else, all round, in Europe 

 and beyond it, a more or less favourable, but distinctly 

 credit-yielding, market has been created and tapped. And 

 hence in great part what superiority other countries — more 

 particularly Germany — have gained over us in respect of 

 productive Agriculture. There may be other hindrances 

 there, but want of money for remunerative purposes does 

 not stand in the way. 



For want of such favourable market our farmers have 

 been driven to the use of credit of a totally different and 

 distinctly uneconomic, illegitimate and impoverishing kind, 

 given in very equivocal forms. Even the credit openly 

 obtained from bankers— a much reduced quantity now, 

 since the private banker has disappeared from the scene, 

 to give place to the big Joint Stock bank — which is finan- 

 cially certainly legitimate, is in the vast majority of cases 

 resorted to, not— as it would be in the case of a merchant 

 or a manufacturer — to produce more new value, but to help 

 to tide over a temporary embarrassment, in other words 

 to fill up some hole that has been created. Credit afforded 

 pretty freely to farmers by bankers has recently been made 



