WORKING CREDIT FOR FARMERS. 225 



One case in point I may give from my own experience. 

 Being an old co-operator, since many years in touch with 

 the first promoters of agricultural supply co-operation — 

 which was at the time all in the way of agricultural co- 

 operation that was known— that is, Vansittart Neale, 

 E. O. Greening, Thomas Hughes, Ludlow, and their friends, 

 I in 1883, while living in Lewes, convened a meeting of 

 persons interested in Agriculture, with a view to inducing 

 them to form a co-operative society for common purchase. 

 The long spell of depression had already made its effects 

 felt and common purchase would, I knew, if practicable, 

 tend to lessen its rigour. I had a capital meeting, both of 

 landlords and of the most prominent tenant farmers. 

 Everybody approved the scheme. Nobody offered to join. 

 Why not ? My friend the late William Mannington, of 

 Laughton, the foremost tenant farmer in East Sussex at 

 the time, supplied me with the answer. " You will never 

 get these men to join," so he said ; " they are all on their 

 dealers' books." They were tied by the leg. 



Where the dealer's credit gives out, the moneylender's 

 comes in. A farmer having a banking account will of 

 course in case of need go to his banker — first, at any rate. 

 The fact of his coming proclaims that he is embarrassed. 

 But if he is a substantial man, he will still obtain credit 

 on the usual easy terms. That is, however, only the 

 elite. After the bank comes the usurer. And to what 

 extent smaller farmers are in the usurer's hands Mr. T. 

 Farrow has told in his rather sensational books, based 

 upon evidence which as Secretary of the Agricultural Banks 

 Association (of which the late R. A. Yerburgh, whose private 

 secretary he then was, was President) he had collected in 

 the course of a special inquiry. 



All this is sheer ruin. It sucks the life-blood out of farm- 

 ing, instead of infusing new strength into it. Instead of 

 preparing the ground for better credit, it has laid serious 

 obstacles in the way of credit at all, by giving credit a bad 

 name and making men ashamed to own to it. " The 

 merchant and the manufacturer," so said the late M. 

 Graux, at the time Belgian Minister of Agriculture in the 



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