226 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



Chamber, " glory in their credit ; the farmer, if he has any, 

 is ashamed of it." And, although throwing a straw to the 

 drowning farmer of moderate position, the credit actually 

 practised leaves the small holder, upon whom now we 

 stake so large a part of our hopes, whoUy unprovided for. 

 For it is not for him that Mr. Cent-per-cent carries on his 

 business. 



The question then arises : What are we to put in the 

 place of present uneconomic forms of credit ? What 

 source of credit can we open to the farmer, large or small, 

 from which he may, Uke the pushing merchant or manu- 

 facturer, draw the working capital which it is admitted that 

 he very urgently needs ? 



As a matter of course, in these days of waning self-reHance, 

 the State has been appealed to. The State is to-day expected 

 to do everything. People seem to forget that all the 

 money that the State itself disposes of is necessarily taken 

 out of their own and other people's pockets, and that State 

 help merely means making the persons not interested in a 

 matter pay for the benefit of those who are. People also 

 often enough forget that it is not everything that the 

 State can do. Among other things, it positively cannot 

 discriminate between deserving and undeserving borrowers. 

 It has citizens to deal with, every one of whom must be 

 considered as good as the other. It may fertilise a barren 

 spot. It may drop a shower of gold upon a desert. But 

 wherever it interferes, it unfaihngly destroys confidence in 

 people's own power and paralyses self-help. Look at the 

 poor figure that the Indian takkavi loans cut by the side 

 of Co-operative Credit ! Again, look at the utter break- 

 down of the Agricultural Bank of Egypt's intended main 

 business — the other is right enough — that is, the supply 

 of working credit to small cultivators ! As Lord Cromer 

 has explained to me, he did not — although a thorough 

 believer in Co-operation — at the time of starting the Bank 

 resort to Co-operative Credit, because he did not consider 

 the fellaheen yet quite ripe for it. That was an excusable 

 mistake. But a mistake it was. For a small man is sooner 

 ripe for co-operative than for other credit, as we now see 



