A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. 397 



ridded himself of a portion of his debt, to contract that 

 same portion anew, on the same terms. Another point 

 deserving mention is this, that under the new form of 

 organisation a mortgage debt is converted from a practically 

 untransferable, fixed and very cumbrous security, into a 

 security fully mobilised and readily transferable — as readily 

 tranferable as stock. Without such condition, of course, 

 neither permanency nor gradual " amortisation " would be 

 practicable. The instrument employed for issue is not a 

 lumbering deed, requiring legal aid and long time for its 

 examination and investigation^before a transfer can be 

 effected, but a bond readily transferable hke a banknote. 

 That innovation has proved a most effective help to rural 

 mortgage credit, all the more that security was so amply 

 provided for that mortgage bonds, fluid as money, were 

 at times reckoned superior in value even to Government 

 paper. The altered form of issue opened the gates of the 

 money market wide to rural borrowers and made the mort- 

 gage, which previously had been a drug in the market, one 

 of the most fancied investments even for short holding only. 



All the advantages indicated of the new mode of issue 

 may be secured and maintained under co-operative as well 

 as under capitalist organisation. Their first entrance into 

 active employment, effected under a sort of co-operative 

 organisation, or co-ordination, was imperatively necessitated 

 by the paucity of capital available for the enterprise at the 

 time. It consisted in a large number of landed proprietors 

 pooling their Hability together without hmit, in order by 

 such pooling to be able to offer to the public a most ample 

 guarantee for individual loans. The individual borrower 

 would of course be answerable to the poolers. And equally 

 of course it might be taken that the credit required would 

 be less in amount by a good deal than the pooled security 

 pledged. 



It is scarcely necessary to enter in detail into all the 

 minutiae of the development of this system of raising money 

 from practically a mere issue of mortgages made as a charge 

 upon an individual property to a wholesale issue of seriated 

 bonds, on which only the name of the particular issuing 



