AGRICULTURAL FINANCE 19 



A common policy used today by many mortgage holders is to pay off a part of 

 the mortgage principal regularly so that in time the farm will be mortgage free. 

 Of the farmers in this study who started with a mortgage, 40 percent were mort- 

 gage free after 30 years. However, this proportion of farms which became mort- 

 gage-free is high if consideration is given to all farms (Table 23). 



Of the 46 farms which the present operator had acquired over 30 years ago, 

 32 were mortgaged when the operator acquired the farm. At the time of the sur- 

 vey 23 were mortgaged. Thus there was a net decrease of 9, or 28 percent, in the 

 number of mortgaged farms which had been operated by the same farmers over 

 30 years. 



Table 24. — Frequency Distribution of Farms Showing Dollar Change in Mortgage 



Between Time When Farm Was Acquired and March 1, 1941, 



208 Massachusetts Farms. 



Table 25. — Total Amount of Mortgage at Time Farm Was Acquired and on 

 March 1, 1941, 192 Farms Acquired During Different Periods. 



Period When Present Operator Acquired 

 Farm 

 • Total 



1931-40 1921-30 1911-20 Before 



1911 



Number of farms 45 



Total mortgage when acquired $163,400 



Total mortgage March 1, 1941 $169,528 



Net change $+6,128 



Percent present of original amount. . . 104 



Number of farms increasing mortgage 12 



Amount of increase $29,533 



Number of farms decreasing mortgage 21 



Amount of decrease $23,405 



A comparison of the amount of mortgage at the time the farm was acquired 

 and when the survey was taken is shown in Tables 24 and 25. Half of the farm- 

 ers who indicated that they had mortgages either when they acquired a farm or 

 when the survey was taken had paid off something on the principal since acquir- 

 ing the farm. A third had increased the amount of mortgage. The others had 



