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mal times 011 commercial houses for his advances. 



That they cannot be easily replaced has been re- 

 marked particularly throughout the last few years of 

 the war. when of those firms who have been permitted 

 by the State to supplant it in its duty of seeing that the 

 business of the country is carried through, one or two 

 were coiripelled by circumstances to partly withdraw 

 from the business and diminish their credits and ad- 

 vances. 



Given the fact that the funds of these principal 

 nouses, together with these of the other houses who form 

 the chief grain group, or the grain combine normally, 

 run into hundreds of millions of pesos, what a partial 

 restriction of their operations has meant to the farmer 

 needs no emphasizing ! 



CREDIT SYSTEM DISTURBED. 



The possibility of anything disturbing this system 

 of financing the farmer escaped the prevision of the 

 Government at the time, and we now see how far reach- 

 ing and efficient was th3 S3 r stem and the remarkable 

 economic dependence of the country thereon by the 

 general restriction if not the total dislocation, of 

 rural credits which has characterised the cereal trade 

 during the war. 



One of the results of the partial abandoning of 

 credit operations to cite one case alone has been to 

 make the difficulties over sacks more intense than ever, 

 which obstacle the authorities, despite all good inten- 

 tions and the calls for decisive action, have been unable 

 to get over effectively. The Government, on the con- 

 trary, has found it more convenient to permit the ar- 

 ranging of this internal and eternal embarrassment by 

 a foreign commission, the chief interested party in the 

 acquisition of the farmers' products, and to confide in 

 the Bank of the Nation to cover the other necessities 

 for the moment. 



The Government has judged it more pressing to 

 dedicate all its attention to the question of the foreign 

 financing of the harvest. 



In the beginning, unable or not prepared to deal 

 with the eternal question of crop finance, the present 

 Government has fallen back on the customary resource 

 and proposed a new entity to deal with agricultural 

 credit a bank of the Republic and to compensate for 

 the deficiencies of the moment, it was, and is intended 

 that the Bank of the Nation shall make special provi- 



