GOVERNMENTAL WORK FOR COUNTRY LIFE 339 



interest rate making until the cooperative product- 

 selling agencies were organized by producers and of- 

 ficered by those who knew how to talk and act in 

 the bankers' chosen way. During the last twenty 

 years and increasing vastly in the last decade, or- 

 ganized growers of special products have been able 

 to secure the capital needed for equipments and 

 operations on terms and rates which have not en- 

 couraged them to make complaint. Their credit 

 has been good and their burdens considered fair. 



However, this progress did not reach the indi- 

 vidual farmers very widely and in the largely un- 

 organized lines of general farming, dairying and 

 stock-growing, money was rarely obtained except on 

 terms which were too short and at rates altogether 

 too long. Agitation for loans to all individual farm- 

 ers of responsibility and good repute, on terms and 

 at rates which would enable them to use money suc- 

 cessfully, began very widely throughout the State 

 early in this century and discussion and effort for 

 organization and financing of a system of rural 

 credits were particularly pointed in California. This 

 need was impressed on the "Commission on Country 

 Life" x (appointed by President Roosevelt in 1908) 

 and which submitted its report in 1909, in the fol- 

 lowing words : 



"The American farmer has needed money less 

 perhaps than land workers in some other countries, 



'L. H. Bailey, New York; Henry Wallace, Iowa; K. L. But- 

 terfield, Massachusetts; Walter H. Page, New York; Gifford 

 Pinchot, Pennsylvania ; C. S. Barrett, Georgia ; W. A. Beard, 

 California. 



