750 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



By rendering this form of agricultural paper liquid before maturity 

 the Federal Reserve act will have become a most important influence 

 for enlarging the amount of capital devoted to this branch of industry. 

 Already eastern bankers have scouts touring the western states to 

 study this form of banking with a view to investing several millions 

 of dollars each. Interest rates upon these loans will unquestionably 

 be reduced in time through such increased competition of lenders. 

 The loan companies will hardly suffer, however. While charging the 

 cattle-grower less, they will be enjoying a large turnover and should 

 welcome this new development. The four or five million dollars 

 placed in such loans yearly by the average loan company, as at present 

 constituted, is but a fraction of the loans that may be placed by them 

 within a few years. By reducing the interest cost charged to cattle- 

 growers an important service will have been performed for the con- 

 sumer. This phase of the operations of the Federal Reserve act will 

 be of distinct benefit, and possibly the least dangerous of all forms of 

 legislation designed to assist American agriculture. 



C. Utilizing and Improving Existing Credit Agencies 



241. WHAT THE FARM MORTGAGE BANKERS OFFER 1 

 BY F. W. THOMPSON 



In touching upon the subject of "What the Farm Mortgage 

 Bankers Offer," I shall confine my remarks principally to the facilities 

 now at hand, and what the farm mortgage bankers have to suggest 

 as a means of increasing these facilities for financing land mortgage 

 loans for the American farmer. The farm mortgage bankers include 

 country and city bankers, farm mortgage investment bankers, and 

 individuals and co-partnerships, who do not only make farm loans 

 for their own investment but who act as agents or brokers for the 

 investment of funds foreign to the locality in which the loan is situated. 



These foreign investments have been computed to total two-fifths 

 of a grand total of nearly $3,000,000,000 of the estimated total of 

 farm mortgages in force in the United States at the present date. 

 Hostile legislation against foreign corporations, building a wall around 

 state boundaries, has had a reversal of the objects to be accomplished 



1 Adapted from an address of the president of the Farm Mortgage Bankers' 

 Association of America, delivered at the National Conference on Marketing and 

 Farm Credits, Chicago, December 2, 1915, and printed in the Bulletin of the Farm 

 Mortgage Bankers' Association, January, 1916. 



