RURAL CREDITS 753 



desirability of loans arising in districts not quite as standard as in 

 the agricultural districts known as the corn belt. 



Farm mortgage bankers have a sincere appreciation of the diffi- 

 culties confronting the serious minded people who are concerned with 

 the future of the homeless tenant. A great many people think in 

 average sized terms of acreage approximating 160 acres in contem- 

 plating land that should be purchased by the homeless tenant. 



Tenancy is with us in all farming sections and is growing with 

 alarming rapidity in our best developed sections. It is useless to 

 think of tenants, without considerable money in hand, buying land 

 in 160 acre or larger units when prices for land run from $75 to $250 

 per acre. 



Protracted periods of drouth and rainfall and other elemental dis- 

 turbances amplified by crop pests, sickness in the family, etc., make 

 the hazard great and no one should seriously think of promulgating 

 a system of rural credits based upon mortgages taken to finance such 

 purchases and issue bonds against them, unless they were protected 

 by a state or government guaranty, which guaranty in turn would 

 have to have behind it a cash fund of sufficient magnitude to protect 

 the investor in such a bond against defaults from whatever cause. 

 The constitutionality of such a guaranty, however, is a grave question. 



It seems, therefore, that until the homeless tenant acquires a fund 

 large enough to pay or obtain credit to permit him to pay at least 

 50 per cent of the purchase price of land desired, he must be dismissed 

 from participating in any scheme of long credit such as is now con- 

 templated. As discouraging as this may seem, there is a way out 

 of the dilemma in my opinion, if we can get our homeless tenant to 

 think in terms of smaller acreage and to think in terms of intensive 

 instead of extensive farming. Instead of thinking of 160 to 320 acre 

 farms, start on a 5 or 10 acre farm close enough to a fairly good town 

 with good school and church facilities to take care of the social needs 

 of the family and if need be rent a small cottage in the village and work 

 the 5 or 10 acre tract for all it can produce. 



Right here is where the building and loan association can do the 

 service it does in building homes for salaried people living in small 

 villages and towns, and if the man and his family have the right kind 

 of stuff in them they will soon have accumulated enough with what 

 help the building and loan association can give them, and be glad of 

 the chance, to erect a comfortable home and otherwise improve the 

 property as the case may require. Small acreage property under a 



