RURAL CREDITS 755 



private effort. We therefore favor rural credit legislation so far as it may, 

 without violation of the constitutional and other vital principles of our 

 form of government, and without disregard to economic law, be effected 

 to the common advantage of the borrowers and the lenders of the country. 



The Association recognizes that there are defects and deficiencies in 

 the facilities open to the tenant without land, or the newcomer either 

 immigrant or city-bred who would go on the land. This Association 

 applauds the efforts to help both the nation and this type of individual by 

 financing his establishment on the land, and would be pleased to render 

 any assistance within its power to such a movement. 



In considering the phase of rural credit having to do with long term 

 loans on the security of land the Association accepts the following funda- 

 mental propositions: 



1. The object to be accomplished is to so mobilize this form of rural 

 credit as to make it available to every land-owning farmer in the United 

 States on terms as favorable as the market affords, consistent with the 

 security offered. 



2. To accomplish this object it is neither necessary nor consistent with 

 the principles on which this government is founded, to lend to farmers as 

 a class either the credit of the nation or its monies, either directly by govern- 

 ment loans, or indirectly by subsidies or guaranties. 



3. The object is, rather, attainable by removing those obstacles, legal 

 and otherwise, which prevent the farmer's paper from reaching the invest- 

 ment market generally in such form, on such terms, and from such a source 

 as to make it at least as acceptable in the matter of assured security, con- 

 venience of handling and convertibility, as any other investment of equal 

 intrinsic merit. 



This Association believes this object, once attained, would provide for 

 the farmer: 



1. Credit in quantity much greater than at present, and in quantity 

 certainly sufficient for all legitimate purposes. 



2. Credit on a basis of intrinsic security, rather than of extrinsic factors 

 such as the special laws of any given state, the distance of the security from 

 the source of the funds, the terms as to maturity, etc., on which it was 

 desired to borrow the money. This result would be gradual, requiring the 

 amendment of the state laws as to titles, collections, taxation, etc., among 

 other changes dependent on the citizens of the states, and not on anything 

 the federal government can do by statute. 



3. Loans for long terms, as well as short terms, "straight" or serial 

 maturity, or amortized as to principal, the latter free from renewal worries 

 or expense. 



4. As low rates of interest as the free play of supply and demand in the 

 investment market affords, when not encumbered by the factors of lack of 



