RURAL CREDITS 775 



the friends of rural credits have contended, and I stand with them. 

 It commits the government in a measure to aid this system. When 

 we have enacted it into law, and I believe we will, great relief will 

 come to the farmer no such sufficient relief, however, as in my 

 judgment he is entitled to receive, but the best that can be had under 

 existing circumstances. In fighting for this measure, as I shall do, 

 and in advocating its passage, as I will do, I do not mean thereby to 

 say that the farmers have received under this bill all they are entitled 

 to receive at the hands of this government. I do not mean thereby 

 to say that I shall accept it as a just and adequate relief. On the 

 other hand, I intend that this shall be merely a stepping stone, a 

 beginning, a new starting point, in the fight that we are now waging 

 to give justice to this most deserving class of our citizenry. 



249. STATE AID UNNECESSARY 1 

 BY MYRON T. HERRICK 



Unfortunately the rural credits movement has been rived by a 

 serious cleavage, and on one side stand those who insist upon state 

 aid, and x>n the opposite side stand those who believe in private 

 initiative and co-operation. The demand for state aid in farm mort- 

 gaging is very strong, and the tendency in that direction was exceed- 

 ingly pronounced in the last Congress. Practically all the measures 

 introduced provided for it to a greater or less extent, while those that 

 received the most attention proposed its use for farmers generally to 

 a degree that appears in Europe only for the lowest class of peasants. 

 About one-half billion dollars was demanded for cotton-growers, 

 while cheap money without limit through government intervention 

 was demanded for farm mortgaging. The advocates of state aid cite 

 as their arguments this use of state aid in some European countries, 

 the critical situation arising from the Great War, and the indifferent 

 or alleged antagonistic attitude of financiers toward farmers. On the 

 other hand, the friends of private initiative and co-operation assert 

 that conditions in Europe and the United States are dissimilar and 

 that there is no emergency here calling for the use of government 

 cash or credit. They cite as their arguments the official declarations 

 of President Wilson, Secretary Houston, the United States and 

 American commissions, and other experts against state aid, and they 



Adapted from an address delivered at the Panama-Pacific International 

 Exposition, San Francisco, September 21, 1915. 



