776 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



contend that if proper legislation were enacted and rural co-operative 

 organization perfected, the credit of landowners and the resources of 

 farmers would be so vitalized that abundant capital would be avail- 

 able on easy terms for the cultivation of the soil and the continual 

 advancement of agriculture. 



The strongest argument for state aid is the claim that there is a 

 pressing, immediate necessity for it; if that claim is wrong, or if 

 any necessity that exists should disappear, then the demands for 

 state aid ought to cease with it. State aid after saying the most 

 that can be said for it is merely an expedient to meet an exigency, 

 the existence of which is as stoutly denied by some people as it is 

 asserted by others. Furthermore, it is advocated without fully 

 considering its effect on the taxpayers not intended to be directly 

 benefited, and without a thought of testing and letting the ordinary 

 means of farm finance have a chance to show their worth. 



The arguments for state aid are based on premises, the correctness 

 of which can be logically proved, of course, only by future trial. In 

 my opinion there is not one advocate of it but believes in his heart 

 that the injustices he condemns and the troubles he mentions would 

 be remedied, if private enterprise could be efficiently regulated and 

 rural co-operation intelligently practiced. So in studying the ques- 

 tion, we must consider the possibility of making these latter methods 

 effective. They are more effective in Europe than the much heralded 

 state aid and are more generally used than it. They rest upon 

 individual honesty and capability. No one in this hall will maintain 

 the ^superiority of European over American, people in these two 

 qualities. Indeed, we all think that the comparison runs in our 

 favor; so if we should say, in spite of the wonderful agricultural 

 organizations developed through private enterprise and co-operation 

 in Europe, that such development is impossible here, the assertion is 

 tantamount to an admission of inferiority, or an absurdly illogical 

 deduction that American financiers and farmers cannot do what 

 lesser peoples in Europe have accomplished .to a remarkable degree 

 of success. 



E. State and Federal Legislation 



250. CREDIT UNIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS 1 



Under a law approved May 20, 1915, Massachusetts, which had 

 already made some beginnings toward co-operative credit in the 

 cities, undertook to give the system a wider field of usefulness in the 



1 Chap. 268, General Acts of 1915, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 



