RISE AND DEVELOPMENT 5 



In some quarters there is a tendency to discourage the 

 idea of cultivators " running into debt," as it is said, for 

 the carrying on of their enterprises ; yet farming is to be 

 regarded, not only as a business, but as a business in which 

 a facility to obtain capital readily, on reasonable terms, 

 may be still more necessary than it is in the majority of 

 other businesses. 



Whereas the ordinary trader, operating with borrowed 

 money, may expect to start almost at once with a turn- 

 over, the cultivator must prepare his fields, sow his seed, 

 await the processes of Nature in the growing and the 

 ripening of his crops, gather in the eventual harvest, and 

 then dispose of it on the market, before he can hope to 

 secure any return on his investment and his toil ; and he 

 must have the means to defray cost of seed, labour and 

 machinery, to cover rent, rates and taxes, and to support 

 himself and his family during the time when the money is 

 all going out and none is coming in. 



On the other hand, the small cultivator has always 

 been in a position of special disadvantage, as compared with 

 large farmers or traders in general, in obtaining the often 

 indispensable loans, owing to his inability to offer what the 

 ordinary banker would regard as adequate security ; and, 

 in the result, he has been in all ages and in all lands the prey 

 of the money-lender, who has too often practised upon him 

 the most shameless usury, even if he should not have reduced 

 him to a position not far removed from that of actual servi- 

 tude. The money-lender may have pleaded that he ran 

 greater risk in lending to the small farmer than in lending 

 to the trader since the one had little that could be seized 

 in default of payment while the other had, at least, his 

 stock of goods ; but none the less may the cultivator have 

 been virtually the slave of the usurer. In a report on 

 Roumania, published in Bulletin No. 2 of the Bureau of 

 Economic and Social Intelligence, International Institute of 

 Agriculture, one may read on this subject : — 



It may be objected that credit is still hard to get ; that 10 per 

 cent, interest is too high ; that here and there are small mis- 



