THE DAY OF RECKONING 355 



was to be loaned to any client whose realizable 

 security did not mark at least five thousand dollars. 



I tell the tale as it was told to me, but whether 

 an absolute fact or not, it is most certainly a fact 

 that the small farmer is not aided as he should be 

 either by the Government or the financial authori- 

 ties in Canada. He seldom has one thousand bushels 

 to sell in the early years of his wrestle with the land, 

 usually weighted with the full charges for imple- 

 ments and horses and lumber, plus heavy interest. 

 The rich farmer can command labour at the critical 

 moment ; the small farmer has to break his heart 

 doing the labour of three men in order to get the 

 one thing into the land which a few years ago was 

 the only farm produce to command market and 

 money. 



It is the farmer in Canada, the man on the land, 

 who has made those astonishing land-values which 

 are being shouted to-day in every country in Europe, 

 and in a time of stress things go harder with this 

 man on the land, the producer, than with any 

 member of those sections of society who depend 

 on the foundation established and sustained by 

 him to maintain their values. 



It is claimed that the banks of Canada are 

 admirable in the basis of their system and working 

 principle, but the fact remains that they exist 

 mainly for merchants of considerable capital and 

 the farmer whose realizable security exceeds x ; 

 also the law of the price of bank money in the 

 North- West is nothing under eight per cent. The 

 finest gilt-edged security which British capital could 

 obtain in Canada, one of the soundest and most 

 promising and most effectual links of Empire, would 





