RURAL CREDITS. 



MYRON T. HERRICK, CLEVELAND, OHIO. 



I feel in speaking on this subject which, from the merest 

 statement of it, is more or less dry, that I should endeavor, so 

 far as I am able, to qualify a little before I attempt to instruct. 

 I do not really mean to attempt to instruct, because I feel 

 incapacitated for doing that. I feel almost like apologizing for 

 attempting to speak on a subject which so many people know 

 so much more about, but that is not the way to learn about a 

 subject. If you attempt to tell somebody else about it you are 

 obliged, from time to time, to know something about it your- 

 self, and finally you accumulate some little fund of knowledge. 

 A great many years ago, more years than I wish it were, I was 

 a small boy on a farm, and I think I got my first lessons about 

 land credit there. I heard my father and mother speaking of 

 the maturity of the mortgage on the farm. It was held by one 

 Mr. Gunn. Mr. Gunn held several mortgages on the farms in 

 that community, and he had a way of not letting the owners 

 know exactly whether or not he was going to renew those 

 mortgages until near the time. All through that neighbor- 

 hood — it was a thrifty one — the people could accumulate a 

 certain amount of money over and above that necessary for the 

 support of their families, but under the system of a mortgage 

 falling due in three or five years — a system which still exists — 

 it was not possible to recover from those little farms money 

 enough to pay up the entire sum from the land; therefore these 

 renewals. I remember that that was the very first trouble I 

 had in the world. I heard this discussion, — whether or not 

 that farm would have to be sold because they couldn't pay 

 it unless they could get a renewal. The farmer is rather 

 inclined to think that the man who has the mortgage on his 

 farm wants his farm. He does not, as a rule, but at the same 

 time it appears so to the farmer. Now the mortgage was re- 



