60 The Condition of the Western Farmer. [338 



a further deduction has to be made for debts secured both 

 by real estate and by chattel mortgages, which debts being 

 included in the lists of real estate mortgages should not be 

 again reckoned here. Making the necessary deductions, the 

 actual total of unpaid chattel mortgages against owners of 

 land in the township is brought down to $6627.07. 



Out of the seventy-four resident owning farmers, only 

 twenty-seven owe any money on chattel mortgage, and of 

 these twenty-seven, sixteen had ninety-one unreleased mort- 

 gages against them. This very uneven distribution shows 

 that the chattel mortgage has now come to be rather a mark 

 of poor success. An important bearing of the facts here 

 stated is in refutation of the argument based on the increase 

 of chattel mortgages which is very often adduced to prove 

 that western farmers are sinking ever deeper into financial 

 difficulties. Whatever may be the real truth about the con- 

 clusion, the argument certainly is far from right. As long as 

 farmers are too negligent or too careless about their own per- 

 sonal standing before the community, to place on file the 

 releases of the mortgages which they have paid, just so long 

 we can expect nothing else than that the total amount of such 

 mortgages on record will show an enormous apparent in- 

 crease from year to year. 



1}. Real Estate Mortgages. 1 



The bulk of the debt owed by farmers is secured by mort- 

 gages upon their farms, given in the main to resident agents 



1 The following figures are based on the records in the office of 

 the county clerk of Hall county; those for 1892 include no instru- 

 ments filed later than September 1st. Only mortgages evidently 

 given to secure the principal of a debt are included in the totals, 

 and no interest due on this debt is regarded. It is very common 

 for the farmer hi his dealings with a loan company to execute a 

 second mortgage in favor of the company to secure the payment of 

 its commission, which is usually about one per cent. As these com- 

 mission mortgages are really of the nature of interest, none of them 

 are here included, though their total would be quite a considerable 

 sum. 



