THIRTY-THIRD BlDNNIAR SESSION 
219 
the coming thirty days, or sixty days, or ninety days those goods are going 
to be sold and the merchant is going to be able to pay the $1,000 pledged in 
the note. The farmer comes along and also wants to borrow $1,000. Can 
he also give a note due in thirty, sixty or ninety days? Oh no; it will take 
about five years for those trees to bring returns, and it will be pretty hard 
sledding until that time. And so when he comes, the banker says: “I 
think I cannot afford to take my chances on it, or what is to give me as- 
surance that he will not plead the excuse of no crops?” By the time the 
orchard comes into bearing, it may be that fruit will be so plentiful that 
the bottom will have fallen out of the fruit market and the fruit will bring 
a very poor price, and then we see how the banker will be out. And; so the 
fruit grower has to go away disappointed. Further than that, it is diffi- 
cult to rent an orchard already grown; and it is difficult to rent land from 
landowners with the idea of putting on orchards, because of the great delay 
before the farm is up to the crop stage and a paying proposition. And so 
the farmer, instead of being able to rent a business unit and start doing busi- 
ness at once, has to face a lot of serious problems. 
Now I am going to enumerate some of these problems, and suggest 
some of the different ways in which the European who maintains a farm 
with a few thousand dollars perhaps and yet be amply secured in maintain- 
ing his farm business. I recall on one or two occasions in the European 
countries where the guide who was showing us around would direct our 
attention and say: “This building was built by So-and-so, and he lived 
there before Columbus discovered America; the family has resided here, etc.” 
And I thought how young we are and how new we are and how scarcely 
beginning we are in our work! They have had centuries to work over 
these problems, and it is not surprising that they have solved some of them 
very satisfactorily, and that they have solved many of them more satis- 
factorily for the farmer even than our present system of finance has for the 
merchant. 
The First Probelm, — Buying the Farm. 
Now our first big question is the buying of the farm, and if the buyer 
is a young man expecting to spend his life on the farm, and unless he is 
so fortunate or unfortunate as to inherit a lot of money, he starts with 
nothing. Now to buy the farm is the first problem. Only a few can re- 
gard that as a question that is simple; it is whether you get one at all or 
not. And at the start the question is, “Are you sure that the young man 
knows how to buy?” He is going to concentrate his effort on that farm, 
make it his life work, and it naturally follows that the farm must pay for 
itself. He must take out of that farm sufficient of produce for the hungry 
public to pay for that farm. The question with him is: “Can I pay for it, 
In one, two, three, four, or five years?” Now in the most productive soil of 
the world it would be impossible in any such length of time, and he soon realizes 
tliat situation and is on the lookout accordingly for means with which to 
meet it. He must therefore have some system whereby he can secure credit 
and pay off this load, free of all incumbrances; it may be 25 years. He is 
able to secure loans, however, and the public in those countries is willing 
