1913. 
1069 
BANKING FOR SMALL DEPOSITORS. 
Establishing a Business Standing. 
Much is being said about the small farmer and 
his ability to obtain credit. The small farmer, as 
a rule, knows nothing about banking other than 
that inside a brick or stone building there are desks, 
windows and clerks, and people put in and pull out 
money, and a fellow with cash can get it, and a man 
without stays without, and that sometimes they fail 
and you lose what you have put in, but never draw 
out more than you deposit. On the whole they dis¬ 
trust the institution, and cannot see the sense of 
putting the money in one day and drawing it out 
again. It is safer to feel the “siller’' bumping your 
leg, or to sweat on the greenbacks next your chest. 
As far as that goes they are right; yet they over¬ 
look the fact that a thief cannot enter your house 
and steal money in the bank, and he cannot hold 
you up and take it away with a gun. They overlook 
the fact that if a stranger comes to their place and 
wishes a cow, hog or load of grain or hay on credit 
they will naturally refuse the trade. They do not 
know him, or anything about him, and cannot risk 
giving him their goods simply because he wants 
them. They are very prudent. On the other hand, 
they go to a bank, and maybe know the president 
to speak to, or fairly well, outside of business 
and want him to lend them some money on 
a note, which is only their promise to pay, on 
paper. Even if they get a couple of endorsers among 
their neighbors, also no better known than them¬ 
selves, they cannot complain if the name does not 
care to put out money on the promise of several 
persons they have done no business with, and have 
only a casual acquaintance with. It is practically 
the same thing as their selling a stranger on credit. 
So long as this condition exists, the small farmer 
will have to hunt the money shark and pay usury, 
and cannot always get the cash even on those terms. 
Who is to blame for the condition? Assuredly it 
is not the bank or banker, for his place of business 
is open to the world for safe and legitimate hank¬ 
ing business; he makes a large part of his profits 
on the lending of money. If he did not, he could 
not exist, for there would not be sufficient profit in 
the business. Were he not careful to whom he 
loaned the money, his losses would be more than 
his profits. First, he has to be reasonably sure he 
is making a safe loan. After deciding a man is 
worthy of credit at the bank, the next question is 
the amount he is entitled to, and on this decision 
hinges the whole thing. 
In order for the small man to receive reasonable 
accommodations from a bank, he has to be known; 
his reputation is a great big asset, or the reverse. 
The best way to be known in a business way is to 
have business dealings; with a bank, it is to deposit 
what cash or checks come into your hands, and give 
your checks in payment of your bills and obligations, 
even if the money is put in to-day and drawn out 
to-morrow, and to be careful not to give checks 
for more than you have to your credit, and when 
wuclx a mistake occurs, if the check is paid imme¬ 
diately to make the amount good; in fact to estab¬ 
lish a reputation of straight business methods with 
your bank. If this is done, and the time comes 
the; rural nkw-yori<eir 
when you need some ready cash, you will be rea¬ 
sonably sure of getting it on your note, even without 
an endorser or collateral. The fact is, you can 
go to the bank and draw money; the next question 
is how much? That will depend largely on the 
amount of business you have with the bank. We 
will say the average amount of your balance, as 
shown by the year’s business, and the man who has 
averaged a balance of .$100 for the year, though at 
times he may have not had over a dollar to his 
credit, will be considered as entitled to a certain 
amount of credit on his note, which will naturally 
not be the same amount as an equally good man 
who had an average balance of $1,000. It all hinges 
on two things: your reputation, and the amount of 
business you do. 
If the little man would only realize this, he would 
be greatly helped. If he would realize that no ac¬ 
count is too small to be gladly attended to and 
accepted with thanks, he would probably become a 
depositor in some bank, and would in times of need 
be a borrower up to such amount as his business 
showed him to be a safe risk. He would also have 
a place to refer the distant merchant or manufac¬ 
turer as to his standing if he wanted to buy goods, 
and receive reasonable credit, and if he was worthy 
of credit, on the statement of his banker, he would 
very probably receive it, so long as he paid as agreed 
and protected it, but no longer, for a bad credit is 
worse than none. 
For instance, in the Spring you need $50 to $100 
to pay for fertilizer or seed. The laws will not 
permit a bank to take a mortgage for the amount. 
but if you are a depositor, they will, if your char¬ 
acter and business justify, take your note for (JO 
or 90 days for the amount, at the legal rate of in¬ 
terest. At the end of GO or 90 days, they will renew 
the note for another GO or 90 days, or you could pay 
a small amount on it and give a new note for bal¬ 
ance. By that time the crop will probably be ready 
to move, and if returns are not coming in to pay the 
note, the operation can be repeated, and the note 
finally wiped out when returns are all in. The same 
thing would apply with a fruit man who needed 
cash to pay for gathering and marketing his crop, 
and by depositing his checks as received from buy¬ 
ers, he would find it more satisfactory than getting 
advances from a commission man, and the bank 
would get the handling of his money while deposited. 
It is a safe thing, when doing business with a 
bank, when you do not need the money, to borrow 
it anyway, first to see if they will lend you. and 
second to establish a credit on your note. If they 
refuse to lend you a reasonable amount, there is 
nothing to be gained by doing business with them, 
so try another that is convenient to you, and tell 
the first one just why you make the change. It may 
hot have much effect, but if they keep losing little 
local business, and they always get the same thing 
shoved in at the same place, it will have its effect, 
for business will follow the banking, and the mer¬ 
chants who are generally interested in the banks 
will lose the business that banks in the other town, and 
will get busy to change conditions and keep it home. 
Every place that has a building with the sign 
Bank in front, is not a bank, for often a money 
shark will call his skinnery a bank, but it is still 
only a loan office in the worst sense of the word. 
A bank is really an institution that is for the good 
of the community, and its prosperity depends on the 
prosperity of its clients, so it does all it can to make 
things prosperous, and the banker is a well-posted 
man—he has to be. lie has a good working knowl¬ 
edge of the abilities and reputation of his deposi¬ 
tors, and can come mighty close to telling how much 
credit each is entitled to. It is his business to know, 
and he generally knows. Now, when crops are mov¬ 
ing and returns coming in, is the time to open an 
account instead of loading an old stocking or tin 
can with nickels and coppers. If you plant your 
money in-a bank in the Fall it is sowing the seeds 
of credit, and the crop is ready for harvest through 
the Spring and Summer. It is not an annual crop, 
but a long-lived tree, and the older it gets the bigger 
it grows if properly looked after, but even the larg¬ 
est and strongest plant if ringed with one or two 
dishonest cuts will die down at once, and- it never 
sprouts from the root; it’s dead, and where it, stood 
only cash transactions will grow. m. a. pae-ker. 
Alabama. 
ROT IN TOMATOES. 
Will you inform me what is causing my tomatoes to 
rot so badly? It first appears as a brown patch in the 
blossom end, gradually extending until the tomato is 
well-covered when the fruit prematurely ripens and 
rots. How shall I treat them? c. w. w. 
Johnson City, Tenn. 
I have always believed the rotting of immature 
tomatoes was the result of unwholesome, environ¬ 
ment of the plants rather than an inherent disease 
of the fruit, and so far as I am aware it has not 
been defined as such by plant pathologists. This 
species of tomato rot is at times very destructive on 
the poorly drained bottom lands of the South.- My 
attention was first called to it 15 years or more ago, 
in the Yellow Creek Valley, Dickson County, Tenn., 
where I had charge of a large truck farm. In my 
investigations as to the cause of the rot I discovered 
that the rot was always present, to a greater or 
lesser extent, when the plants were grown on the 
poorly drained bottom land, the trouble being es¬ 
pecially bad in a wet season, while those grown on 
high well-drained soil suffered very little and some¬ 
times not at all; also that highly stimulating ma¬ 
nures, such as Peruvian guano, hen manure, fish 
scrap, hoof trimmings, etc., should be avoided as a 
fertilizer for this crop, as they induce a rank growth 
of vine, and caused the fruit, especially the first, 
to rot before reaching mature size, and those that 
did reach maturity were watery and of poor quality. 
I am reliably informed that muck applied to toma¬ 
toes will cause them to rot badly before reaching 
maturity, even when exposed to the atmosphere 
eight or 10 months before using. On account of my 
belief as to the cause of the rot, based upon three 
years of investigation and trial, and the rot origi¬ 
nating apparently within the fruit, I have deemed 
the application of fungicides as a remedy a useless 
expenditure of time and money. The remedy, there¬ 
fore, lies in the selection of naturally well-drained 
soil and a strict avoidance of the use of highly stim¬ 
ulating manures, and when planting this crop if 
these hints are observed, there will be no appreci¬ 
able loss from this species of rot. ~ k. 
