failures are rare even in states which maintain absolutely no inspection is conclusive evidence of the long strides forward which the public conscience and the public demands have made in banking.
Personal letters to me from bankers in representative counties in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina corroborate testimony from other sources that the escape of the farmers from the lien system is being hastened and their independence assured just in proportion as they themselves manifest principles of integrity and promptness in their financial affairs; and secondly, as the local bankers or other lenders of cash at legal rates stand ready to make advances to farmers.
The three following typical letters illustrate the progress of the southern farmer towards independence. The first is from northwestern Mississippi and presents an agricultural population whose own shortcomings debar them from assistance:
Our farmers are in much better condition as regards the lien system. The majority either borrow money by trust deed or personal security, usually the former. Our banks extend accommodation to farmers where they can give anything like reasonable or satisfactory security. However, this class of our business has not proven very profitable or satisfactory, for the reason that, in majority of cases, farmers do not realize the necessity of being prompt in meeting their obligations; consequently entail considerable trouble and worry in collecting same, thus in large degree offsetting the profit in interest, as well as the pleasure of business. . . . They need assistance and organization, and all the encouragement possible from such institutions as ours.
The second, from a central Georgia county, not nearly so favored by nature as many others, shows the results of energy, integrity and business methods:
The farmers are borrowing more money from banks than in former years, probably to the extent of 40 or 50 per cent. . . . to avoid paying the large credit prices amounting to more than the bank interest. We make these loans principally upon rent notes, (or) stock and crop mortgages with warehouse and personal endorsement. Our farmers we think in better condition than at any time in twenty years.
The third is from a rich county in southwest Georgia whose farmers have learned business methods approximately as well as its merchants, and are approaching the situation in which they will borrow only to retrieve disaster or to enlarge their operations:
The farmers in the territory supplied by this bank appear to be in better condition each year for the last two or three, and mortgages and liens are getting to be the exception, whereas they were formerly the rule. Almost all the loans to farmers are made on personal security only, and the volume of these loans is decreasing. We can not speak for other sections, but our observation of south Georgia is that the escape from the lien system is general.
Such is the condition of the southern farmer, with whose well-being is wrapped up so much of our best interests. He needs better trained and more moral labor, access to credit at reasonable rates when he requires it, and a system of education suited to his life work.
