The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-08-05
About Mortgages.

There are two sides to the mort
gage question. A great many farmers
have been ruined by them. A great
many have toiled hopelessly for years
and sunk at last into the grave under
the burden of interest and the despair
of ever getting free from the terrible
slavery of debt. Many woman has
come to lose hope and sunk down,
crushed by the terrible mortgage. Fairly
prosperous men have been drawn into
some outlay, often not necessary, and
had to mortgage the farm to get money,
in the end losing everything. A safe
rule is never to mortgage ones home for
small amount. Better do without
many things which seem necessary
rather than put your home in peril.
Then when a man and his wife buy
place it should be decided to them jointly.
The husband should make his will, Civ
ing his share in the place to his wife,
and the wife should make her will, CIV
llS ucl phulO w lCl AuoDuAu. 1ACu,
as so often happens, if the husband
dies, the wife has the home secure in
her possession, and no scoundrel Of
mortgage-holder can rob her of her all.
She has chance to keep up the pay
ments and hold the place, aud there is
no legal red tape and law fees to pay,
Euh vol ia pnnnontnI with tho mill
This is the best way, we believe, in
every case, though there may be excep-
tiOns. But as things usually are, if the
husband dies the wife loses her home,
especially when there is a mortgage.
But there are hundreds of women who
can keep their homes, keep the chill
dren together, and be thousand times
HAMMER than they could if the homo
was lost.
One of the great troubles with mort
gagged farms is that the debt was in
Cured when everything the farm pro-
duced was much higher than it is now.
That is the secret of much of the IN
rest in the South and West 1t is al
most impossible to get paying price
for any farm crop in those sections, and
eastern people and city people should
not wonder at the way things are going
politically in many farming sections.
When men, in spite of all they can do,
are running behind-and that not
here and there one, but by thousands
and hundreds of thousands--it causes
reckless feeling. People get desper-
ate, and when a remedy is offered, no
matter what it is, they grasp at it. And
one of the worst features of the popu-
listc trend is that there is no real de-
liverance for it except prosperity, and
the way they are taking to get out of
their trouble is sure to only plunge
them deeper into it..
But there are thousands who have
lifted mortgages, and the stories they
have to tell, if one can only hear them,
make very instructive reading. One
very successful attempt has been made
W COllNCL lnO SlOIlCb vi oOulC VI lhOoO
who have succeeded in clearing off
mortgages. The way it was done was
this: Two papers, the NeD England
Homestead and Farm and Home, offered
prizes for the best articles on this sub.
ject, with the condition that the ar
ticles should be records Of actual ex'
perience. The result was that some
five hundred articles were sent in, and
from these the editors selected one
hundred fifty which they have printed
in neat pamphlet of one hundred
twelve large pages, and as the type il
small and set close, there is large
amount of reading in the work 1t il
also copiously illustrated with portraits
groups and pictures of farm buildings
There is great deal of encouragement
for mortgaged farmers in these tru
stories of successful mortgage-lifting
Almost every state and Canada is rep