The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1916-11-01
)USIN BEN TO FARMER NED

ing your berries by the carload and
forcing the buyers to bid against each
other and SO bid up the price made me
laugh out loud It hears out just what
you and | argued six years ago when
we were coaxing the neighhors to join
the cooperative society. | tell you,
Ned, the more | know Of the foolish
ness of individuals, the more / sym
pathize with hogs on the icy pond.
They do work hard and are independ-
ent, but Dan Patch could have beaten
their speed
You farmers have already demon
strated the power Of cooperation in
your fruit selling cooperative organi-
cations; also in your creameries,
cheese factories and livestock coop
erative organizations. Just extend
that principle now to collective cred
it's organizations. Of course, you will
have to reconize the necessity of for
getting prejudices against your neigh
DOrs, and when you consider credit,
leave out all other qualities of the
borrower and think only of the prob
ability of payment. Since character
enters into personal credits, you must
have a reliable committee to pass on
the character of every man you admit
into your local credit union. The
committee must be broad minded, i'm
partial, but il must also be firm in
ruling out farmers whose words can
not be trusted or who are visionary in
their plans
Assuming that this is done with fair
J conservatism and caution, then you
can go ahead and organize into local
credit union all the farmers in your
neighbOrhOOd who want to borrow
! Suppose you have 25 farmers as the
minimum. You decide that your 10
cality is well adapted to raising
hogs, for example, and you Is or more
farmers agree amongst yourselves all
| to raise the same kind of hogs and to
follow the directions which your sec
rotary will get through the county
agent Or professor from the Agricul-
tural College. Now, suppose each of
you wants to borrow 500 with which
/ to buy hogs. Some of you could go to
| the bank and get it without mortgag-
ing your farms, but many of you could
not. Ii, however, you say to the bank
| er, you will mutually endorse the en-
tire loan of $4,000, the banker will at
once reconize that, while perhaps one
or two farmers might be risky, the
whole % will not fall down in the pay
ment of the note, and SO the collective
credit of the union enables you all to
obtain your money. The bank gladly
lends its money to the union, not to
the individual, and the union lends in
turn to the individual members.
But now, how will the union protect
itself against loss by the individual
member? Some, perhaps, might be-
come sick or die, or they might not
live up to their reputation for honesty.
That problem is fully solved in fifty Of
the cities of the United States, through
comparatively new system of banks
for lending on personal credit exclu-
slVely, to city wage earners and small
merchants whose credit is not strong
enough to interest national bank.
This new system of banks never takes
tangible security. 1t requires that the
individual note be signed not only by
The borrower, but by two of his friends
as endorsers. Then the borrower
must make fifty weekly installment
payments so that the entire debt is
paid off by the end of the year. Each
installment is very small, but if any
instruments is delayed the bank at
once notifies the endorsers and they
are called upon to pay the installment.
Now, can you imagine what mean.
small character a man must be, who.
without good cause, would shirk his
lnstallment and fOrse his friends who
have endorsed his note to carry his
lnstallment amounting to, say, So a
week on hundred dollar loan?
[ think l hear you say that the
scheme wouldn't work at all on the
farm, because farmers don't get their
money in weekly installments, but the
| answer is that the same principle can
easily be adapted to farm conditions to
make the installments monthly instead
OF weekly, and the farmer can meet
these monthly installments if he is
enterprising enough to diversity his
interests by having COWS or poultry,
or truck. If he isn't that much alive
you had better keep him out of your
organization, because this proposed
system is not intended to finance grain
raising or cotton raising or any of the
great staple products It is to help
the individual diversity his interests
and get on his feet.
| Now, just to illustrate the strength
of this plan: In city that l know of,
one such bank, which in the last four
years had loaned more than 50, 900 900
without any security except the per-
sonal character back of its notes has
lost less than $500 of the $4,000. COO
/ know Of their institutions somewhat
similar in character, one located in
Boston, which in six or seven has lost
only $40, and that loss was due to it's
cashiers having his pocket picked
The banker tells me that he finds that
the very fact that the borrower had to
ask two Of his friends to go on his note
is moral influence upon that borrow
er almost irresistible He will pay
that note even if he goes hungry, if he
has any manhood in him. Now, if that
is true in the city with wage earners,
just apply the same to the farm COM
munity. Suppose a farmer borrowed
money from local credit union The