The Elk Mountain pilot., 1920-12-30
The CHOKING HAND OF CREDIT


billions for gambling; we can use
more than a billion in government
funds to support a broken down
transport system; we can supply mill
lions and billions of credit to Europe;
we can and are financing the prof.
teering sugar farmers of Cuba during
their market crisis, but we cannot
help the American farmer to help
himself and sidestep the bankruptcy
which threatens him in a similar cri-
sis here at home, not even when he is
feeding the American nation at
prices far below the cost of produc-
tion.
To save American farmers from an
estimated loss of 211 billions of dol
lars. thru being compelled to sell, or
to dump by contract, 20 billion dol
lars worth of farm products on de-
moralized markets unable Immediate
ly to assimilate fraction of such
quantity-these farmers need approx
imately $50 million dollars of short
time credit and they cannot get it.
eoveramenfs Eyes Elsewhere
Neither the Secretary OF the Treas
ury-the same treasury which ad-
vanced the railroads s1,031. .S99, ,451-
nor the Federal Reserve system which
has an unusual lending power of $50
million dollars that could be raised
to 211 billions, can provide a few
millions. it appears. for an S0-billion
dollar industry which supplies US
each year with 20 billions of new
business and furnishes the breath of
life to national prosperity.
I cite these facts merely to show
how faulty is credit and banking
system which cannot finance an
American industry so fundamentally
important that it produces 20 bill
lions of new wealth every year in the
form of food, as well as new mater
ials for manufacturers; but which
can and which did provide New York
and Wall Street with loans aggregat-
ing 215 billion dollars for gambling
and speculation on AZ different days
this last year, as recently reported by
the Comptroller of the currency, Mr..
Williams.
Won't Help Our Own
While our wool growers, our live
stock producers, our wheat raisers,
our cotton farmers are facing ruin
because they cannot borrow money
"bank credit being overstrained'-it
is curious to read in the days news
of the tremendous amount of foreign
financing now being done in the
United States. Four issues Of for
eign securities. aggregating AZ mil
lion dollars. were quickly sold in this
country last week.
1t is equally novel to learn from
the Wall Street journal that "the de-
cision of American bankers to ex-
tend financial aid to Cuba has been a
favorable influence" on the sugar
market.
The Cuban sugar crop, it seems,
was nearing harvest. Cuban planta-
ton owners needed financial support,
because the price of sugar was drop
ping. They appealed to American
bankers, and we have the spectacle
presented Of American financial sup
port promptly Forthcoming to the
Cuban farmer. but not in a great cri-
sis to the men who farm in the
United States, The men who produce
the food on which we live.
There is something the matter
with credit system which works as
iliogically as that.
| We can finance a 26-billipn doller
European war, we can finance Euro
pean governments to the extent of
another 10 billions, we can supply
more than a billion of funds to Amer
ican railways and we can furnish
month after month other billions of
credit for wild and woolly specula-
tion. But we've got no money to
lend to the hard pressed young farm
family struggling to pay for home,
nor to save from bankruptcy the men
who have their all in wool, cotton.
livestock. or grain, tied up by a car
shortage on one hand and by demoral-
ized, no-bottom markets on the other.
Farmers Lose 21a Billions
1t is true the Federal Reserve
Board denies that credit has been
withheld in agricultural sections, but
if that credit is wholly inadequate as
we know is is. what does the denial
amount to? The Federal Reserve
bank at Kansas City has charged as
high interest as 20 per cent per an
nun this year.
What we do know and what the
fact is, is that the farmers of the
United States, for lack of sufficient