Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-12-11
FARM POLITICS JOLTED
BY LAND BANKS REPORT
Presidents Message Indicates Situation
on Agricultural Loans Has Cleared
i'm Recent Months.

| selling stock to the public and have
used it for paying dividends on tina
same stock and have thus forced tbs
| price of the stock up on the market L
/ SI75 a share. at which price they MADE
sales of ii TO innocent purchasers; ant
/ then the actual condition of the banE
| has necessitated the passing OF dlVl
bends. and the stock has fallen, ant
! the innocent purchasers have founf
! themselves owning stock of which the
! true final value was $3.50 share.
Three Members Removed.
officers of a joint stock land bank
! have organized companies to buy rea
estate from their bank; and they have
| sold the stock in those companies
touchingly called farmers com
panies"--to trusting customers; ana
! then they have unloaded onto those
! companies and onto those customers
all the inferior and worthless invest
ments which they themselves had COP
| traCted in the joint stock land bank
| but which they themselves did not
wish to carry.
Officers of a joint stock land bank
being also owners of an ordinary regu
lar bank. have transferred long line
Of unwiSe and insecure mortgages from
the bank which they owned to the
bank which they Differed and con
trolled but did not own.
President Coolidge, some time ago
removed from the Federal Farm Loan
Bureau three members under whom
such practices had by inadvertence
and by lack of rigid supervision been
permitted to flourish. One of them
attended the trial at Mankato. Mimi,
the other day. of Huston of the Joint
Stock Land Bank of Southern Mime
sofa. His testimony was in the di
rection of eXtenuating and excusine
Mr. Huston's accounts and reports as
rendered to the Federal Farm Loar
Bureau. In the face of his testimony
jury from an agricultural region
found Huston guilty on II counts; anC
Judge w. A. Cant was so deeply i'm
pressed by his guilt that he visited
upon him the extremely severe SEN
tence of nine years in Jail.
Began Final Cleansing.
That sentence was the beginning of
the final cleansing of the last of the
unfortunate governmental situations
which President Coolidge inherited.
At the time when he removed three
members from the Federal Farm Loan
Bureau and appointed Mr.. Meyer and
Floyd Harrison and George Cooksey to
take their places he gave no reason
for his action. 1t is thought that only
the attacks upon Mr.. Meyer and Mr.
Harrison and Mr. Cooksey brought
MN TO the frankness with which in
his recent message to Congress. he
spoke of the improper and unsound
practices into which certain Joint
stock land banks have fallen" 1t is
thought, further, that the uprooting
OF those practices will go to the last
unit OF thoroughneSs, and that the
accompanying revelations will ampIv
convince the Senate that a change in
the personnel of the Federal Farm
Loan Bureau was unavoidable.
1t is also and finally thought that
legislative representatives here of
farm organizations. who have been
defending the eX-members of the Fed.
eral Farm Loan Bureau as farm
minded" and who have been deriving
Mr. Meyer and Mr.. Harrison and Mr..
CooKsey as 'finance-minded, are
about to find their vocabulary losing
caste on Capitol Hill, and are about
TO have to abandon their long
cherished idea that a sympathy for
cotton plants and fOrty-acre lots is a
sufnclent equipment for supervising
the issuing and the selling of almost
three-ffths of billion of agricultural
securities.
The practical immediate political
erect Will additionally and probably be
that when the McNary-H augen bill.
OF some equivalent for it. is again
passed through the Congress. it viii
cease to provide that the members of
the new proposed Federal Farm Board
Should be nominated by farm organi-
cations, and will permit them to be
nominated directly and solely by the
President of the United States.