Sentence:  Bankers who had been reluctant to lend without better security than the house itself got that security from the U. S. government ; householders who had been unable to pick up the burden of short-term high interest mortgages found they could borrow for twenty-five years at 4 <WSD>per</WSD> cent , under government aegis . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a proportion in relation to a whole (which is usually the amount per hundred)