Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1891 — BUINING FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

BUINING FARMERS.

Maoh has been said recently relative to mortgages on farming lands in some of the Mississippi valley states. Doubtless there has been exaggeration, but if what a farmer writes from Kansas is true, reforms ought to be initiated at least in that state. This correspondent says: “The Lombard Loan and Trust Company of London has foreclosed on at least 120,000 acres of farming lands in Kansas alone. This company has loaned its money on lands at low valuation, for 2 and even 2i per cent, per month—24 to 30 per cent, per annu n. It is no wonder that farmers in the west complain that their land is being taken them under each circumstances. The worst feature of this bnsiness is the absorption of large tracts of land in the hands of English capitalists to be rented to tenants, for it te stated that men are now being brought from England for that purpose, * The same correspondent writes farther as follows: “Vast tracts of Kansas fanning lands are now owned by foreign sharpers, while the evicted owners are still in debt for more than the amount originally loaned npon them. All of this is done legally as there are no usury laws.**—S. F. Call. For many years Kansas has been the most intense stalwart Bepublican state in the Union and we see in the above the eondition to which her people has been reduced.—No laws to prevent usury; no laws to prevent alien ownership of real estate. The alliance is now on top in that state; they have deposed one of the nsnrers—lngalls; let them follow np this righteous act by the enactment of laws that will effeotually put a stop to usury and alien ownership of lands within its borders. *