Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1920 — DISCRIMINATES AGAINST FARMER [ARTICLE]

DISCRIMINATES AGAINST FARMER

SENATOR CAPPER SAYS FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD IS NOT FAIR.

United States Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas has the following to say in reference to the discrimination of the federal reserve board against the farmers of the nation: “We can finance a 126,000,000,000 European war;, we can finance European governments to the extent of another $10,000,000,000; we can supply more than a billion of funds to American railways can furnish month after month other billions of credit for wild and wooly speculation—but we have no money to lend to the farmer nor to save from bankruptcy the men who have invested their all in wool, their cotton, their live stock or their grain, the victims of ear markets.

We can supply Wall Street with billions for gambling; we can furnish more than a billion in government funds to support a brokendown transportation system; we can and are financing the profiteering sugar farmers of Cuba during their market crisis—but we cannot help the American farmer, who is feeding our nation a$ prices far below the cost of production. This all shows how faulty is a credit system which cannot finance American industry, which produces $20,009,000,000 of new wealth in food and raw material and which provided Wall street with $2,500,000,000 for speculation on.forty-two different days this last year, according to the report of John Skelton Williams, comptroller of the cur-

rency. . It appears that the Secretary of the Treasury, the same Treasury which advanced the railroads sl,031,899,451, and the federal reserve system, which has unused lending power of <750,000,000, which could be raised to $2,500,000,000, are both unable to provide a few millions for an $80,000,000,000 industry which makes possible our national prosperity.. Every day we read of “bank credit being overstrained” for farmers, wool growers, stock producers and wheat raisers, when we can learn on the same page of. the .paper that four issues of foreign securities aggregating $42,000,000 were quickly sold in one week. What a commentary! American financial support prompt to rescue the Cuban planter, but not to the men who produce the food on which we live. On June 80 last, the assets of American banks exceeded the combined assets of all other leading nations, a total Of more than <53,000,000,000. There is something the matter with a credit system which works as unreasonably as that. Secretary Houston does not approve of the war finance board;, but we might as well re-establish the war finance

corporation to finance farm exports. We have got to open foreign markets immediately to our grain and meat products. ’d Cites High interest Rato. I have just talked.- tp Eugene Myers. Jr., former chairman of the war finance board, and ho has been in contact with the leading bankers of all western cities, who express themselves as being in favor of re-establishing the war finance board. » Furthermore, the federal farm loan board should have authority to issue and sell in the open market short time securities, based on warehouse receipts; .these securities to be acceptable for rediscount# by the federal reserve banks. The federal reserve board denies that credit has been withheld in agricultural sections, but if that credit is wholly inadequate, m we know it is, what does that denial amount to? ‘ _ The federal reserve boardof Kansas City has charged as high interest as 20 per cent per annum th What *we do know is that the farmers are facing an aggregate loss of >500,000,000 this year, and what concerns us vitally is how can they produce >20,000,000,000 of food next year unless they are givbn credit.