Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1916 — FARMERS AND CREDITS [ARTICLE]

FARMERS AND CREDITS

Manufacturers of farm machinery have advanced prices 10 to 15 per cent and, according to a dispatch from Chicago, further advances up to 30 per cent may be necessary. This is due to increase in the cost ■of steel. Implement manufacturers are forced to compete with munition manufacturers for thig material. The binder twine market is also seriously disturbed, owing partly to crop shortages and partly to the disturbances in Mexico. The prediction is made that retail prices next spring will be higher by 25' to 40 per cent. Contrary to a popular belief, producers do not always rejoice when they ask more for their goods. The International Harvester company and other prominent manufacturing concerns say that the farm implement business just now is in a peculiar state. Good crops and high prices have made many farmers prosperous. Banks in some agricultural communities are piling up surpluses. Yet with all this apparent prosperity the American farmer seems to prefer a credit to a cash business. One of the problems before the farm implement industry is to put the business on a cash basis. Manufacturers contend that they could reduce current quotations 10 per cent if they were selling for spot cash. Notwithstanding the report from Chicago, local agencies declare that there hag been no change in the system. They are confronted with a tradition that causes the purchaser, no matter how much money he has in the bank, to ask for credit. Usually he is so favored, although this favor costs him interest. The war boom in foodstuffs affords the farmer opportunity to buy his freedom out of the slavery of long credits. War business, with its remarkable profits, has enabled many industrial concerns, which were operating on close margins with borrowed capital, to build up their ’•osources. Tb’o should be the farmer’s privilege. Then again, there is the new rural credits law which should help the farmer to

buy his binder or reaper for cash. Cash, business is probably 20 per cent better this year than last. This ig due to th© eagerness of the country banks to take up paper. Implement manufacturers look forward to the day when they may abolish long credits. Now would be an excellent time—owing to the accumulation of gold-—but concerted action is improbable. The only way, they say, to persuade a farmer of the old type that cash is better than credit is to deny the privilege of credit. The manufacturers hesitate to do this, as it woyld impair sales for possibly a year. But in the end the farmer, the manufacturer and the public as a whole would profit. Perhaps the new type of farmer—the kind we see in 1917 touring cars—will be able to convince his neighbor that business is business, whether in the factory or on the farm.—lndianapolis News.