COUNTRY LIFE
Hired Cows A much advertised change in farming finance is likely to stir a new and national effort towards the provision of cheap credit to farmers ; and the reasons for the urgency of the need are curious. Farmers are so short of capital and at the same time. so anxious to produce goods for which the price is assured and the payment immediate that they are buying stock, especially milch cows, on the instalment principle. Adver- tisements of cows to be sold in this way multiply ; and we are faced by this odd. and not healthy contradiction that while farmers cannot obtain direct credit, those who supply hint can. The fact is not of course necessarily regrettable. American economists have argued that it is the ideal system for it universalises credit ; but there Are dangers, and the danger that is most generally feared in England is that stock-raising is seriously decaying. It needs capital, in the sense that the stock raiser must wait for his money. It already becomes a question where the stock are coining from ; and that question is not satisfactory in a country which is perhaps, with only Ireland as a rival, the very best in the world for producing animals of pure breed and high staniina.
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