er price, or seek a better market for any part of it, until all his
obligations have been settled. Disposing of mortgaged property is a
serious offense and no one not desirous of abetting fraud will buy
property which he has reason to suspect has been mortgaged. As a result
of this system in some sections, years ago, nine-tenths of the farmers
were in debt. Undoubtedly the prices credited for the crops have been
less than might have been obtained in a market absolutely free. If the
crops a farmer raises bring less than the advances, the balance is
carried over to the next year and no other merchant will give credit to
a man whose accounts with his former creditor are not clear. In the past
the signing of one of these legal instruments has often reduced the
farmer to a state of peonage.

Naturally the merchant who has begun to extend credit, sometimes before
the seed is in the ground, has a voice in deciding what crops shall be
planted. The favorite crops in the past have been tobacco and cotton,
particularly the latter. Both contain comparatively large value in small
bulk; both can be stored conveniently, with little danger of
deterioration; neither is liable to a total failure; a ready market for
both is always available; and neither tempts the thief until it is ripe.
Only winter wheat, sown in the fall and reaped in early summer, is grown
in the South, and the crop is somewhat uncertain. A tenant who has secured
advances on a crop of wheat during the fall and winter may easily move to
an adjoining county or State in the spring and plant cotton there. Half a
crop of corn may easily be stolen, eaten by animals, or consumed by the
tenant while still green. A further reason for not encouraging the
production of corn and wheat is the profit the merchant makes by the sale
of imported flour, meal, and bacon. Cotton is therefore almost the only
product of sections admirably suited to the growing of corn or to the
raising of hogs. The country merchant has helped to keep the South poor.

Yet in spite of the apparently exorbitant percentage of profit, few
country merchants become rich. In a year of drouth, or of flood, many of
their debtors may not be able to pay their accounts, even though their
intentions are of the best. Others may prove shiftless and neglect their
fields. Still others may be deliberately dishonest and, after getting as
large advances as possible, abandon their crops leaving both the
landowner and the merchan