rative credit or
selling associations.[31] Moreover, a cooperative store will seriously
affect the solidarity of a small community unless a goodly majority,
both from farm and village, are convinced of the necessity of competing
with local retailers and will give the store their patronage. Except in
the buying of agricultural supplies, which may be considered rather as
the raw materials and equipment of the farm as a manufacturing business
and which are therefore entitled to wholesale prices, consumers'
cooperation as usually conducted through cooperative stores is not a
distinctively agricultural problem, but is the same for the farmer as
for the villager or industrial worker, and its desirability and
limitations are determined by similar considerations.

With the change to a commercial type of farming and with the higher
price of land, the American farmer has had to make larger use of
borrowed capital and his business has been seriously hampered by a lack
of credit facilities to meet his needs. Probably in no field of
cooperative effort have the benefits been more apparent than in that of
the rural credit banks which are found throughout Europe and which have
thoroughly demonstrated their usefulness. Attention has been called to
the fact that our best farm lands are more and more operated by tenants,
and that this is inimical to strong community life. One of the reasons
for this tendency has been the inability to secure long-term loans on
farm real estate by the man who has little capital of his own. As lands
rose in value this became increasingly difficult. To meet this
situation a commission representative of all sections of the United
States visited various countries in Europe in the spring of 1913, and as
a result of their report, in 1916 Congress finally enacted the Federal
Farm Loan Act establishing a system of farm land banks. Under this
system one-half of the value of a farm and buildings up to $10,000 may
be borrowed and paid off under the amortization plan in from five to
forty years at a low rate of interest. The details of the system do not
concern our present discussion, but the essential feature of the system
is the local land bank through which the loans are made and collected.
The local land bank is strictly a cooperative society organized to
secure long-term credit facilities for its members under the terms of
the federal act through the regional land banks of which each local bank
is a member. Like o