reason, but
being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being
sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's
desire. This year--1913--the administration issued sudden orders that no
man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land.
The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds
worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our
clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in
quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new
law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United
States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence--or words to
that effect.

'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with
less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on
in the world?'

'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to
prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land.
We've got to protect them against themselves.'

That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of
Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or
too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other
quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it.

'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '_He's_ all right. There are
about six ways of evading the Act that, _I_ know of. The fellah probably
knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the
days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land
enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes
to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result
of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek
at 30 per cent.'

'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law,
won't it?' I said.

'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made
if there's five piastres on the other side of it.'

'Maybe; but _was_ the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too
much?'

'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if
anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a
judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of
consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it
does