| 266THAT VITAL THING, DEBT
Mrs. Peattie Discourses on It in Connection With Mortgage Statistics.
What the Figures Tell of the Movements and Emotions of the People-The Sowing of 1887 in Nebraska.
It is a difficult thing to make the mortgaged indebtedness of a country intersting or simple reading. Yet there is no subject which more nearly concerns the happiness of men and women than this. For in proportion as men enjoy the fruits of their labors, are they free men. No man is free who must give the results of his toil to another man.
If this fact had always been fully appreciated by Americans, they would not perhaps have reached a point where the present financial depression became an inevitable thing. If they, had been more patient in earning and less eager to borrow , if they had developed resources, instead of speculating in possibilities, they would not now, so many of them find themselves hemmed in by a wall of debt. For men build barriers of debt so high that never while life lasts, can they surmount them. And they are too often prone to aquire these debts recklessly in the hope opf large success, and then, when they fail to meet the drain they have put upon themselves, to find fault with the system which permitted them to commit such an error. On the other hand, there are circumstances which compel a man to become a borrower, And these conditions arise, primarily from the system of land and money which obtains here. But not to go into questions so large, and concerning which there are so many differences of opinion, It may be interesting to those who are themselves struggling under the burden which borrowed money imposed to know something of the condition of the people, in this respect, all over our beautiful but much suffering country.
Among the extra census bulletins are some which deal with the statistics of farms, homes and mortgages, and which represent a new departure on the part of our government. Mr. Robert P. Porter, chief of the census bureau says: "It is, I believe , the first time a government has ever attempted to invade for startical purposes the realm of private indebtedness."
He gives some idea of the labor involved in this extraordinary investigation in the following sentence: "The employment of a small army of 2,50 special agents and clerks to make an abstract of every mortgage placed on record in every county of the United States for the last ten years has attracted attention to the dangers of these incumbrances, to the alarming extent to which usury is practiced, and to the defectiveness of these records in all parts of the country. The agents of the census office have, as a matter of fact, overhauled the records in every state and territory. They have traveled on horseback and on foot through the most sparsely settled districts of our vast domain in search of mortgages, and have done their work so industriously and so thoroughly that we now have on file in Washington, as a result of their labor, the abstracts of about 9,000.000 mortgages"
It would be impossible in the space of such an article as this to deal with all of the states of the union. Therefore it may be best simply to use Mr. Porter's figure as they refer to states which topographically, or naturally, or in products, or manner of people, greatly contrast with one another.
In a letter accompanying his report to the secretary of the interior Mr. Porter says concerning this state:
"The real estate mortgage business of Nebraska during the ten years 1880-1890 is represented by 837,872 mortgages made to secure a debt of $274,808.858.
Of this debt 48.44 per cent remained unpaid January 1, 1890. Nearly one-third (81.90 per cent) of the existing debt is on village and city lots, and the principal portion of this is in the couties of Douglas and Lancaster, containing, respectively, the cities of Omaha and Lincoln. In Douglas county the existing debt is $27,064, 041 of which 87.60 percent is on lots. In Lancaster county the existing debt is 80,172,266, of which 64.97 per cent is on lots.
In some of the more prominent characteristics of its real estate mortgage indebtedness Nebraska occupies a place between Kansas on one hand and Iowa and Illinois on the other. The per capita indebtedness of these four states is as follows:
Kansas...9170
Nebraska...126
Iowa...104
Illinois...100
Existing mortgages cover 14,085,200
acres in Nebraska and these are 58.13 per cent of the total number of taled acres in the state. This is lower than the Kansas percentage and higher than the Iowa and Illinois percentages, as is shown below:
Kansas...61.55 per cent
Nebraska...58.13 per cent
Iowa...40.93 per cent
Illinois...80.78 per cent
Again, Nebraska occupies an intermediate place in proportion that the debt on acre tracts bears to the estimated true value of the acre tracts that secure it. The proportions for the four states shown are by the following percentages:
Kansas...47.53 per cent
Nebraska...44.47 per cent
Illinois...48.13 per cent
Iowa...38.85 per cent
Mr. Porter points out fact which in very much to the credit of Nebraska, and that is that the cause for mortgages almost invariably is improvements and purchase, In short, they represent growth and activity, and in no way decay or a-running behind. They show on the whole, the consciousness of strength, not weakness. At the same time, there is not a doubt about many of them having been incurred under protest. This is particularly the case in the farming districts, where the need for securing agricultural implements of the expensive sort, the occasional failure of crops, and the other exigencies of agricultural implements of the expensive sort, the occasional failure of crops, and the other exigencies of agricultural life have compelled farmers to assume second mortgages, frequently at usurious raics of interest.
Yet it is noticeable, and I cannot refrain from calling particular attentionto the fact that a very large percentage of the mortgages are on town and city lots. Whereas it is very well known that it is not city men who speak much of the oppression entailled by the mortgage but almost universally such complaints come from the farmer. This may be because of the dull and isolated nature of American farm life, and the fact that the farmer and his family have few amusements to divert their minds from their monetary difficulties. They are forced by the nature of circumstances to concentrate their attention upon themselves. There is also this to be taken into consideration in pallaition of the | 266THAT VITAL THING, DEBT
Mrs. Peattie Discourses on It in Connection With Mortgage Statistics.
What the Figures Tell of the Movements and Emotions of the People-The Sowing of 1887 in Nebraska.
It is a difficult thing to make the mortgaged indebtedness of a country intersting or simple reading. Yet there is no subject which more nearly concerns the happiness of men and women than this. For in proportion as men enjoy the fruits of their labors, are they free men. No man is free who must give the results of his toil to another man.
If this fact had always been fully appreciated by Americans, they would not perhaps have reached a point where the present financial depression became an inevitable thing. If they, had been more patient in earning and less eager to borrow , if they had developed resources, instead of speculating in possibilities, they would not now, so many of them find themselves hemmed in by a wall of debt. For men build barriers of debt so high that never while life lasts, can they surmount them. And they are too often prone to aquire these debts recklessly in the hope opf large success, and then, when they fail to meet the drain they have put upon themselves, to find fault with the system which permitted them to commit such an error. On the other hand, there are circumstances which compel a man to become a borrower, And these conditions arise, primarily from the system of land and money which obtains here. But not to go into questions so large, and concerning which there are so many differences of opinion, It may be interesting to those who are themselves struggling under the burden which borrowed money imposed to know something of the condition of the people, in this respect, all over our beautiful but much suffering country.
Among the extra census bulletins are some which deal with the statistics of farms, homes and mortgages, and which represent a new departure on the part of our government. Mr. Robert P. Porter, chief of the census bureau says: "It is, I believe , the first time a government has ever attempted to invade for startical purposes the realm of private indebtedness."
He gives some idea of the labor involved in this extraordinary investigation in the following sentence: "The employment of a small army of 2,50 special agents and clerks to make an abstract of every mortgage placed on record in every county of the United States for the last ten years has attracted attention to the dangers of these incumbrances, to the alarming extent to which usury is practiced, and to the defectiveness of these records in all parts of the country. The agents of the census office have, as a matter of fact, overhauled the records in every state and territory. They have traveled on horseback and on foot through the most sparsely settled districts of our vast domain in search of mortgages, and have done their work so industriously and so thoroughly that we now have on file in Washington, as a result of their labor, the abstracts of about 9,000.000 mortgages"
It would be impossible in the space of such an article as this to deal with all of the states of the union. Therefore it may be best simply to use Mr. Porter's figure as they refer to states which topographically, or naturally, or in products, or manner of people, greatly contrast with one another.
In a letter accompanying his report to the secretary of the interior Mr. Porter says concerning this state:
"The real estate mortgage business of Nebraska during the ten years 1880-1890 is represented by 837,872 mortgages made to secure a debt of $274,808.858.
Of this debt 48.44 per cent remained unpaid January 1, 1890. Nearly one-third (81.90 per cent |
