By getting at the cause of this threatened re-absorption of the small farmer into the system from which he so eagerly and bravely sought release, we shall best understand the movement. It is primarily credit—a false credit based on usury and oppression, strained to a point where it breeds distrust and provokes a percentage to compensate for risk, and strained, not for the purchase of land, which is a security as long as the debt is unpaid, but for provisions and fertilizers, which are valueless to either secure the lender or assist the borrower to pay. With the failure of the large planters and their withdrawal from business, banks, trust companies, and capitalists withdraw their money from agricultural loans. The new breed of farmers held too little land and were too small dealers to command credit or justify investigation. And yet they were obliged to have money with which to start their work. Commission merchants therefore borrowed the money from the banks, and loaned it to village brokers or store-keepers, who in turn loaned it to farmers in their neighborhood, usually in the form of advancing supplies. It thus came to the farmer after it had been through three principals, each of whom demanded a heavy percentage for the risk he assumed. In every case the farmer gave a lien or mortgage upon his crop of land. In this lien he waived exemptions and defense, and it amounted in effect to a deed. Having once given such a paper to his merchant, his credit was of course gone, and he had to depend upon the man who held the mortgage for his supplies. To that man he must carry his crop when it was gathered, pay him commission for handling it, and accept the settlement that he offered. To give an idea of the oppressiveness of this system it is only necessary to quote the Commissioner of Agriculture of Georgia, who by patient investigation discovered that the Georgia farmers paid prices for supplies that averaged fifty-four per cent. interest on all they bought. For instance, corn that sold for eighty-nine cents a bushel cash was sold on time secured by a lien at a dollar and twelve cents. In Mississippi the percentage is even more terrible, as the crop lien laws are in force there, and the crop goes into the hands of the merchant, who charges commission on the estimated number of bales, whether a half crop or a full one is raised. Even this maladjustment of credits would not impoverish the farmer if he did not yield to the infatuation for cotton-planting, and fail to plant anything but cotton.